Epic: Build Tool Rewrite

[vkbo]

Introduction

This Epic used to be for Release 2.1, but as of 24/4 the scope has been scaled down a little to just focus on the Build Tool rewrite. The reason for this is that due to limited time to work on this project, the initial large scope of this Epic is a blocker for adding smaller features.

This means the new Build Tool can be merged into a release when it's ready, and the 2.x releases can continue in the mean time.

As before, feel free to make new feature suggestions if you have any, and they will be considered for the Build Tool rewrite if they fall within the scope of it.

Planned Features

The Build Novel Project tool will be completely rewritten. Some of the planned features are listed below. It will also be possible to save presets of these setups as "builds" so that you can keep a set of your filters and formatting settings without having to manually select them each time.

• Manuscript Export #622
• Readability metrics #712
• Word count for manuscript body text only #1114
• Add aggregated char count with and without spaces #1116
• Add a quick build feature using a pre-defined build, without prompts #1322
• Keyboard shortcut to run the export dialog straight away #1394
• Frequency of words statistic #1547
• Add table of content navigation to Manuscript preview #1765

Document Selection

Add a tree view of the project where the user can select which documents to include via check boxes. There will be filters available to auto-select based on criteria, so there will be no need to go through and manually do this, necessarily.

This will make it a lot easier to build smaller subsets of the manuscript, say a specific chapter, without having to go through the entire project and set each item to active or inactive.

• Exporting only one or two documents is difficult #971
• Custom inclusion of meta data in manuscript build #1132

Customisation Options

A lot of specific formatting features have been requested. The following ones are being added:

• First Line Indent #906
• Suppress hard line break in build output where carriage returns exist in source #944
• Add a modifier to the scene header for hard breaks #1050
• Add option to disable page breaks in build tool #1117
• Mark comments as manuscript notes #1133
• Metadata with a different format in the exported file #1134
• Add a page size option to the ODT build #1361
• Insert POV character in chapter titles #1468
• Custom page header in ODT documents #1505
• Table of Contents with the NovelWriter HTML format #1548
• Add option to centre chapter headers #1661
• Suppress scene header at start of build output #1756

General Export Options

The plan is also to add more specific export options. That is actual export, not a manuscript build. Both on individual document files, and on the project as a whole. The latter is especially useful as one benefit of novelWriter is that there is no real lock-in in terms of file format. The project text is saved in plain text. However, the file naming is hard to read, so an export feature that will just spit out a folder structure is very useful.

• Export documents #1001
• Export project #1108
• Export outline as spreadsheet #1507

Core Tasks

The core tasks for redesigning the build tool. These are basic features needed for adding all the other features.

• Refactor: Make a document build class #1314
• Design a new core build tool #1315

Related Features

Related feature requests that will be solved by one of the above.

• "Toggle active all" for all documents in a folder #1448

[vkbo]

The build tool redesign is finally done. At least the first iteration. There is a lot of room in it to add other features, so it should be a lot easier to extend. Here's a quick demonstration:

Screencast.from.2023-06-09.22-24-07.mp4