On Sat, Nov 02, 2019 at 03:00:28PM +0000, Oliver Leaver-Smith wrote: > Hello, > > What tools do people find useful for writing on OpenBSD? By writing > I mean long form such as novels and technical books, including plot > and character development, outlining, and formatting for publishing > (not all the same application necessarily) > > I have found a number which boast Linux support, but not really > anything that stands out which supports OpenBSD (aside from the > obvious LaTeX et al.) > > Mich appreciated > > ~ols
I am not sure what is your ability to learn tools - no offence, but some people want to have it as WYSIWIG, period, and I am mostly ok about it (as long as they also do their cleaning). However, my unholy opinion is, if you plan for your words to be readable with the least problem say, twenty years from now, then you should stick with text based formats for, er, text and learn few tools that can process such format. So, - LaTeX for writing a book It is possible to have parts of a text in various files, which can be included into main file - various ways of developing plot, etc. It is possible to have many versions of same book, including chapters into them as separate files. And so on. I am not sure if a writer actually needs this much flexibility, but a lot is possible if you would like to mess with different ways to organize a book. - Emacs for editor This part is tricky, but I definitely prefer Emacs. Some prefer Vim and I agree it is very fine editor, but myself, I go with Emacs. I stay away from anything web based, browser based and Javascript based. All of those look like ticking bombs to me. When they go (not an unlikely event, IMHO) those depending on them are left to freeze. Or they will be dying a death of thousand worms loaded from some far away countries in their just-updated JS library. - Org mode for plot/characters and stuff Org mode is kind of program running inside Emacs (not really, but do I want to delve into talking about Lisp, loadable code and programmable editors). Or, it is a way to have one's own personal wiki in a file, without the need for web server and whatnot. Very handy, if you ask me. All those are tools and require some learning. In my case, I read a tutorial built into Emacs (say, an hour of reading + learning to press right keys), I read some chapters from Leslie Lamport book on LaTeX (say, maybe few hours of trying stuff inside Emacs and producing documents with it). As of Org-mode, I caught some basics and started going, then caught some more and there is still 98% or more to learn, but as I do not have to, I just use what I know and keep going. There are few more tools which might be useful for above case. - pandoc for converting from LaTeX to ODT (i.e. Open Office) - I have not used it but some people say it works - version control - whatever is easier, I have just set my own org-mode based "wiki" into RCS. RCS is amongst the oldest such system still in use, but I did not wanted to mess with other things, for a while. Now, if I make a mistake, press wrong key combo and delete half of my wiki, I might have better chance to recover from this error. There are many version control systems to choose from, I think most will work locally on your computer without prematurely exposing the book to the outside world. This email was written in Emacs, BTW. I get easy formatting for free. Of course, tools have quirks. I think so. I got used to them and forgot, so I am unable to say more about this. So maybe the learning experience will not be peachy rosy for you at first, but I would say positives prevail over time. HTH -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
