What I am doing recently with Writing Outliner Word addin

Posted in: Novel Writing Software by Edwin on September 13, 2010

I’ve recently moved and it’s taken some time from the Writing Outliner project, but don’t’ worry, I’m back to work – in a more comfortable environment 😉

Currently I’m still mostly focus on improving the quality of the current features, instead of adding big features too fast, this is something I learned before and I think it’s crucial for development a high quality software product. The following is an example, it’s a snapshot of the ‘Recent Project List’ in the Welcome pane, now there is a yellow hint window shows where the actual file is located on the disk when you hover your mouse pointer over a project, and the context popup menu has been improved, you can directly email a project file as an attachment, rename the project, or remove from the list an old entry which you don’t want it again.

Once I’m confidential with the quality of the current version, I’ll work on the new and big features such as corkboard, and so on, my goal is to make Writing Outliner + Microsoft Word a perfect tool for writing novels, non-fiction books, technical documents, academic documents, etc.

And thank you to all your guys sending in feedbacks and bug reports!

Derek Cater’s workflow of writing archaeological technical reports

Posted in: Novel Writing Software by Edwin on July 19, 2010

User Derek Cater shared with us his workflow of writing archaeological technical reports with Writing Outliner, it’s worth reading if you want to write technical reports in Microsoft Word, because as Derek said, without an outliner,

it was too time consuming to scroll up and down the document in MS Word, which was a continual necessity.

Derek also mentioned the problem with other outliner software is that other outliner software  usually lack advanced formatting features that Microsoft Word has (and of which Writing Outliner can take advantage):

it left a lot of formatting to be done at the end. Both of these problems are solved by Writing Outliner. Writing Outliner also puts all of MS Word’s writing and formatting tools at my disposal, which is a big bonus.

So to conclude, if you often write long Word documents, give Writing Outliner Word Add-in a try and you pain will go away.

You can now vote on new features for Writing Outliner – introduced UserVoice

Posted in: Novel Writing Software by Edwin on

I have just integrated UserVoice voting system with the Writing Outliner website, and I have “migrated” some existing suggestions from the existing Writing Outliner forum, please vote now to influence the future development of Writing Outliner – the MS Word add-on for professional and creative writers who need to write long texts (novels, technical manuals, research papers, etc)  in Microsoft Word.

Click here to vote on new features for Writing Outliner now!

If you have followed the development of Writing Outliner  – you should have noticed that during the development of this writing software I,  the developer, have been listening to feedbacks from you nice people -like what Wojciech – a fan of Writing Outliner  said in an email to me:

I’d like to let you know that I have just made use of you promotion and bought both Writing Outliner and MindVisualiser licenses. Although I was rather ‘silent’ last months, I followed the forum and your announcements with still growing satisfaction and respect – I have never seen such a successful software development from the scratch and fruitful interaction between testers/fans and the developer. My sincere congratulations! Good job Edwin!!

Sorry not being modest by showing off this email, but what I want is to show you that I really listen to you users and I ask for your help to vote on the feature suggestions made in the past few months with this new voting system.

New Features section illustrated with screenshots

Posted in: Novel Writing Software by Edwin on July 17, 2010

I have just completed the ‘Features‘ section of the website which describes the major features of Writing Outliner – the novel writing software as a Word add-in, contents include:

1. Outliners – the left Project Manager Outliner and the Multi-column Outliner.
2. Document full-text search.
3. Tabbed document editing.
4. Document icons (status and label).
5. Document tagging
6. Document synopsis and notes
7. Revision control.
8. Integrated file explorer.
9. Project compilation (merging all documents in a project into a single document for output).

All these features (still growing) that are added to Microsoft Word by Writing Outliner Add-on makes MS Word into a perfect software tool for writing novels.

Writing Outliner Beta 4 (Update 1)

Posted in: Book writing software, Version History by Edwin on July 2, 2010

Hi folks,

I’ve just uploaded a new beta version of Writing Outliner – 0.9.9.492 Beta 4 (Update 1).

This version includes the following bugfixes and enhancements:

• Enhancements of document compilation (merging separate documents into a single one):
  • Compilation error under Vista Enterprise + Word 2007.
  • Style handling problem reported by forum member MuppetGate in this forum post (happens only when ‘Include titles’ option is not selected).
  • Now the ‘compiled output’ will not be opened in the current document tab, but instead, open in a new tab (and one tab only). This is more convenient as it will not change your current document selection.
  • Shows an icon on the ‘compiled output’ document tab so that it can be identified easily.

• Occasional error (something like ‘Access violation’) that happens when closing Microsoft Word.
• Shows a balloon hint window to tip the user that he/she can restore  the Writing Project Manager pane when it’s is minimized. Some users reported they lost Writing Outliner, I guess this might be the reason 😉

Download address of this beta 4 (update 1) of Writing Outliner Word add-in. Note there is an alternative download link at the bottom of the download page.

Writing Outliner Beta 4 and Pre-launch Promotion

Posted in: Version History by Edwin on June 29, 2010

Thorough support for Word 2010 is coming

Posted in: Word addin by Edwin on May 24, 2010

Hi folks,

Some of you might have already know that while in most cases Writing Outliner Word works with Office 2010, the current version (beta 3) of this addin still has various problems when working with Word 2010.

Now here is a good news – I have upgraded the  underlying SDK to a newer version which claims to support Word 2010 better (the SDK itself is still in beta and the final version will due in June, but the SDK vendor says that it’s quite stable and is already-for-a-product), and I’ll integrate it into the upcoming Writing Outliner beta 4, and I guess as a result beta 4 will work better with Word 2010.

The new ‘start page’ tab in Writing Outliner Word Add-in

Posted in: Word addin by Edwin on May 22, 2010

I’d like to show you one of the new features for beta 4, instead of always opens the current document in the new tab,  the ‘start page’ tab now will shows up every time you open a new tab.

You can simply click any document in the Project Manager Outliner on the left to edit it in the new tab, or you have two alternative options – open  a new tab for the Multi-column Outliner or the embedded file manager (for importing or exporting documents).

I imagine you’ll start using some new future features from this new “Start Page” tab, this way the UI can be simplified. Screenshot below:

Good Word tutorial about style, numbering, sections and so on.

Posted in: Book writing software by Edwin on May 5, 2010

Since I’m implementing functions related to styles and templates for Writing Outliner Word Add-in, I’m doing some research on the Internet, and I found this user’s guide to Microsoft Word by Charles Kyle Kenyon, it’s a very good article for Word users, especially legal users, who deal with large Word documents which contains complex numbering, styles and so on. I recommend it.

A proposal for project-level style in Writing Outliner Word addin

Posted in: Book writing software by Edwin on April 29, 2010

Style in Word is a good tool for formatting large documents, however, the UI design of Microsoft Word seems does not encourage the use of style.

Obviously, as a Word addin which claims its main purpose is to deal with  book-length documents in Word, Writing Outliner should take advantage of the underlying styling features of Word.  There are also several posts related to styles in the Writing Outliner Word addin beta test forum.

So this will be my next major work  for the upcoming beta version 4. And here is my proposal, and I appreciate all kinds of input.

Note: if you haven’t tried Writing Outliner Word Addin nor you have looked at the screenshots of it, you’ll find the following description a little difficult to understand, because it’s based on the UI of this Word addin.

1. In the left project outline, there is a top-level folder called “Template Repository”.
2. Under that “Template Repository” you can insert new Word documents, each of which defines a set of style sheets you can use in any Word documents  all across the project.
3. In each “style template document”, you define styles in a visual “what you see is what you get way”,  look at the screenshot below, each text line in the “style template document” defines two things:
   1. The text line itself is the style name.
   2. How a line looks like is exactly how that style that’s named after that line looks like.
4. Once a “style template document” is defined, you can select a specific “style template” for each drafts in the writing project;  If you don’t specify one, the default one will be used.
5. You can only define styles in the “style template documents”, because the styles are global in the project. Does this make sense?

That’s all for now as a starting point. Honestly, I don’t have too much experiences of using styles in Word, so I will really appreciate your input!