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sgtrock · 03-31-2014, 01:30 PM

I read through this entire thread with a great deal of interest. One of the most fascinating aspects for me was to see how people's perceptions of the available tools changed over the lifetime of the thread.

I'm just getting back into writing after far longer than I care to think about. Things have changed enormously since the last time that I looked at the available tools, so I'm slowly feeling my way toward a complete toolchain.

I also prefer to use cross platform tools whenever and wherever possible. In my experience they tend to be far more robust than platform specific tools. I think it has something to do with the need to decouple functionality from basic platform code when developing software.

In addition to that, I worked in the IT department of a typesetting and publishing house for several years. The attitude that presentation must be separate from information in order to be able to publish in a wide variety of electronic and paper formats became deeply embedded in my thinking while I was there.

My background in IT has also made me a huge fan of the belt and suspenders approach to data backup and version control. I've received one too many panicked calls from someone who just deleted several weeks or months worth of work with a single thoughtless click. I don't want to ever put myself in a similar situation.

Finally, I'm cheap and I like robust, stable solutions.

I'll pay for software if I have to. However, I would far rather use FLOSS software when I can. All of the software applications listed below are free for the download.

So with that background in mind, here is what I'm currently using and why.

First, backup. I'm currently using SpiderOak for backup to the cloud. It's available for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. I really like their design philosophy. I REALLY like the fact that their security model is deliberately designed to prevent anyone, including themselves, from seeing anything stored on their servers because encryption happens at the client before uploading. SpiderOak has a free trial service available limited to 2GB and a "plus plan" at $10/mo or $100/yr for 100 GB. I'm currently using about 10 GB for my writing and a lot of other stuff that I want backed up.

Second, version control. After mucking about with manually moving versions from one folder to another for a few years, I finally broke down and tried subversion. It's pretty decent but it's also a bit heavyweight. The major problem that I ran into with Subversion was that it didn't handle branching as cleanly as I'd like. I work fulltime at my day job so I tend to write in much shorter bursts when I have a few minutes and for an hour or so in the evening. I wanted a solution that would let me write on three devices and keep things up to date between them; my Linux desktop, my Google Nexus phone, and a tablet running Android. I decided that my best approach was to maintain three branches and keep them synced. This is doable in subversion but it's not a trivial task.

After digging through a variety of reviews and comparisons I settled on git. Git is based on a peer to peer model instead of a centralized server/client model like subversion. (Although you can run git in a client/server model if you need to.) It therefore makes branching and merging trivially easy.

Again, there are git clients available on all five of the platforms that I mentioned above. Right now I'm using the packaged version for my Linux distro (Debian testing if anyone cares) and SGit on my two Android devices.

Next comes note taking, character management, etc. I've been a fan of mind mapping in general and Freemind in particular for many years so that's what I started with. For the past couple of years, though, I was becoming dissatisfied with the relative lack of progress with it. I discovered a fork of Freemind called Freeplane some time last year. This page highlights the differences between the Freemind and Freeplane.

So far, I've been very satisfied with Freeplane. I find that its editing features are definitely better than Freemind. There's a plug-in for it called GTD (Getting Things Done) that's handy for keeping track of tasks. Also, its docear integration looks like it might be worthwhile if I ever get around to writing something that requires a lot of research.

So, now that the basic infrastructure has been defined, what about the actual writing and publishing? Back when I was working for the typesetting/publishing company, I became aware of TeX and LaTeX. This combination produces some of the most beautiful printed output that I've ever seen. The best GUI that I've ever used for generating documents based upon TeX/LaTeX is LyX**. The WYSIWYMean model lets you concentrate on the actual writing without worrying about the distractions that can inevitably creep in with WYSIWYG applications like LibreOffice and Microsoft Office. For years I did almost all of my writing in LyX and used its excellent import/export features to share documents with others.

Unfortunately, while LyX is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, there is no iOS or Android version available at this time. This obviously leaves me in a bit of a pickle if I want to continue to write the way that I plan to.

After thinking about it for a while I realized that my best bet was to fall back to writing straight text. Text editors are readily available on all of my target platforms, for one. For another, this will force me to completely decouple the writing process from the presentation and publication processes. Right now, I'm using Kwrite on my Linux desktop and Vi Improved Touch on my two Android devices. I have used vim for basic editing tasks on *nix based OSes for over a decade and I'm pretty comfortable with it.

The final step in my toolchain is going to be conversion from text to publication ready format. I plan to import the text files (one per chapter) into LyX for most of the massaging (plus inclusion of any illustrations, etc.) because I want to take advantage of its broad array of export utilities. Once that's done I need to figure out whether I want to go directly to epub (probably Sigil for final massaging unless I find something else), plan to submit to Smashwords (.DOC, ewww!

), or take another route entirely.

I'm not too worried. With straight text as my base format, I'll be able to choose multiple directions if I wish.

So, to the experts out there... any thoughts on where and how I could improve my workflow? Any recommendations about tools for publishing?

TIA

**BTW, I STRONGLY urge all aspiring authors and amateur/semi-pro typsetters to read A Few Notes on Book Design by Peter Wilson. He does a great job of explaining in layman's terms how and why typographic conventions for paper publishing came into being. I think it's a great resource even if your only target is ebook publishing.

The companion book, The Memoir Class manual for LyX, is an outstanding example in and of itself of the kind of truly beautiful presentation that LyX is capable of. The manual has dozens of illustrations highlighting how LyX leverages LaTeX to accomplish what it does. Well worth flipping through even if you have no intention of ever using LyX.

03-31-2014, 01:30 PM	#279
sgtrock Member Posts: 20 Karma: 11190 Join Date: Mar 2011 Device: various	I read through this entire thread with a great deal of interest. One of the most fascinating aspects for me was to see how people's perceptions of the available tools changed over the lifetime of the thread. I'm just getting back into writing after far longer than I care to think about. Things have changed enormously since the last time that I looked at the available tools, so I'm slowly feeling my way toward a complete toolchain. I also prefer to use cross platform tools whenever and wherever possible. In my experience they tend to be far more robust than platform specific tools. I think it has something to do with the need to decouple functionality from basic platform code when developing software. In addition to that, I worked in the IT department of a typesetting and publishing house for several years. The attitude that presentation must be separate from information in order to be able to publish in a wide variety of electronic and paper formats became deeply embedded in my thinking while I was there. My background in IT has also made me a huge fan of the belt and suspenders approach to data backup and version control. I've received one too many panicked calls from someone who just deleted several weeks or months worth of work with a single thoughtless click. I don't want to ever put myself in a similar situation. Finally, I'm cheap and I like robust, stable solutions. I'll pay for software if I have to. However, I would far rather use FLOSS software when I can. All of the software applications listed below are free for the download. So with that background in mind, here is what I'm currently using and why. First, backup. I'm currently using SpiderOak for backup to the cloud. It's available for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. I really like their design philosophy. I REALLY like the fact that their security model is deliberately designed to prevent anyone, including themselves, from seeing anything stored on their servers because encryption happens at the client before uploading. SpiderOak has a free trial service available limited to 2GB and a "plus plan" at $10/mo or $100/yr for 100 GB. I'm currently using about 10 GB for my writing and a lot of other stuff that I want backed up. Second, version control. After mucking about with manually moving versions from one folder to another for a few years, I finally broke down and tried subversion. It's pretty decent but it's also a bit heavyweight. The major problem that I ran into with Subversion was that it didn't handle branching as cleanly as I'd like. I work fulltime at my day job so I tend to write in much shorter bursts when I have a few minutes and for an hour or so in the evening. I wanted a solution that would let me write on three devices and keep things up to date between them; my Linux desktop, my Google Nexus phone, and a tablet running Android. I decided that my best approach was to maintain three branches and keep them synced. This is doable in subversion but it's not a trivial task. After digging through a variety of reviews and comparisons I settled on git. Git is based on a peer to peer model instead of a centralized server/client model like subversion. (Although you can run git in a client/server model if you need to.) It therefore makes branching and merging trivially easy. Again, there are git clients available on all five of the platforms that I mentioned above. Right now I'm using the packaged version for my Linux distro (Debian testing if anyone cares) and SGit on my two Android devices. Next comes note taking, character management, etc. I've been a fan of mind mapping in general and Freemind in particular for many years so that's what I started with. For the past couple of years, though, I was becoming dissatisfied with the relative lack of progress with it. I discovered a fork of Freemind called Freeplane some time last year. This page highlights the differences between the Freemind and Freeplane. So far, I've been very satisfied with Freeplane. I find that its editing features are definitely better than Freemind. There's a plug-in for it called GTD (Getting Things Done) that's handy for keeping track of tasks. Also, its docear integration looks like it might be worthwhile if I ever get around to writing something that requires a lot of research. So, now that the basic infrastructure has been defined, what about the actual writing and publishing? Back when I was working for the typesetting/publishing company, I became aware of TeX and LaTeX. This combination produces some of the most beautiful printed output that I've ever seen. The best GUI that I've ever used for generating documents based upon TeX/LaTeX is LyX*. The WYSIWYMean model lets you concentrate on the actual writing without worrying about the distractions that can inevitably creep in with WYSIWYG applications like LibreOffice and Microsoft Office. For years I did almost all of my writing in LyX and used its excellent import/export features to share documents with others. Unfortunately, while LyX is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, there is no iOS or Android version available at this time. This obviously leaves me in a bit of a pickle if I want to continue to write the way that I plan to. After thinking about it for a while I realized that my best bet was to fall back to writing straight text. Text editors are readily available on all of my target platforms, for one. For another, this will force me to completely decouple the writing process from the presentation and publication processes. Right now, I'm using Kwrite on my Linux desktop and Vi Improved Touch on my two Android devices. I have used vim for basic editing tasks on nix based OSes for over a decade and I'm pretty comfortable with it. The final step in my toolchain is going to be conversion from text to publication ready format. I plan to import the text files (one per chapter) into LyX for most of the massaging (plus inclusion of any illustrations, etc.) because I want to take advantage of its broad array of export utilities. Once that's done I need to figure out whether I want to go directly to epub (probably Sigil for final massaging unless I find something else), plan to submit to Smashwords (.DOC, ewww! ), or take another route entirely. I'm not too worried. With straight text as my base format, I'll be able to choose multiple directions if I wish. So, to the experts out there... any thoughts on where and how I could improve my workflow? Any recommendations about tools for publishing? TIA BTW, I STRONGLY** urge all aspiring authors and amateur/semi-pro typsetters to read A Few Notes on Book Design by Peter Wilson. He does a great job of explaining in layman's terms how and why typographic conventions for paper publishing came into being. I think it's a great resource even if your only target is ebook publishing. The companion book, The Memoir Class manual for LyX, is an outstanding example in and of itself of the kind of truly beautiful presentation that LyX is capable of. The manual has dozens of illustrations highlighting how LyX leverages LaTeX to accomplish what it does. Well worth flipping through even if you have no intention of ever using LyX. Last edited by sgtrock; 03-31-2014 at 01:42 PM.