Discovering the Power of Plain Text w/ MD and Links for book project

[drezha]

Thanks for posting the thread - I had no idea there was a footnotes plugin for Obsidian, so that’s been downloaded.

As others have said, Pandoc is probably the tool of choice for converting markdown to docx. However, I have in the past used both Marked 2 and Typora to do that. However, I’ve found pandoc to be the best option, especially as I can feed it a template .docx document and it’ll output the file based on that. Has made writing some long form university documents easier than writing the whole thing in Word. However, I do have to go back and tidy some items up, but it’s not the end of the world in comparison to writing it all in Word (it’s quicker to type ### than it is to select Heading 3 for example!)

[Bmosbacker]

@drezha I had high hopes for Pandoc until I read this, “Step 2: Open a terminal…” I’m afraid (literally!) that I don’t do terminal.

[anon85228692]

I may well use Scrivener to compile and publish once the writing is done.

Be aware that moving a writing project in Scrivener for revision and compilation is harder / longer than it seems.

[Bmosbacker]

Yes, when I try to import text files to Scrivener and then compile/export those text files from Scrivener to say Word, the MD syntax remains (there may be a way to eliminate this in the compile function but I’ve not discovered how), which creates extra work that would not be necessary if I wrote everything in Scrivener. However, iA Writer does an excellent job of exporting MD text files to Word format and strips all of the MD syntax. Here is an example from a draft section of my book:

iA Writer MD Text

Result in Word

I think/hope that once I figure out how to use MD Transclude (a new concept for me), I should be able to combine whole chapters in iA Writer and export to Word for final formatting and completing citations and references. I’m experimenting in small chunks to master the workflow to determine if in fact this is worth it instead of just using Scrivener. Thus far, I think this will work well.

[drezha]

Ah, that can be off putting, but it is one of the easiest command line software’s I’ve used.

This is a good guide I’ve used previously - though it is LaTeX to Word, but substitue Name.tex for Name.md and it’ll work.

[brookter]

Have you looked at Scrivener’s External Folder Sync feature?

You can write documents in another editor (including any Markdown editor) and have them synced automatically into your project – and vice versa.

Your documents in Scrivener must use markdown for bold / italic etc, but elements like footnotes and comments and lines between paragraphs can be automatically translated: E.g. all inline annotations in Scrivener are automatically converted to (( Inline Annotation )) and footnotes to {{ footnotes }} and back again.

Similarly, you can add new documents in the external editor, you can delete documents in the finder, and your project and the folder will remain in sync (you can even set it to take snapshots every time you sync, so you won’t lose data).

There are a few wrinkles, but it works really well when you’ve understood the process. I haven’t tried it with an obsidian vault, but on the face of it, there’s no obvious reason why it wouldn’t work – it does with every other markdown editor I’ve tried.

Obviously, you’d have to test out the features which matter to you most, but in principle you could use Scrivener for organisation, Scrivenings, citations etc, while doing most of the actual writing in Obsidian.

Once you’re ready to compile, the conversion from *italics* to italics can be done automatically. Once you’ve chosen your compilation format, just click the cog in the bar on the right hand side and tick the two ‘markdown’ options.

Just one other observation – don’t be concerned that you’re not using all the features of Scrivener – you’re not supposed to! I’d be surprised if anyone ever uses more than half of them… It’s a toolkit, not a straight-jacket, and many of those tools are intended for specific purposes and no-one needs them all.

[Bmosbacker]

@brookter This is extremely helpful. I never looked into the sync with external folder feature. This may give me the best of all worlds: 1) the ability to focus on text in an editor like iA Writer, the “linking my thinking” capabilities of Obsidian, and the power features of Scrivener. I’m going to give this a go and see how it works.

Thanks a million!

[brookter]

As I said, there are a few wrinkles to how it works and it may not fit your exact needs – I suspect linking may be something you’ll have to test thoroughly, for example – but it’s a powerful feature which isn’t all that well known, I think.

It’s worth giving the manual (14.3 Synchronised Folders) a skim first so you get the outline of how it’s supposed to work and the limitations.

Even if it’s not for this project, it’s a useful feature to know about. Good luck!

[svsmailus]

As much as I like and use Obsidian, I’ve found it’s easy to try and throw all text in it. I think it still wise to use the best tool for the job in hand. Obsidian will require far more of your time than Scrivener to accomplish the same task in Obsidian.

Obsidian is best at hyperlinked notes. That’s what I use it for.

[Bmosbacker]

Yes I’m coming to the same conclusion when it comes to a large writing project. I think I will continue using Scrivener for my major writing but I have found that Obsidian is excellent for my work project and meeting notes and for reviewing and linking my research for various presentations and the book project. In short, Obsidian is replacing Craft for project and meeting notes and will be used for thinking and idea generation and linking from articles and books that I read. I think I was trying to make Obsidian a Swiss Army knife, which isn’t ideal nor necessarily desirable.

[LucCogZest]

I started my first Cognitive Productivity book in Scrivener, but I found it a bit awkward. I wanted to keep my research notes/materials separate from my book (basically keeping the research wherever). I also found Leanpub quite appealing philosophically (and more).

So I exported all to plain text, and resumed writing in BBedit+ Markdown, using Leanpub to publish. It outputs PDF, epub and .mobi.

I wrote my entire second book in Markdown, using BBEdit and the Leanpub framework.

My 3rd book, Discontinuities: Love, Art, Mind is an edited one, in progress. Again written in Markdown (though some people have contributed chapters in Word, unfortunately).

I have no regret re markdown , Leanpub and my toolkit.

Leanpub does not preclude you from selling the same book elsewhere.

[Bmosbacker]

@LucCogZest Great input, thanks. I’m exploring how best to write in Scrivener using markdown. Scrivener does support markdown so if I can do that successfully that may be what I decide to do. That said, I find it more appealing to use something like Obsidian, iA Writer etc. to write the book. The problem I’m running into is that it is harder to re-organize chapters in sections in those programs than it is in Scrivener. I’m finding myself needing to use a Johnny decimal type system unless I use Scrivener in which case I can manually move the chapters/sections around at will.

Have you run into any of the same types of issues?

[LucCogZest]

well, I certainly don’t want to dissuade anyone from using Scrivener. It’s great software with many benefits. (I believe there are also ways of using it with Leanpub now; but when I was finishing my first book its output didn’t work with Leanpub).

Leanpub generates the PDFs etc. and handles the autonumbering. It expects a book.txt file which is the outline of the book containing the names of the top level files in the book. Those files can have whatever structure one wants.

Leanpub computes the heading numbers and churns out a ToC. Just press the “preview” button on the internal Leanpub.com webpage for your book and Leanpub outputs the various files for review or publishing.

[quentinsf]

I really liked Scrivener and used it for a while, but went off it when I tried to do my first long project. I found the lack of proper stylesheet-type management to be a big problem. It was a bit more of a technical document, I admit, and I appreciate that Scrivener is more designed for novels, but the ability to do create, manage and modify styles was definitely missing back then. Has it got any of that now?

At the time, trying to avoid Word and not being able to afford InDesign, I went for Nisus Writer, which did proper hierarchical style management and used very-compatible RTF; not as good as plain text, I grant you, but pretty good at the time.

That, for me, is still the major limitation of Markdown (which I use all the time for most other things): the ability to give paragraphs or spans of text a named style, which can be formatted later. I don’t think there are any dialects which support that?

[Bmosbacker]

I can’t really speak to Scrivener then vs now but the compile function (as I understand it) can apply style to specific headings up export. It seem a bit complicated to me. Ideally, I would prefer to just use a plain text editor to write the book I’m working on but I find it cumbersome to manage the chapters and sections. Scrivener at least makes this part easy!

[quentinsf]

Yes, I think the limitation of Scrivener’s styling is that it only has a limited number of predefined styles.

I was helping a friend with a book that included lots of verses of poetry, for example, which needed at least one ‘poem verse’ style, ideally several, and a ‘poem title’ style, and these were distinct from anything else in the documents, but might need to be reformatted before publishing.

Sadly, I think the only plain-text system that can handle such things at present is LaTeX, but that’s far from being easy to read or write, and you have to be a programmer to get the most out of it. (I am, but I still avoid it. )

[anon85228692]

I think the limitation of Scrivener’s styling is that it only has a limited number of predefined styles

No, in v3 you can create and style your own styles without limitation.

However, it’s entirely true that Scrivener is a rich text environment first and foremost. It has affordances for Markdown and understands it but it will not render it live like Bear, Craft, Ulysses and other editors.

[brookter]

(I’m sure you know this, but in case people are new to Scrivener, or want to know what it can do…)

There’s actually little need to write in markdown in Scrivener, unless you are syncing documents with External Folder Sync, even if your final document will be in markdown format…

That’s because the conversion from RTF syntax is good enough for all but advanced needs. When you know that any combination of headings, italics, bold, footnotes, tables, footnotes, images, captions, cross-references will be translated from their RTF format to standard multi markdown on compilation, there’s not so much need to type *italic* or for

| Messing | around | with | pipes | to create | tables |

Scrivener’s User Manual (a far more complex document than most of use will ever use Scrivener for…) uses this sort of hybrid approach:

• headings come from the Binder titles (i.e. they’re not markdown)
• bold/italic are in markdown format
• bullet / numbered lists, tables, internal and external links are all in Scrivener’s own format
• Scrivener styles are used to identify Mac-only or Windows-only text, and the appropriate wording is selected on compilation…
• latex commands are embedded in a style, which on compilation adds the necessary latex syntax.

...wherever you see blue text in this project, the compiler will insert the following code around the text:

	`\interface{`{=latex}blue text`}`{=latex}

Compilation itself uses a customised workflow as a front end via markdown to Latex to PDF, which results in the 800 page PDF manual being produced in either a Windows or Mac format, to taste.

If anyone’s interested in just how sophisticated Scrivener can be with regard to markdown and LaTeX, then it’s worth downloading the actual Scrivener project for the Manual from this page: User Manuals | Literature & Latte (select ‘Mac / Scriv Proj / Zip’ from the drop down list).

But the bottom line, is that you don’t actually have to write in markdown in Scrivener to produce multi-markdown. You can if you want, but it’s happy to mix and match.

Hope this is interesting to someone …

[quentinsf]

@anon85228692

No, in v3 you can create and style your own styles without limitation.

Ah - thanks, that’s good to know! I may revisit it when I come to write my first novel.

But I’m pleased to hear that things have improved a lot on this front since my experiences with v2. I may have a think about using it for other kinds of documents too.

(As they say, everybody has one novel inside them… and for most people, that’s exactly where it should stay. )

[brookter]

V3 is a lot more capable (and more logical) than V1 or 2, but they have added or rethought some basic workflows: e.g. the addition of ‘proper’ styles (instead of the former ‘formatting presets’), and the changes to the compilation workflow amongst others, so there are couple of things which can trip up people converting from earlier versions.

If you do decide to take it up again, then you’ll find that an hour with the Interactive Tutorial will save you a fair bit of time and angst. The tutorial has a collection pulling together all the features which are new or changed in V3, so it’s easy to review them.

HTH.