Understanding the User Interface

The Storyist main window consist of three parts:

The Project View—Displays the text, images, and bookmarks associated with your project.
The Main View—Provides an area for editing project items. The Main view can be configured to display items as text, outlines, or storyboards. It can also be split (as shown below) so you can edit multiple project items.
The Toolbar—Provides quick access to frequently used Storyist commands.

Project View

A Storyist project consists of one or more manuscripts or scripts and a collection of notes, images, and bookmarks. The Project View—located to the left of the main window—helps you organize and access these items quickly.

To hide the Project View, choose View > Hide Project View. To display it again, choose View > Show Project View.

Main View

The Main view, located to the right of the Project view, has three components:

The navigation bar—The button strip at the top of the view.
The editing area—The area in the middle of the view, which you can select to be a text view, an outline view, or a storyboard view.
The control bar—The button strip at the bottom of the view.

The Main view can be split both horizontally and vertically so that you can see multiple project items at once. For more information on splitting views, please see the section titled “Splitting Views”.

Navigation Bar

Much like a web browser, the navigation bar lets you switch between recently viewed pages. It also controls whether the content of the view is displayed using the Text view, the Outline view, or the Storyboard view.

The navigation bar contains the following buttons:

Back Button—Returns you to the previous item in your viewing history.
Forward Button—Takes you to the next item in your viewing history.
History Pop-up Menu—Pops up the list of items in your viewing history.
Text Outline Pop-up Menu—Pops up the outline of your text file, allowing you to navigate to sections of your text.
View as Text Button—Switches the editing area to the Text view.
View as Outline Button—Switches the editing area to the Outline view.
View as Storyboard Button—Switches the editing area to the Storyboard view.

Control Bar

The control bar provides buttons and status related to the view.

In the Text view, for instance, the control bar contains:

The Zoom Pop-up Menu—Lets you specify the zoom factor and related options.
The Word Count Indicator—Gives you a quick count of the words in a selection, or the entire document (if no words are selected).
The Page Count Indicator—Gives you a quick count of the pages in the document.
The Style Pop-up Menu—Indicates which style is applied to the current selection, and lets you apply a different style if you want.
The Quick Key status—Indicates which style will be applied when the Tab and Return keys are pressed.

The Outline and Storyboard views provide similar controls.

Text View

The Text view is where you’ll do most of your writing. It displays your manuscript or script, story sheets, and notebook entries in text form.

To view your story elements in the Text view, navigate to the element you want to view, and do one of the following:

Choose View > as Text.
Click the View as Text button (the first button showing three horizontal lines) in the Navigation bar.

For more information on the Text View, please see the chapter titled “Working with Text”.

Outline View

The outline view provides traditional outlining tools that let you quickly capture your ideas and work with them at a high level.

To view your story elements in the Outline view, navigate to the element you want to view, and do one of the following:

Choose View > as Outline.
Click the View as Outline button (the second button showing three staggered horizontal lines) in the Navigation bar.

For more information on the Outline view, please see the chapter titled “Working with Outlines”.

Storyboard View

The storyboard view gives you a high-level overview of your story elements (characters, plot points, and settings) by displaying your story elements as index cards or photographs on a corkboard or collage.

To view your story elements in the Storyboard view, do one of the following:

Choose View > as Storyboard.
Click the View as Storyboard button in the Navigation bar (the right-most button showing four small squares).

Headings and groups are shown as items on corkboard.

Body text and individual story elements are shown in a collage.

For more information on the Storyboard view, please see “Working with Storyboards”.

The Storyist toolbar provides buttons for quick access to the most commonly used commands and a search field that allows you to search your entire project. The default toolbar configuration is shown below.

Starting from the left, these are the Toolbar icons:

Project—Provides a quick way to add items to your project. Click the icon to select from a list of available items.
Manuscript—Displays your manuscript in the Main view using the current view mode.
Notebook—Displays your notebook entries as index cards on a corkboard in the Main view. If the Main view is not already split, this button first splits it, and then displays the notebook entries in the second pane of the split.
Plot—Displays the plot points of your story as index cards on a corkboard in the Main view. If the Main view is not already split, this button first splits it, and then displays the plot points in the second pane of the split.
Characters—Displays the characters of your story as photographs on a corkboard in the Main view. If the Main view is not already split, this button first splits it, and then displays the characters in the second pane of the split.
Settings—Displays the settings of your story as photographs on a corkboard in the Main view. If the Main view is not already split, this button first splits it, and then displays the settings in the second pane of the split.
Comment—Adds a comment to the currently selected text.
Bookmark—Adds a bookmark to the current location to the Bookmarks collection.
Workspaces—Provides a quick way to change between saved workspace snapshots.
Inspector—Opens or closes the Inspector.

Template Chooser

When you create a new document, Storyist displays a dialog to allow you to choose a template for your project.

Workspaces Window

The Workspaces window lets you create and quickly switch between snapshots of your project views and windows.

Inspector Window

The Inspector window allows you to quickly view and edit settings for text, styles, page, and writing goals settings.

To open the Inspector window, do either one of the following:

From the toolbar, click the Inspector button (the blue circle with an “i” inside).
From the main menu, choose View > Show Inspector.

Text Attributes Pane

The first button in the Inspector window selects the Text Attributes pane. You can use the Text Attributes pane to modify the font, spacing, and tab settings of the text you select.

Styles Pane

The second button in the Inspector window selects the Styles pane. You can use the Styles pane to:

Apply a different style to the text you select.
Create a new style from an existing style.
Update an existing style to match the text you select.

Page Attributes Pane

The third button in the Inspector window selects the Page Attributes pane, where you can set page margins and specify different left and right headers and footers.

Writing Goals Pane

The last button in the Inspector window selects the Writing Goals Pane. You can use the Writing Goals pane to set and track both word-count and writing-time goals.

For more information on setting writing goals, please see the chapter titled “Tracking Word Count and Writing Time Goals”.

Backups Window

The Backups window gives you a quick overview of the backups that have been made of your project and allows you to:

Make a new backup of the project.
Remove selected backups from the backup directory.
Restore the project state from a backup.
Open a copy of a backup for viewing.

To view the Backups Window, choose File > Backups.

Note: The Backups Window is not available until you’ve saved your project.

Project backups are stored in the ~/Library/Application Support/Storyist/Backup directory.

Fonts Window

You can use the Mac OS X Fonts window to change font attributes such as typeface, size, color, underlining, and strikethrough.

To view the Fonts window, choose Format > Font > Show Fonts.

Colors Window

You can use the Mac OS X Colors window to change text color.

To view the Colors window, do one of the following:

Choose Format > Font > Show Colors
Open the Inspector, select the Text Inspector tab, and click the color well in the Size and Color section.

Preferences Window

General Preferences Pane

The General Preferences Pane lets you specify:

Which template to use for new documents.
Whether or not you want to save documents automatically, and how often.
Whether or not you want to back up documents automatically, and how often.

Text Editing Preferences Pane

The Text Editing Preferences pane lets you specify:

The behavior of the Tab and Return keys. Storyist can use these keys as shortcut keys to make changing styles as simple as typing a key or two.
Whether or not to automatically show completions for scene introductions, locations, times, characters, extensions, and transitions when working with a screenplay.

Plugins Preferences Pane

The Plugins Preferences pane lets you specify which format converters are used for specific file types and which text tools appear in the Edit > Tools menu.

Software Update Preferences Pane

The Software Update Preferences pane lets you configure Storyist to use your Internet connection to automatically check for updated versions.

Sharing Preferences Pane

The Sharing Preferences pane lets you share project items over a local network with Stanza for iPhone and other devices and applications that support the Open Publication Distribution System.

Keyboard Shortcuts and Shortcut Menus

Many of the Storyist menu commands described in this user’s guide can be performed from the keyboard. To see a list of the available shortcuts, open Storyist and choose Help > Show Keyboard Shortcuts. A table listing the keyboard shortcuts appears.

Some menu commands are also available from shortcut menus. To bring up a Shortcut menu, right-click or control-click an object or some selected text.

See a typo? Something not clear? Help us improve the documentation by letting us know in the comments.

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Storyist User’s Guide