Inserting images

[CarlosR2]

I just downloaded and was toying with the app, btw, I really like it and i find it very useful.

But i was wondering if you could insert pictures, i haven't seen the option.

Thanks

[vkbo]

I'm glad you like it!

novelWriter is a plain text editor intended for writing pure text. It has no support for images, links, coloured text, tables or any other such structures. Just plain headers and paragraphs. The colouring that is added is purely for visual aid, and isn't saved to the text files.

[CarlosR2]

Thanks for your answer Veronica.

I just thought would be nice to have the ability to add images since many books include figures. I wish i had enough knowledge in python to contribute.

And congrats again!

[vkbo]

Oh, it's not a matter of being able to do it. Omitting general word processor features is intentional. It just isn't what the editor is for. It's for writing fiction by assisting in the process of writing – and only writing. Its end product is a manuscript document. I'm still planning to add features, but only features that fit within that scope.

Novels do not generally have figures. Some have illustrations, however they are usually not a part of the text but rather fluff added by the publisher for special editions and such. In any case, they're not a part of the writing process. Even when self-publishing, you'd want to manually post-process the final manuscript into something more presentable and reader-ready.

There are plenty of writing tools out there with a broader range of use. I have used them myself, and I made novelWriter exactly because I wanted something more tailored to writing fiction and not have all that extra stuff I don't need, and which just gets in the way.

So yeah, the current range of features is very much deliberate :)

[CarlosR2]

good thinking!
clarity is key

[longqzh]

@CarlosR2 maybe you should try VNote, it supports image, math formulas, table, UML and so on :)

[snden]

I would like to once again open a certain possibility regarding images. I know, I've read it here several times, that images are not and will not be part of Novelwriter. But I offer another point of view and ask for your consideration. When I wrote a book years ago, pictures were an integral part of the text. The publisher wanted clean, unformatted text (that's what Novelwriter is for, and thanks for keeping it clean, it's its unique feature, please keep it in the future), but he wanted that I insert to the text, where the image would be, specifically marked text. For example:
*** Figure 1 - Image Caption ***
I think that just such a simple text mark would help to have an overview of where the image will be in the final layout and would not disturb the author with graphics. I would suggest, for example, the tag @ picture: , and then a special folder called pictures in the tree of the book structure (similarly as for Characters, Objects ...) where could be written detailed notes about the image in its corresponding file, a link to it (path where it is stored), its detailed description ... . During the final creation and export of the book, if it were possible to renumber this 'links' to the pictures chronologically, it would save would be a lot of work for the author, because he often moves and deletes chapters. I had dozens of pictures in the book, and without marking them directly in the text right when I was writing, I would get lost overview in where each one should be placed. Sorry for re-opening the image topic. Perhaps this will be a more acceptable way to incorporate images into the text, as it will only be a short textual representation of it.

Just to explain what i mean exactly - in the resulting text generated by the Build Novel Project, there would not be an image in the text, but only its textual representation. Just *** Figure 1 - Image Caption *** (Or any other wildcard format that the publisher would require.), the typesetter would then deal with that when typesetting of the book. The result of compiling the entire text of the book would be, for example:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
*** Figure 1 - Image1 Caption ***
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo.
*** Figure 2 - Image2 Caption ***
Sed convallis magna eu here.

[snden]

If it was possible to separate 'Include keywords' and 'include custom keyword' when generating the resulting file, that would be a solution.

[vkbo]

Hmm, why don't I add the option to select which keywords to export during the build? I'm rewriting the entire tool anyway, so may as well add that in the process.

[vkbo]

I've added feature tickets #1132 and #1133 for the 1.8 release cycle.

[snden]

Excellent! I wanted to suggest one more improvement, but I didn't want to bother you with it anymore. It has to do with metadata when exporting. Would it be possible to distinguish the metadata from each other so that it has a different style in the exported file? In . odt - style, in .html - .class? Then it would be possible to work with the metadata in another editor (change font size, color, hide...)

for example in html:
<span class="Locations">
<span class="Characters">
<span class="POV">
<span class="Timeline">
<span class="Objects">
<span class="Focus">
<span class="Synopsis">
<span class="Comment">
<span class="Tag">

[vkbo]

Sure, that's fairly easy. Just make a feature request and I'll add it to the 1.8 backlog.

Edit: It's easy for HTML anyway. I have to look into it for ODT.