Quote:
Originally Posted by Pajamaman
@rcentros. Yep, emacs with a plugin like fountain-works looks like the way to go. Thanks for the recommendation and info. I must admit, I am writing more and more in ASCII these days. I am using notepad+ a lot in Windows. It's quite nice, has multi-tab, but finding the settings to change options is the stuff of tortured fever dreams. Is emacs multi-tab? And does it do colored fonts? I've never used it.
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Emacs isn't multi-tab "out of the box," (it's multi-buffer) but if you use the CLI "flavor" of Emacs and a tabbed terminal application (like Guake) you can have multiple files open at once and paste from one to the other. And, yes, it will do color fonts with the right "add-on."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pajamaman
Edit: watched the video. Thanks for your trouble. Yeah, that's impressive. I see the plugin fountain-works is for script writing. Can it be adapted to a general writing format--i.e., can scriptwriting template be dropped? Crucially, does it support multi-tab? I am forever flipping between windows and editing. But emacs definately looks worth exploring. I wonder if it works under windows...  |
Yes, the only way the Fountain-Mode "turns on" is if your file's name ends with the extension ".fountain." Otherwise you'll just go into "normal mode" and the Fountain sub-menu won't show up. (You can have a mix of both in your buffers.) "Normal" mode does not include onscreen italics, etc., as Fountain-Mode is (I believe) loading "minor-mode" settings for that. But I'm pretty sure there are non-screenplay writing "major-modes" that would do this — but I've never had any reason to look them up. Sorry about all the talk of major and minor modes. I honestly don't fully understand how Emacs works (it's a world of its own with hundreds of "major-modes" and probably thousands of "minor-modes"). Basically all I know about Emacs is how to install it (
sudo apt install emacs) and how to install Fountain-Mode (
sudo apt install elpa-fountain-mode). I can also change the default font and do a few other minor adjustments in the configuration — so I'm on the very fringe of the Emacs "world." But I'm happy with the results. So much so, that I prefer Fountan-Mode over the professional application, Fade In — though they interact with each other just fine. (Fade In works well with the Fountain format so transferring files back and forth is easy. Same with Trelby and the others mentioned in an earlier post.)
(Sorry about the rambling.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pajamaman
Edit: Okay, GNU Emacs works in windows. So it's a question of getting the plugins working. I'll have a play around with this at some point.
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I think I actually tried Fountain-Mode on my wife's Windows computer and I was able to get it to work. Instead of using
"sudo apt install elpa-fountain-mode" you can use the Emacs built-in package manager. I'm guessing it would be the same for whatever writing "major-mode" you found.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pajamaman
Edit: The Centaur plugin provides tabs. Not sure if you can mix and match with other plugins such as fountain-works. But yeah, definately an interesting option when I feel like looking around. Always on the lookout for an interesting editor. I actually managed to copy some of the power features to windows using auto hot key.
The base software does look kinda ugly (like a DOS program), but the Centaur plug-in sexes it up. Call me shallow, but I like shiny stuff where possible.
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A quick Google search showed this page on creative writing in Emacs. I can't really endorse it because I only half understand it, but it might give you some idea of how modify Emacs. (Maybe Centaur does everything you need?)
https://jacmoes.wordpress.com/2019/0...ng-with-emacs/
A lot of information about using Emacs for writing at this GitHub page...
https://github.com/thinkhuman/writingwithemacs
I didn't show some of the features of Fountain-Mode, like outlining. You can press Shift+Tab and it will bring up all you scenes (one per line) — navigate to the scene you want and press Shift+Tab again and moves you to that spot. I'm pretty sure outlining would be included in most Emacs major-modes for writing. (But that's just a guess.) Maybe I'll try exploring some of the other modes. You could actually use Fountain-Mode for standard writing, but you would have to use the ".fountain" extension. I think it would be better to find something else for this purpose.
If you look into this, I wish you well. I'm sorry I'm so ignorant about Emacs. Basically I've told you everything I know about it in this post.