The Book properties view opens in the right pane
when you select “Book” in the tree,
or when you click on the toolbar icon.
It is the initial view after opening a novelibre project.
Title and description are displayed in an editable “index card”.
The editing of book title and author can be completed by pressing the Enter key.
Changes to the description are applied when the mouse is clicked
anywhere outside the text input field.
After exporting the book to an ODT document, title and description
appear in the document properties.
Expand or collapse this frame by clicking on the label.
Auto number chapters/parts when refreshing the tree
If this checkbox is ticked, all chapters/parts are automatically numbered
each time the tree is refreshed.
The chapter titles are replaced with a prefix-number-suffix
pattern (without the dashes).
Hint
You can optionally exclude individual chapters/parts from auto-numbering
in the Chapter/part properties.
Prefix and suffix entries can be completed by pressing the Enter key.
Note
Make sure to add a space character to separate the prefix or
suffix from the chapter or part number.
Use Roman chapter numbers
By default, arabic numbers, like “1”, “2”, “3” … are used for auto-numbering.
If this checkbox is ticked, Roman numbers, like “I”, “II”, “III”, “IV” …
are used instead.
Reset chapter numbers when starting a new part
By default, the chapters are numbered consistently across the parts.
If this checkbox is ticked, the chapter numbering starts again with “1”
in each part.
Expand or collapse this frame by clicking on the label.
novelibre provides some ready-made fields for sections and characters
to store information that should be at hand when writing.
If the default categories do not fit into your individual story planning
concept, you can rename these fields.
Editing the categories can be completed by pressing the Enter key.
“Not a scene” fields
The heading replacements for Plot progress, Characterization, and
World building are used when you set the Scene frame to Not a scene.
These categories then apply to all sections that don’t represent scenes.
“Other Scene” fields
The heading replacements for Opening, Peak emotional monent, and
Ending are used when you set the Scene frame to Other.
These categories then apply to all sections that represent scenes
other than “Action” and “Reaction”.
“Character” fields
If you want other categories than Bio
and Goals for your characters, you
can enter them here. They will then apply to all characters.
Note
If you rename the Bio frame, it will keep the Birth/death date
entries anyway.
Expand or collapse this frame by clicking on the label.
To get an overview of the course of the narrative time, you can enter
date/time information for each section.
The date can be specific (YYYY-MM-DD) or unspecific (number of days,
e.g. from the beginning of the story).
Reference date
The reference date is optional. It can be used to convert relative dates
into absolute dates, or vice versa. The timeline software plugins may
use the reference date for creating events from sections that have no
date or an unspecific one.
Format: YYYY-MM-DD, according to ISO 8601.
Hint
Even if you don’t need specific dates for your story, specifying
a reference date might be helpful. Thus, a day of the week
can be displayed along with the unspecific date, and ages can be calculated for
related characters.
Convert dates to days
This transforms specific section dates into days, related to the
reference date.
Convert days to dates
This transforms unspecific section dates into specific ones, using
the reference date.
Note
For large novels, the conversion may take some time, depending on
your system. During the conversion time, the clicked button will
display “Please wait …”.
Hint
The commands above convert all dated sections at once. If you want to
do the conversion for single sections, just go to the
Section properties view.
Expand or collapse this frame by clicking on the label.
With novelibre, you can set a word count target and track your
writing progress.
Note
Regardless of the entries made here, you can see the word count
in the status bar at any time.
Log writing progress
By default, novelibre stores a log entry with the word counts
for each day on which you edit the project. You can prevent
this by unticking the Log writing progress checkbox.
Hint
For viewing the daily progress log, you may want to
install the nv_progress plugin.
Words to write
Here you can enter a number (without decimal points or separators)
indicating your writing goal in words.
The entry can be completed by pressing the Enter key.
Starting count
Here you can enter a number (without decimal points or separators)
indicating the word count you want to start from.
The entry can be completed by pressing the Enter key.
Set actual wordcount as start
Click this button to enter your current word count in the Starting
count field.
Words written
Here the difference between your actual word count and the starting
count is displayed. The percentage refers to the words to write.
Expand or collapse this frame by clicking on the label.
This is a list for image and research document links.
Although novelibre holds some character/location/item data, it is
not the right application for extensive world building. For this,
you may want to use more powerful software, like Zim Desktop Wiki. In this case, novelibre allows you to
create links to the text files that will take you quickly to the right
places in the wiki.
Or you have collected some images that could inspire you when writing.
Then simply create links to these images to open them with your
system’s standard image viewer.
Tip
If you have collected several images for a character in a folder
that your standard image viewer can browse through, a single link
to any image file is sufficient.
The links are displayed in a list in the order they are entered.
Add Link
When clicking on , a file selection dialog opens. The selected
file will be added to the link list.
Hint
By default, the dialog shows image files. For other file types,
change the selector in the lower right corner.
When clicking on or pressing the Del key,
the selected link is removed from the list.
Open Link
When double-clicking on a link, or clicking on ,
the link is opened with the standard application for the link’s file type.
Hint
If you want to open certain linked files with another application than the
standard application, you can provide a novelibre “launcher” setting.
For this, just create a text file named launchers.ini in the
.novx/config directory (where all configuration files are stored).
Here you can assign applications to the file extensions.
Zim desktop wiki pages are a special case.
For this, the Zim program is assigned to the .zim extension.
This example shows a setting that makes novelibre open text files
with the Zim Desktop Wiki application instead of the standard text
editor:
A cover thumbnail is displayed with the book properties if you
provide a PNG image file with the project name along with the .novx
file. The recommended image width is 100 to 200 pixels.
toolbar icon.
It is the initial view after opening a novelibre project.
, a file selection dialog opens. The selected
file will be added to the link list.
or pressing the 
,
the link is opened with the standard application for the link’s file type.
