Choose a storage file format

[spacekookie]

Most features for Novelist are already planned out pretty well, except for how to store any of it. Following are some thoughts gathered on what storage format could be used.

Text format

• Store large quantities of text with formatting (font, family, size, type, ...)
• Easily convertable to other formats (docx, odt, epub, mobi, tex, ...)
• Usable with source control software (git, subversion, mercurial, ...)

Container format

• Optionally compressed (no longer usable with source control)
• Store files in a logical manner (same structure as novel?)
• Allow access to files outside of Novelist
• Maybe a folder with a .novel extension?

Options that can be considered

• XML (just like Scrivener, docx, odt, etc)
• LaTeX (easy to convert from and into anything)
• Something custom?

Being able to translate the text format to any other format is important. Using a standard format it would then be possible to use pandoc to handle exporting automagically.

This is still an open issue and open to debate

[herzmut]

A container format for a repository could be in place. When it's compressed, it surely can be piped through compression/decompression filters on memory.

The way the file is storaged should be different to a novel, since a novel is a completed piece. The files contain novels unfinished.

Allowing access outside of Novelist makes it hard to port the file through different devices and locations.

XML is probably the best choice to save the file; LaTeX should be considered to be an export/import format as it is an important and common book typesetting language.

[spacekookie]

Additional requirements

• Tag text snippets with external resources
  • Optionally auto-complete suggestions

Custom XML