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Norwid
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Working with text

Text and fonts

In the app: Writing

Norwid has three layers of formatting, and they do not get in each other’s way:

What Where Goes into the book
How you like to write: font, size, spacing, background The Aa button in the editor, Settings ⌘, No
The meaning of a passage: italic, subheading, quote, scene break The Format menu, ⌘I, ⌘B Yes
How the book looks: edition typeface, chapter headings, drop cap Publishing (in development) Yes

So you can write in a monospaced font on a dark background, and the book will come out with the design set in the edition.

Editor settings (Aa)

  • Font — New York, PT Serif, Georgia, Iowan Old Style, SF Pro, PT Sans, SF Mono or any installed font (“All Fonts”).
  • Size — the slider or ⌘+ / ⌘−; ⌥⌘0 returns to the default size.
  • Spacing — the distance between lines.
  • Paragraphs — “Indent” (first-line indent, as in a book) or “Spacing” (blank space between paragraphs).
  • Width — 60, 70 or 80 characters per line, or the full width of the window.
  • Background — dark, paper or sepia. Only the text area changes.
  • Typewriter — the line with the cursor always stays in the middle of the screen, so your eyes don’t drift down.
  • Paragraph focus — everything except the current paragraph is dimmed.
  • Dim markup — the *, #, > characters are lighter than the text but remain visible and editable.
  • Spell check — the system one.

Settings belong to this Mac and are kept between launches. “Reset” restores the defaults.

Text markup

Scene text is stored as Markdown — you can open it in any app.

What How In the text
Italic ⌘I *word*
Bold ⌘B **word**
Subheading Format → Subheading ## Subheading
Quote Format → Quote > text
List Format → List - item
Scene break Format → Scene Break * * *

Repeating a command removes the markup: ⌘I on an italic word makes it regular. With no selection, ⌘I inserts a pair of * with the cursor between them.

Find in scene

⌘F opens the search bar above the scene text, ⌘G jumps to the next match. To search the whole book, use ⌘K.

Poetry, letters and characters’ correspondence, centred text and footnotes don’t have dedicated markup yet — the format for them is still being chosen.