This update included:
As always, feel free to contact us with any questions.
It doesn't matter what operating system you use -- the whole tool runs in the browser. We recommend a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768.
Chrome is going to yield the best results, mostly because it was built with Chrome in mind — as someone with a Chromebook, that was a big thing I had in mind. It's been tested in Firefox and Microsoft Edge, but not as extensively.
It is not supported for phone use at this time; it may work, but it's been neither tested nor given the necessary tweaks for best use.
Writer is built entirely on HTML, JavaScript (and various libraries thereof), and CSS. It uses an awful lot of objects to manage your novel as separate scenes, which you can then download in a few different formats.
Your project data is saved to your browsers's local storage, rather than reading/writing from a file on your hard drive. (Here's the Wikipedia article on web storage, if you want to know more.) Session storage is used to keep track of how much you've written today, which you see in the settings and in the goal progress bar if you have a daily writing goal set.
More detail on how to use the tool is available in the Gramarye Writer documentation.
On the topic of browser storage: browsers limit how much a website can use in localStorage space (rightly so).This limit in most major browsers seems to be about 5MB. Obviously, I've been concerned about how much space this app uses with that in mind.
Using this stackoverflow method to calculate the use of browser storage, I checked to see what my 50K NaNoWriMo project uses up. The answer is just a bit over 500KB. Settings and other information that's stored use under 1 KB each. So unless you're storing several epic-length novels in the app, you're unlikely to hit the storage quota.
Only you (and anyone who opens Gramarye Writer in your browser). Your writing isn't uploaded to a server, and isn't saved anywhere other than your browser storage and/or your linked Dropbox account.
As mentioned in the above aside, anyone with access to your browser who opens Gramarye Writer would be able to access your files -- there isn't any sort of protection on writing projects at this time. I don't recommend using this tool on public computers for the sake of protecting your information.
Gramarye Writer works for people like me, who want:
I will be the first to admit that this may be a narrow venn diagram of people. But also, I constantly jump between computers, operating systems, and programs for my writing — hello, ADHD. I'd always wanted to write the software that would work for my very specific needs, and in 2015 even briefly looked into what it might take to create a Chrome app. Now, years later when I finally had enough skills to do so... well, why not? If other people find it works for them, great!
For my use, Gramarye Writer meets a need I want during writing, rewriting, and developmental/content edits of a novel. When it comes time to format and clean up, I have historically moved to Word or some other Office-equivalent software. Since it's a plain-text app for now, it's not suited for turning out a piece of work that's in the standard manuscript format.
The first time you access Gramarye Writer in the browser, it caches all the files necessary to run the program. If you later open the browser while you're offline, all the necessary files are available for the browser to access.
Some caveats:
Gramarye Writer was created and written by Ashley Baker (who writes under the name Ashley M. Hill). She's a total amatuer, having taken a variety of web development classes during her degree but only practicing it as a hobby. She works in IT Support, and writes sci-fi/fantasty.
The only known user doing novel-editing in it is, well, me. I let my ten-year-old QA it, which is just him trying to find ways to break it. There are still bugs and issues that I'm working on, but in this live version, data loss hasn't been one of them yet. (Naturally, there were data issues in early early versions that have been ironed out.)
However, I also don't want people to start using it and lose their hard work to some bug I hadn't yet seen. I recommend right now saving regularly, downloading a copy of your data when you finish a session, and letting me know if you start to see any issues.
It's just the file format I'm using to store data in a way that can be reread into the app with your scene names intact. You can open it in a text editor and see that it's your project (or your settings data) in stingified JSON. When you upload it, it parses and recreates those scenes for editing. This file also saves and retains your archived scenes — the .txt, .html, and .doc formats can save the archived scenes, but not view them as archived upon re-upload.
I chose the .gwf for "Gramarye Writer Format," and because it's not currently in use by any other file.
Please do contact me with bugs, errors, and other issues you encounter while using Gramarye Writer. If you have a screenshot, that's great. I have tackled the issues that I personally encounter, but everyone uses software differently. That difference could run into wholly different issues.
Please feel free to contact me with feature requests. It's not a promise that I'll be able to support it, or that it fits into what I want the app to be, but I'm open to suggestions.
If you're curious about what my next goals for the app are, you can check my future list for Gramarye Writer. There isn't a timeline for these — for now, I'm testing the basic functionality by writing.
Icons used in Gramarye Writer are via Font Awesome.
Background patterns from Subtle Patterns.
The pen-nib image in the icon is modified; the original is via
Terms & Conditions generated from the Terms And Conditions Generator and then modified.