Storywriting program for teenagers?

[scsijon]

Does anyone have a basic linux /puppy story writing package that can be used by teenagers?

Needs to be fairly simple, etc. as he is 'not all there' (sorry, could not think of a better way of putting it) or interested in composition.

Needs to be able to handle about 12,000 words (I think) and handle the new-paragraph step-in and first letter-of-a sentence-a-capital type stuff automatically.

thanks in advance for any ideas.

[mjmikulcik]

Are you looking for something like libreoffice as an ms word substitute or do you have something more specific in mind?

I'm guessing that's really not what you're looking for but I'm not sure. If you wanted something simpler you could look at leafpad or even geany.

[musher0]

I'm confused too.

Story-writing package... Do you mean that the teen will give the app a few ideas, and the app will write the story for him?

[Makoto]

As a writer, myself, in terms of Linux I've only used OpenOffice/LibreOffice's Writer. I tried to use AbiWord, but it was always buggy in some way (a different set of bugs for each version I tried ), so I wouldn't recommend it.

OpenOffice/LibreOffice's Writer can handle large texts, definitely. I'm not sure about automating paragraph indents, as I normally indent manually... but it does also handle automatic capitalizing rules on sentences/paragraphs.

[Mike Walsh]

@ scsijon:-

Does anyone have a basic linux /puppy story writing package that can be used by teenagers?

I have no idea whether or not these would be of any use. I packaged these up the middle of last year; I'm an 'occasional' writer (of sorts) myself.

Bibisco is Java-powered, but contains its own, fully-deployed version of Java within it. The app is completely ready-to-go; just load the SFS, and then start via the Menu Entry. Available for both 32- & 64-bit Pups.

Manuskript is more akin to the Windows version of Scrivener. This is more 'professional-level' stuff; it's Qt5 and Java-powered, but again, like Bibisco, it's completely self-contained and ready-to-go. It is, however, 64-bit only. (Looks like there's some Python 3.5 in there, too...)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I fancy your young friend would find Bibisco easier in any case; the interface is more simplified, although like anything new, you need to experiment for a few minutes and find your way around. But by all means have a look at both.....and see what you think.

If you want the newest version, it's currently sitting at 2.0.2. Just grab it from the Bibisco web-site, un-tar it, then start it from the executable. It really is that simple. Likewise, if you want to try the newest version of Manuskript (currently sitting at 0.6.0), it's the exact same procedure

(It looks as though the Bibisco developers have moved away from Java, and gone with the Electron framework instead. 'Node.js' is mentioned, and it appears earlier versions aren't compatible with articles produced by later ones.....i.e., they can't open/read them. I may need to re-package this.....and, just so you know, this, too, is now 64-bit only.

EDIT:- Here's the 'ouch' part! Unpacked, the tarball is now not far short of 600 MB..!!! *Jeez* )

I may re-pack 32-bit and 64-bit v1.50 with up-to-date Java. Let me know if you'd be interested.

EDIT 2:- 32- & 64-bit Bibisco v 1.5.0 now re-packed with the current version of Java - 1.8.0_171. Follow the link to the page above.


Mike.

[scsijon]

thank you all.

It seems I need to give a bit more information than I had planned.

These teenagers (in the main) have all been involved in accidents and had mental changes. A group of us assists them to get their learning skills up to the point that they can return to some semblance of normal schooling. It usually happens!

We did have access through a version of linux that had been built for them to use, however that, for a number of reasons, including legal, will be coming to an end this year.

We have arranged a number of individual packages to provide/replace most of what has been used in the past, however a simple story-writing package is just not available. I have been working with a couple of this years students to try to find something they can use without any serious complications. I know (and have used) geany for years for most of my work and had hoped it would suffice, but it doesn't and the similar type packages are in the same boat.

What I said in the third line of the first message is all that is needed. Nothing fancy or with any complication is wanted, else in the beginning it confuses them. They are worked with on one-on-one to start with and have a 'cheat sheet' to use as they progress.

Most of them return to a level of studies, although a year or two behind what they were before, and move forward to, in the end complete their studies and find a rewarding job.

And that's where i'll end it. If anyone has an idea, please add it and we will try it, if not, i'll pass it onto the group following up in july to continue the search, as I will have a new project to work on from then..

[foxpup]

I know (and have used) geany for years for most of my work and had hoped it would suffice, but it doesn't and the similar type packages are in the same boat.

What I said in the third line of the first message is all that is needed. Nothing fancy or with any complication is wanted, else in the beginning it confuses them.

Could you explain what is missing in geany, functionally, to make us better understand your needs.
It seems to me you basically need just a texteditor with a little more. Or do you also need more lay-out possibilities?

For just texteditors: Did you consider leafpad?
I also remember Adie looks simple and good; it comes with the fox toolkit (easily compiled from source).

For Office-things you may find some ideas here:
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/SoftwareOffice
Maybe OOo4kids or OOoLight?

EDIT: notecase?

[Puppyt]

scsijon - I earnestly hope you find a solution for your teenage charges. What a brilliant project. I had a similar traumatic experience when I was younger, and joined the ranks of the "Acquired Disabilities". Structure and scaffolding thoughts is vital, as you well know - and I think that from personal experience your approach is excellent. I know of no such writing software in Linux unfortunately, although I investigated yWriter for Windo$e some time ago.

Mindmaps could be helpful - I have dabbled with Freemind for memory aids (and Docear for writing scientific publications), and found "The Brain" software really useful earlier in my initial recovery stages. But unless you/someone is prepared to supervise such idea threads into a linear sequence for communicating ideas effectively - mind-mapping may be more of a ramble than it's worth. I found it personally helpful to retread and rearrange thought paths visually, none the less. Great memory aid for study purposes, too.

If I had my time again, I would probably have benefited from writing short scripts for a personal youtube channel... but it didn't exist back in them thar days. Getting my thoughts organised now for such a public platform I have found surprisingly challenging - but really beneficial. Mixed-modal is good for me, I think - audio and visual. Perhaps your teenagers might find such a format a suitable target by which to aim (and measure) their progress?

Possibly, software designed for writing Interactive Fiction (the old "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories) could be co-opted effectively for your purpose? Twine? Adrift? Quest?

Very Best Wishes
https://twinery.org/
http://www.adrift.co/
http://textadventures.co.uk/quest/

[jafadmin]

Needs to be able to handle about 12,000 words (I think) and handle the new-paragraph step-in and first letter-of-a sentence-a-capital type stuff automatically.

Just musing here ..
So a monospace font, automatic tab after <Enter> is pressed, autowrap, and first non-whitespace character after a '.' (period), is capitalized?

It might be worthwhile to fork LeafPad, maybe?

[scsijon]

I know (and have used) geany for years for most of my work and had hoped it would suffice, but it doesn't and the similar type packages are in the same boat.

What I said in the third line of the first message is all that is needed. Nothing fancy or with any complication is wanted, else in the beginning it confuses them.

Could you explain what is missing in geany, functionally, to make us better understand your needs.
It seems to me you basically need just a texteditor with a little more. Or do you also need more lay-out possibilities?

For just texteditors: Did you consider leafpad?
I also remember Adie looks simple and good; it comes with the fox toolkit (easily compiled from source).

For Office-things you may find some ideas here:
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/SoftwareOffice
Maybe OOo4kids or OOoLight?

EDIT: notecase?

It's not what is missing in most of the text editors, it's more that there is too much available both by keys and on the screen and menus for them to deal with in the first place. What we had could be set with a single line of functions (like wordstar was origonally for those who remember the cpm version) and by changing a config setting we gave them a second and third line of functions as they could deal with them. As I said, it's one of the few parts we can't replicate or replace and as its in the process of going commercial, no longer gpl and we have been officially notified as such by it's owner.

I will have a look at Adie as i've not heard about it before, but the others have been tried.

[Puppyt]

Well I recall using Wordstar back on ye olde Osborne 1 and Kaypro 10, with the over-keyboard template (Have fond memories of the control code view screens). In Hercules amber screens, no less. In that vein for less distracting bling - the WS Clone Tsarwriter looks OK and v0.49 working in my 32bit Dpup Stretch 7.5 environment. Nobody has mentioned Focuswriter for a similar bling-free approach, though I doubt it and anything similar in Linux have the sort of automatic indent and capitalization setup you mentioned. I see now why Geany was something you considered scsijon - just looked in on Puppus Dogfellow's nwp (newbie word processor)/bwp 1.5/emergency wordprocessor offering in his Geany as Launcher, Bookmarks Manager, and Word Processor and A NWP/A NWPUS--A Noob's Word Processor and Utilities Suite threads. Wondering idly whether the default 'styles' you mentioned couldn't be similarly implemented - the sort of additional functionality foxpup alluded to. All beyond me - and I have a steep learning curve to climb in the first 20mins playing with bwp1.5

[Galbi]

Take a look at this:
http://educoo.org/TelechargerOOo4Kids.php

Saludos.

[foxpup]

the sort of additional functionality foxpup alluded to

I have been thinking about the opposite also. The menus in ms office are highly configurable. I do not know for Libreoffice. At work we used to strip Access of almost all its menus and compiled it. We gave the users just what they needed, nothing more. That was for a pilot app. But I don't think you can compile Word. But you can customize the menus.

Just came across this, following a link from the Bibisco thread of Mike Walsh:
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/write-pea ... ditors-si/

[mikeslr]

Hi scsijon and foxpup,

Nice find foxpup. I tried out some of the programs listed there. A couple required Java whether you ran the Linux or XP version under Wine. One which almost fits the bill is Textroom. I tried the portable version under Wine, textroom-0.8.1-portable.zip, you can download from here, https://code.google.com/archive/p/textroom/downloads and unzip. It handles automatic indentation of new paragraphs, but NOT automatic capitalization of the first word of a sentence. Its builtin spell-checker (F5) works, but doesn't highlight a failure to capitalize.

Lots of customizations are available behind the scene. Thereafter, you've got a screen and a keyboard with F1 bringing up a list of keyboard commands. Among them is F7 which opens a "Minflow Mindmapper".

The Linux version only comes as a 32-bit app. Run from an external folder, ldd reports the following missing dependencies:

libSDL_mixer-1.2.so.0 => not found
libhunspell-1.2.so.0 => not found
libxml++-2.6.so.2 => not found
libQtSvg.so.4 => not found
libQtXml.so.4 => not found
libQtOpenGL.so.4 => not found
libQtGui.so.4 => not found
libQtCore.so.4 => not found

Should be easily solvable if the deb + dependencies are installed.

mikesLr

[musher0]

Hello again, scsijon.

Would any of your protégés be inclined to develop his/her novelette
with... notecase?

Or an outliner, generally?
https://www.linux.com/news/five-outliners-linux

So we have an initial context branch:
Peter's mom is sick and they have no money to get the required medication
and in the "leaves" part, your future famous author describes the mom's
sickness, how it happened, and why they are poor.

The title of the next branch is:
Peter finally decides to rob a bank.
and in the "leaves" part, your future Pulitzer-Prize winner writes how
Peter does it.

on the next branch:
Sgt Preston and police dog Rex are alerted.
and in the leaves part, your future Conan Doyle explains how they set in motion...

And so on!

Sorry for the miserable, a la bad Dickens, example.

Bye for now.

[Keef]

If you want a really minimal interface then why not Proom?

It is a gtkdialog script, so could be customised to some degree.
You just get a big black screen and no visible controls. Meant for distraction free writing. As it is it, you need to know the keyboard shortcuts to save, cut and paste, quit etc (Alt+F4 to quit by the way).

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

# Proom-0.4 
# seaside October 23, 2011
# Thanks to Taavi ideas for dated files, selection and invisible buttons


# To QUIT=alt+f4
DATE='$(date +%Y-%m-%d)' # File saves appended to current date filename
# DATE='$(date +%y-%m-%d%H%M%S)' # Each "seed" saved in separate file
SAVEKEY=_S # alt+s
EDITKEY=_G # alt+g
CURSOR='cursor-visible="true"' # or "false"

export TXTDIR=/mnt/home/texts # 3 dir level only
export EDITOR=geany
mkdir -p $TXTDIR

echo 'style "beige_background" {
                bg[NORMAL] = "beige"
                text[NORMAL] = "black"
                base[NORMAL] = "white"
        }
        widget "*" style "beige_background" ' >/tmp/beige.rc



 echo 'style "proom" {
   font_name             = "DejaVu Sans 14"
   #bg[NORMAL]         = "black"
   base[NORMAL]         = "black"
   text[NORMAL]         = "green"
   }
 class "*t*" style "proom"' > /tmp/gtkrc

 export GTK2_RC_FILES=/tmp/gtkrc
 
>/dev/shm/seedtxt 
>/dev/shm/selSeedtxt

# build command line
echo '#!/bin/sh ' >/dev/shm/seedtxt
echo 'Xdialog --rc-file /tmp/beige.rc --title "Seeds-loader" --stdout --separator " " --checklist "Please check Seed files to load in $EDITOR" 20 100 40 \' >>/dev/shm/seedtxt
for SEED in $TXTDIR/*;do
read -r LINE <$SEED
SEED=`echo  "$SEED" | cut -d/ -f5`
echo "$SEED" \\ >>/dev/shm/seedtxt
echo "'$LINE'" \\ >>/dev/shm/seedtxt
echo "off" \\ >>/dev/shm/seedtxt
done
echo '>>/dev/shm/selSeedtxt' >>/dev/shm/seedtxt
chmod +x /dev/shm/seedtxt


TxtEdit() {
>/dev/shm/selSeedtxt	
/dev/shm/seedtxt	
[[ -s "/dev/shm/selSeedtxt" ]] || exit
for i in $(</dev/shm/selSeedtxt); do seeds="$seeds $TXTDIR/$i" ; done
$EDITOR $seeds
}


export -f TxtEdit

 export Proom='
<window title="Proom" width-request="1240" height-request="768" decorated="false">
<hbox>
<hbox visible="false">
<button use-underline="true">
<label>'"$SAVEKEY"'</label>
<action>echo "$EDIT" >>/mnt/home/texts/'"$DATE"'</action>
<action>clear:EDIT</action>
</button>
<button use-underline="true">
<label>'"$EDITKEY"'</label>
<action>TxtEdit</action>
</button>
</hbox>
<edit wrap-mode="2" left-margin="200" right-margin="200" '"$CURSOR"'><variable>EDIT</variable></edit>
</hbox>
</window>'
gtkdialog3  -p Proom

[foxpup]

@keef
First I tried just this script, but the alt+s and alt+g don't seem to work. Also tried the .pet, but same result.
alt+f4 works to quit, but nothing is in /mnt/home/texts

[Keef]

I've got the same problem. Can't help sorry.

@scsijon

I didn't read that thread fully did I! This is not new to you.

[mjmikulcik]

Code: Select all

	
#!/bin/sh

echo 'style "proom" {
  font_name             = "DejaVu Sans 12"
  bg[NORMAL]         = "black"
  base[NORMAL]         = "black"
  text[NORMAL]         = "green"
  }
class "*t*" style "proom"' > /tmp/gtkrc
export GTK2_RC_FILES=/tmp/gtkrc:/root/.gtkrc-2.0

export Proom='
<window title="Proom" width-request="1250" height-request="750" decorated="false">
<edit wrap-mode="1" left-margin="300" right-margin="300"><variable>EDIT</variable></edit>
<action signal="key-press-event">echo "$EDIT" >/root/mystuff</action>
 </window>'
gtkdialog3 -p Proom

This script did work for me with alt f4 to close and save. Although I had to edit the width/height, margins, and font to suit my screen

[greengeek]

Needs to be able to handle about 12,000 words (I think) and handle the new-paragraph step-in and first letter-of-a sentence-a-capital type stuff automatically..

I haven't used it but Ghostwriter looks as if it may be simple visually but also configurable:

http://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/