[MarkL4]

I am really excited about this. I'm curious if I can write a novel in this thing (or copypasta into something else), while mixing in visual cues (shapes, drawings), so I can scan a huge text file (hundreds of thousands of words) very quickly and always know exactly where I am.

[milen]

Hi there, Monodraw developer here.

I think it should be entirely possible. Different parts of your novel can just be different shapes and you can arrange them on the infinite canvas as you wish.

In addition, Monodraw now supports embedding of pictures on the canvas, so you should be able to have additional visual cues.

Feel free to get in touch if you have any specific use cases in mind - always happy to hear more from our users.

Thanks!

[MarkL4]

lol, when you said "infinite canvas," I had a brain fart, and I almost asked what the file format was and if I can get my data out. I'll show myself out.

EDIT: Wait! Having actually opened the program. There's layers. It's not a raw ascii save file. Interesting.

EDIT EDIT: Would suggest XML save file so that all data is always in plain text. See, e.g. Eastgate Tinderbox's save file.

[MarkL4]

Another quick thought. Again, this program is already polished and excellent--I think "export" should be as simple as hitting ctrl/command-C with something selected and then pasting into a text file. This would be for quick little drawings without breaking flow in another file. Right now it seems like you have to export, choose a file name and location, open the new file, etc., etc.

And another quick thought. I haven't looked closely at your save format, but it'd be great if one could also have periodic autosave to *.txt or even autosave after every change. Layers, etc., would be lost, but I'd feel safer than leaving data in your "proprietary" format (which actually might be quite accessible) if I investigated it.

[milen]

> Another quick thought. Again, this program is already polished and excellent--I think "export" should be as simple as hitting ctrl/command-C with something selected and then pasting into a text file. [snip

That's exactly how it works! Select any number of shapes, hit Cmd-C and it will copy them to the clipboard. You can even set a preference to include a comment tag when copying to the clipboard.

> And another quick thought. I haven't looked closely at your save format, but it'd be great if one could also have periodic autosave to *.txt or even autosave after every change.

As a standard OS X document app, it autosaves are regular intervals that are determined by the OS (in particular, every time you leave the app, as well).

[MarkL4]

>> That's exactly how it works!

Ah, have to be in select mode. Not intuitive--I really did play around and give up, and I'm not stupid. ;-)

[mminer]

You actually can export a selection to the clipboard using command-c. I never use the export button, opting instead to select all with command-a then copy with command-c. Be sure to check out the clipboard tab in preferences. I find the option to trim trailing whitespace helpful, and the comment styles are useful to embed diagrams in source code.

[MarkL4]

Hmm, in raw text mode, I would prefer that the text boxes have word wrap and automatic multilining, instead of the cursor hitting the border and staying there. In this way, I could watch a text box fill up while I was typing.

I would also love nonrectangular (arbitrarily shaped) text fields. And text flow around shapes if you overlap a shape with a text box.

Basically, the features of Scribus.

BUT, I may be a far edge case, of wanting to do actual writing and desktop publishing in something like this.

In any case, for the features it has, it feels extraordinarily clean, comprehensive, and polished.