Septangular
Chapter 2
The window
Every section of Septangular shares one window, laid out the same way: the section icons down the left, a sidebar beside them, the page you’re working on in the middle, and a status bar along the bottom.
The parts of the window
| Part | Where | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Section icons | The narrow strip at the left | Switch between the seven sections. The heptagon at the top hides and shows the sidebar. |
| Sidebar | Beside the icons | Lists what the section holds: the book’s scenes, the Story Bible’s entries, the versions you’ve saved, and so on. |
| Main area | The rest of the window | Shows what you’ve chosen in the sidebar: a scene in the editor, a chapter on the corkboard, a page of statistics, a build configuration. |
| Status bar | Along the bottom | The book’s word count, messages, and whether everything is saved. |
The window’s title is the book’s title, followed by “Septangular”.
The section icons
Click an icon to go to its section; hover over one to see its name. The section you’re in is highlighted. From the top, the icons are Manuscript, Outline, Story Bible, Notes, Statistics, Versions and Publishing, and each has a chapter of its own in this manual.
Moving between sections loses nothing. The Manuscript, the Story Bible and Notes each remember what they had open, so you can look something up in an entry and go straight back to the scene you were writing, at the same place, with its undo history and unsaved changes intact.
The heptagon above the icons hides the sidebar, and clicking it again brings it back. It does the same as View → Hide Sidebar.
The sidebar
What the sidebar shows depends on the section:
| Section | The sidebar lists |
|---|---|
| Manuscript | The Corkboard, the Title Page, front matter, parts, chapters and scenes, back matter, and the Stash. |
| Outline | The outline’s items, with buttons to switch between the Tree, the Grid and the Timeline. |
| Story Bible | Entries, in a section for each category. |
| Notes | A search box, and All Notes, Text, Links, Pictures, PDFs and Word, to show one kind of note. |
| Statistics | Its four pages: Overview, By Part and Chapter, By Status, and Style Checks. |
| Versions | Take Snapshot…, Find in History…, Writing Record… and the auto-save setting, then every version, by day. |
| Publishing | The book’s build configurations, and in a series, its box sets. |
When the book is part of a series, a bar at the top of the sidebar names the series and the book, in every section. Chapter 10 describes it.
Making it wider or narrower
Drag the sidebar’s right-hand edge to make it wider or narrower. Double-click the edge to put it back to its usual width. You can also click the edge and use ← and → to move it a little at a time, or further with ⇧.
The sidebar can’t be made narrower than 180 pixels or wider than 600, and it always leaves room for the main area. Septangular remembers the width for every book, and for next time.
Hiding it
To give the editor the whole width of the window, choose View → Hide Sidebar ⌃⌘S, or click the heptagon. The menu item then reads Show Sidebar, and the heptagon’s tooltip says it will show the sidebar again. The section icons stay where they are. With two scenes side by side, they share the width the sidebar gave up. Septangular remembers whether the sidebar is hidden.
Headings that stay in view
In a long book, the headings above what you’re looking at stay at the top of the sidebar as you scroll. In the Manuscript, the book’s title, the Corkboard and the Title Page stay put, and under them the part and the chapter you’re scrolling through, so you always know where a scene belongs. In the Story Bible, the title and the section you’re in stay put the same way.
Folding things away
Anything with a triangle beside it folds away. In the Manuscript, click the triangle beside a part or chapter to fold it, and click it again to open it; clicking the part’s or chapter’s name instead shows its scenes on the corkboard (Chapter 3). In the Story Bible, click a section to fold it or open it. A folded chapter or section still shows its word or entry count.
To fold or open every one at once, ⌥-click any of them, or use the fold button at the top of the sidebar, beside +. In the Manuscript, its menu offers Collapse All Chapters and Expand All Chapters, and in a book with parts, Collapse All Parts and Expand All Parts. The same commands are on the Manuscript menu. In the Story Bible, the fold button offers Collapse All Sections and Expand All Sections.
What you’ve folded stays folded while the book is open. A book always opens with everything showing.
The main area and the editor
The main area shows whatever you’ve chosen in the sidebar. In the Manuscript, the Story Bible and Notes, that’s usually a document in the editor: a scene, an entry, or a text note. With nothing chosen yet, the main area shows the heptagon and a hint, such as “Choose a scene to start writing.”
The editor keeps the text to a comfortable line length in the middle of the page, however wide the window. Each document you open keeps its own undo history and its own place, so you can move between them and come back to where you were. Chapter 3 describes writing in it.
The header above the editor
A line across the top of the editor says what you’re looking at.
For a scene, it shows:
- the scene’s name;
- its status, in a small pill: outline, draft, revised or final;
- its synopsis, on one line, cut short if it’s long;
- when it happens in the story, in a small chip: + When until you give it a time. Click it to give the scene a time, or change it, on the Outline’s timeline (Chapter 4). A scene in the Stash has no chip;
- the outline items the scene tells, each a button: click one to go to it in the Outline (Chapter 4);
- the Preview button, which shows the finished pages beside the editor. If the preview is already showing, the button refreshes it and takes it to this scene.
Under the header, a strip offers Try a Rewrite…; once a scene has drafts, the strip also says which text you’re writing in. Chapter 3 explains drafts.
For a Story Bible entry, the header shows its name and its category, and under them the entry’s card: its pictures, its fields, such as the other names it’s known by, and the scenes it appears in (Chapter 5). For a page of front or back matter, it shows the page’s name and says which it is. Notes have a header of their own, described in Chapter 6.
The status bar
The status bar runs along the bottom of the window whenever a book is open. From the left:
| It shows | When | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 105,767 / 120,000 words | Always | The book’s words against its target. Without a target, just the words. Only scenes in the book count: the Stash and drafts don’t. Unsaved writing counts as you type. |
| Scene: 799 words | In the Manuscript, with a scene open | The open scene’s words, unsaved writing included. |
| Draft: 812 words | When a scene is showing one of its drafts | The draft’s words. |
| +312 today | With View → Highlight Today’s Writing on | The words written in this scene today, less any cut. A minus sign means more was cut than written. |
| 2 problems | When something is wrong | Hover over it to see what, such as a scene whose file can’t be found. Appendix E explains what to do. |
At the right-hand end:
| It shows | When | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| A message | For a few seconds after something happens | See Messages, below. |
| 1 delete waits for Save (⌘S) | After deleting a scene, chapter or part | Deleted items wait in the Stash until you save with ⌘S. Auto-save leaves them waiting. |
| Unsaved changes | When anything has changed since the last save | A scene, an entry, a note, the book’s structure or its outline. |
| All changes saved | When nothing has | Everything is on disk, and in the book’s history. |
The book’s target is set on the Statistics page (Chapter 7).
Messages
When Septangular has something to tell you, it says so in the status bar: “Saved” after a save, “Auto-saved” after an automatic one, or what has just happened, such as “Moved the scene into chapter 2”. A message stays for about three seconds. A message about something that went wrong is shown in red and stays for ten.
A few messages come with a button. After combining two scenes, for example, the status bar says what was combined and offers Undo Combine; a message with a button stays for half a minute.
A message is always one line. If it’s too long for the window, it’s cut short with “…”; hover over it to read the whole of it. In a narrow window, the scene’s word count and the waiting-deletes notice make room while a message shows.
When you choose a command that needs something open, the message says what: Format → Bold with no scene open says “Open a scene to format its text.”, and Manuscript → Split Scene at Cursor outside the Manuscript says to open a scene there first.
Light and dark
Septangular follows your Mac’s appearance. When macOS is set to Light, the window is light; set to Dark, it’s dark; set to Auto, it changes when your Mac does. To change it, use Appearance in System Settings. It changes only how the window looks: books are built the same either way.
The editor’s font and text size
View → Editor Font chooses the typeface you write in:
| Editor Font | |
|---|---|
| Book Serif | A book typeface. The default. |
| Georgia | |
| Times New Roman | |
| Sans Serif | Your Mac’s own system typeface. |
| Typewriter | A Courier face, like a typewritten page. |
View → Editor Text Size sets the size: 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22 or 24. The default, 17, is marked “(Default)” on the menu. The menus tick the current choices.
Both apply to the editor in every section and every book, and Septangular remembers them for next time. They change only how the text looks to you while you write: how the finished book looks is set by its build configurations (Chapter 9).
Other View menu choices
The View menu has a few more settings for the editor and the Manuscript, each ticked when it’s on:
| Setting | At first | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Show Synopses | On | Shows each scene’s synopsis under its name in the sidebar. |
| Show Comments | On | Shows comments as cards in the margin, beside their passages. Turned off, the cards are hidden, but commented passages keep a dotted underline. |
| Show Style Checks | Off | Underlines what the style checks find in the scene you’re writing. |
| Highlight Today’s Writing | Off | Marks what you’ve written or rewritten today. |
| Show Revision Heat Map | Off | Tints scenes by how often they’ve been revised. |
| Back Matter Under Front Matter | Off | Lists back matter at the top of the sidebar, rather than after the story. |
Like the editor’s font and size, these apply to every book and are remembered for next time. Show Preview ⇧⌘V and Focus Mode ⇧⌘F are on the View menu too. Chapter 3 describes them all, except the style checks, which Chapter 7 describes.
Zoom and full screen
View → Zoom In ⌘+ and Zoom Out ⌘− make everything in the window larger or smaller: the sidebar, the status bar and the editor together. Actual Size ⌘0 puts it back. To make just the text you’re writing larger, use Editor Text Size instead.
View → Enter Full Screen ⌃⌘F, or the green button at the top left of the window, fills the screen in the Mac’s usual way. Focus mode goes full screen too, and leaving full screen leaves focus mode.
The welcome screen
When no book is open, the window shows the welcome screen: the heptagon, “Start a new book, or open one to carry on writing.”, and two buttons, New Project… and Open Project…. Under them, “Or start from a Word document or a Scrivener project…” makes a new book from one you’ve begun elsewhere: click a Word document or a Scrivener project. You see it the first time you open Septangular, and when you start it after closing your book. If the book you had open last time can’t be opened, the welcome screen says why. Chapter 1 describes starting and opening books, and starting from Word or Scrivener.