The binder and the editor, with prose and its synopsis side by side
Plan, write, manage your novels
Skribisto is a writing app for novels, from the first idea to the finished manuscript.
Split panes and tabs, and a whole chapter, part or book readable as one text
Corkboard, story bible, margin comments and footnotes
Word goals, writing sessions, pace planning and manuscript analysis
Statuses you name yourself, from first draft to final
Import from Scrivener, Manuskript, Plume Creator, Word, OpenDocument or Markdown, comments
included, with a report of anything left behind
Export to DOCX, ODT, EPUB, PDF and more, and finish the page layout in the program you prefer
Search and replace, autosave, backups and version history
Spell checking, smart punctuation and 24 interface languages
Built for accessibility: screen readers, braille displays and keyboard shortcuts
Chanjyow yn dyllans 3.3.1
1 day ago
Opening a text's menu with Shift+F10 or the Menu key leaves the cursor where it was.
It used to jump to the middle of the text, so Paste landed there
Alt+Up and Alt+Down move the selected binder item up or down, and Alt+Down opens a list
or a date field. Those keys used to go to the previous or next item from anywhere in the
window; they now do that only while you write in a text
Go ▸ Next scene, Alt+Down and the other Go commands put the cursor in the text they open,
so you can go on writing at once. It used to stay on the page you left, and a screen reader
announced only the window
In the Help window, Enter on a topic, the Back button and a link to another page take
you into the page's text, and a screen reader announces the page's title as its heading.
Focus used to stay on the topic's button, with no sign that the page had changed
In Settings, Enter on a page in the list on the left, a link to a page, a page in the
breadcrumb at the top or a search suggestion takes you to that page's first setting. Focus
used to stay where it was, and was lost when that was on the page being left
Every on/off setting in Settings has its name on the left and its switch on the right,
as most pages already did. Some pages put the switch first, and periodic backups now take
two lines: one to turn them on, one for the interval
With a screen reader, the search fields in Settings, the binder, Search, the corkboard,
the overview, Go to and the Launcher, the editable lines of the tags, statuses, templates,
dictionary and text replacement pages, the fields that add a holiday or a milestone in Pace,
and the bar of views at the top of a chapter, a part or a book now have names. They used
to be announced with none, or by their grey hint until something was typed
Help ▸ Keyboard shortcuts opens Settings on its Keyboard shortcuts page, where every
shortcut can be found and changed, in the Launcher too. It used to open a small sheet whose
list the keyboard could not reach, and whose button did nothing in the Launcher. A Settings
window opened for one page, from a message or a menu, now starts on that page's first setting
A screen reader announces the Help window as “Help - Skribisto” and each page by its
title. They used to be “Skribisto” and an unnamed document
In the Help window, the short definitions under “What things are” open as pages you can
enter and read with the keyboard, like the other topics. Their text used to be out of reach
of Tab, and of Enter on the topic
With a screen reader, each line of the tags, statuses, note templates, dictionary and
text replacement lists in Settings is announced by what it holds: the name of the tag, the
status or the template, the word, or the shorthand and what it becomes. A tag used to be
announced by its colour, a status by its number, and every word and every rule by the same
field name
With a screen reader, the charts in Go back in time, in a book's Pace and in its Analysis
are announced by their titles. They were announced in English, by how many series and categories
they had
With a screen reader, the title, subtitle and chapter title fields above a text, and
a note's name, are announced by name. They used to give only their grey hint, which disappears
once they hold a name
Every panel has its own command and shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+B the binder, T the trash, C
the comments, G the writing games, I the inspector, O formatting, D this document's comments,
K the footnotes, R the versions, J the search preview and L Go back in time, beside Ctrl+Shift+F
for Search. View ▸ Panels lists them all, and the command palette and Settings ▸ Keyboard
shortcuts too
The View menu keeps the panels in their own submenu, then the left, right and bottom
panels, then the window's modes. Panels and window settings used to be mixed in one list,
and half the panels were missing from it
Search preview no longer claims F10, which belongs to the menu bar on Windows and Linux
and never reached it there. Revealing an item in the binder brings the binder in front of
Search or the Trash, which used to keep it hidden
Help ▸ Using a screen reader opens a new page for writers who use NVDA, JAWS, Orca or
VoiceOver, with the cursor in its text: how the window is laid out, the shortcut of every
panel, and the keys of the binder, the views bar, the menus and Settings
When Skribisto starts with a screen reader running, it offers to open that page. Tick
“Do not show this again” to stop the offer; the page stays in the Help menu, and Settings
▸ Reset to defaults brings the offer back
Undo works again after a visit to Settings. Once Settings had been opened and closed,
Ctrl+Z and Edit ▸ Undo no longer took back a move in the binder, a trash or any other change
to the project's structure, for the rest of the session
Cut, Copy, Paste and Select all work in the fields of Settings and of the other dialogs,
such as Rename. Ctrl+V and Ctrl+A did nothing there
A panel's shortcut, such as Ctrl+Shift+B for the binder, puts you in the panel, and a
screen reader says its name. It used to bring the panel forward and leave the cursor where
it was
F6 and Shift+F6 move between the left panels, the text in the centre and the right panels,
and a screen reader says where you are. Tab goes through the window in reading order: the
title bar, the left, the centre, the right and the status bar
With a screen reader, the binder says each item's level and its place among its neighbours,
and Shift+F10 or the Menu key opens an item's own menu, with Move at the end. Every item
used to read as level 1, and the keyboard opened a Move menu in English instead
With a screen reader, a menu command, a command palette row and a button say their keyboard
shortcut. A menu opened from the keyboard starts on its first row, where it used to start
on the row chosen last time
The Up and Down arrows change the view of a chapter, part or book, as Left and Right
do
In Settings, the lines of the Tags, Statuses, Templates, Personal dictionary and Text
replacements pages can be reached from the keyboard: F2 or Enter goes into a line, Tab moves
between its fields and Escape comes back to the list
Tab leaves a synopsis, an epigraph, a comment and a footnote for the next control, as
in any field. It typed a tab into them
In the help, Tab goes from link to link in a page and Enter follows one
A date field's calendar opens as a small dialog with Cancel and OK. Tab stays inside
it, and a screen reader says the date chosen. Tab used to close the calendar without choosing
In New Work, Next takes you into the next page's first field and a screen reader announces
the step. The cursor used to stay on Next
In a narrow window, the second half of a split editor no longer draws over the right
panels: both halves shrink to fit
Enter at the end of a heading starts an ordinary paragraph, as in LibreOffice Writer,
and Enter in the middle of one splits it
On Windows, input methods for Chinese, Japanese and Korean, the emoji panel and voice
typing write into Skribisto as they do into Notepad: the candidate window follows the text,
and voice typing shows its words as you speak
Chinese, Japanese and Korean text, and emoji, are drawn with the fonts your system uses
for them, in colour for emoji, and bold or italic when the text around them is
After Add word, Add rule, Add tag or Add status in Settings, the cursor is back in the
field, ready for the next one. It stayed on the button, which greys itself out once the field
is empty
The Templates page of Settings fits a narrow window. Its row of buttons made it scroll
sideways, cutting off the start of its lines
Ctrl+Shift+O puts you on the first button of the Format panel, like the other panels'
shortcuts, and Tab moves through its buttons. They were out of reach of the keyboard, so
the shortcut left you in the text. A click on one of them still leaves the cursor and the
selection in the text
With a screen reader, the text of a scene, chapter or note is announced as “Text”, its
synopsis as “Synopsis” (on a corkboard card too) and a chapter's epigraph as “Epigraph”,
and the target box in the Inspector as “Target”. They used to be announced as edit fields
with no name, so you could tell them apart only by reading the words in them
Undoing a change to the binder no longer erases what you wrote since. Undoing a move,
a duplicate, a trash, a restore, Replace all or an import of tags or templates put the texts
it covered back as they were before the change, so the words typed afterwards were lost and
the open text was reloaded with a “Typing history reset” message. Only a text the change
itself rewrote, as a merge, a split or Replace all does, goes back
When a chapter's Epigraph section is closed, Tab goes past it. It used to stop on its
hidden Source line button and on its field
With a screen reader, the binder's items are no longer each described as a tooltip, the
Rename field has a name, and a field whose grey hint repeats its name says that name only
once
On Windows, a paragraph of the help is one paragraph for a screen reader, as in your
own text, and with NVDA's Read by paragraph a braille display shows it whole. A hidden character
at the end of each source line used to split it, and the display showed each of those lines
as a paragraph of its own
Pictures show in the text again when a project is opened, a Scrivener project or a document
is imported, or a text is reopened. Since version 3.0.5 they appeared as blank spaces of
the right size, though they were safe in the project and present in exports. This includes
macOS, and a high-resolution screen when the last project reopens at launch, where a picture
could stay blank after the first fix
A picture added after a project was saved to a new place, with Save As or by the first
save of a new folder project, shows when pasted into a text that was already open. It stayed
a blank space until the project was closed
Bold, italic, headings and other formatting are saved with your project even if you type
nothing afterwards. They used to stay in the open text and be gone the next time you opened
the project. After an undo, Redo is offered straight away, and the Edit menu says “Undo the
last change to this text”. It used to stay unavailable, and to call every change typing
When you import a project from Scrivener, Manuskript or Plume Creator, Skribisto suggests
the folder you last chose for a new project, or your documents folder, instead of the folder
your old project sits in. You can still choose any other folder, and Skribisto remembers
it next time
Tabbing through a chapter no longer lands on an invisible button: the Tags control shows
itself when you reach it, and Space opens it. Tags also show after opening a project from
the Launcher, where their dots could be missing. In a column narrowed by the side panels,
the corkboard and overview filters keep a field you can see and type in, and the cards stay
inside the column. These filters used to shrink to almost nothing, and the cards were cut
off at the edge
With a screen reader, Go ▸ Go to… (Ctrl+G) says how many items match as you type and
the first of them, and the Up and Down arrows read each match with its place in the list.
Enter opens the item with the cursor in its text. It used to say nothing about the results,
and Enter left you on the window
Go to… also finds an untitled chapter by the name the binder gives it. It used to show
the row, then skip it with the arrows and refuse to open it with Enter
F9 no longer leaves you on the window when the left panel hides with the cursor in it:
the cursor goes to the text in the centre, or into the view in front of you when it has no
text. A screen reader says when a left, right or bottom panel is hidden or shown, which it
used not to. Leaving distraction-free mode with F11 puts the cursor back in your text
On the corkboard, Shift+F2 takes you into a card's synopsis from the keyboard, Tab goes
round the card and Escape brings you back to it. A synopsis used to need the mouse, and once
inside, Tab jumped to the title bar
On macOS, a project on a mounted remote drive, such as a WebDAV share, can now be saved
and backed up. Every save used to fail with “fsyncing temp file” and left a hidden temporary
file beside the project. A save is also no longer called failed when it reached the disk
but macOS refuses access to its folder, which left the project marked unsaved
The panel names read out by a screen reader or listed under Keyboard shortcuts, the names
of the title fields and a few other labels are now in your language in every translation.
They used to appear in English in 22 of them
Entering distraction-free mode puts the cursor in your text where you left it, whichever
way you enter, so you can go on writing at once. A page with no text takes the cursor in
its view, and with nothing open the mode's bar takes it and a screen reader says there is
nothing to type in. The cursor used to be lost: keys went nowhere, and a screen reader was
left on nothing until you pressed Tab or left the mode. Also, a text in which the synopsis
sits beside the prose keeps the cursor when the window gets too narrow or wide enough for
that arrangement to change
After Work ▸ Save as folder… or Save as single file…, your recent works list the project
where you saved it, at the top, and no longer offer the file you saved from. They used to
keep only that older file, so reopening the project from the Launcher or the title bar opened
a copy without anything written since. The older file stays where it was, and Work ▸ Open
Work… still reaches it. The same goes for a backup you restore: the project it was put back
into comes first
When your project cannot be saved as you quit, close it or open another one (a network
drive that dropped, a full or write-protected disk, a USB key taken out), Skribisto now asks
what to do: leave without saving, losing the changes since the last successful save, or Cancel
to keep everything open and try again or use Save As. With autosave on, it used to stay open
with only a message, so you could not quit without forcing it
A backup opened beside its project, or the file a Save As left behind opened beside the
moved project, keeps its own count in Analysis ▸ Arrivals. The two windows used to add up
into one count, kept even after both were closed
The Settings window grows with a larger interface text size, set in Settings or by your
system. The list of pages on the left widens with it, and the bars at the top and bottom
keep their margins. At 200 % it used to keep its usual size, so the names of the pages, the
search field's hint and the commands under Keyboard shortcuts were cut short. Done now sits
at the right end of the bottom bar, away from Reset to defaults
Dragging a chapter in the binder or a tab, and selecting text with the mouse, keep up
with a fast mouse. With a 1000 Hz mouse on Linux they used to fall behind the pointer and
finish only after the button was released
Copy and paste between Skribisto and other applications work on Linux under GNOME with
Wayland, in the Flatpak too. They used to work only inside Skribisto there, with no message
to say so
Undoing or redoing bold, italic, a heading or a list shows in the text at once, and counts
as a change to save. The text used to keep its old look until you typed, and closing the
project could lose the undo
In the text, on Windows and Linux, Ctrl+Right goes to the start of the next word, as
in other editors, and Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down go to the start of a paragraph, with Shift to
select. Ctrl+Right used to stop at the end of the word, and Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down moved one
line
Left and Right with text selected go to the start or the end of the selection. They used
to move one letter from the cursor, which could leave it inside the selection. On a line
that wraps, Left no longer jumps from the second letter to the end of the line above, and
after Undo, Redo, Backspace or Delete there the cursor stays on the line its text is on
The cursor stops blinking after ten seconds with nothing moving it, and stays shown.
Typing, a click or coming back to the window starts the blink again
In a table, Down from the line above goes into its first row, Down from its last row
goes to the text after it, and Up into a cell that wraps lands on its last line. Shift with
an arrow inside a cell of several paragraphs selects text in that cell. The cursor used to
stay where it was, or select whole cells
With a screen reader, a line break made with Shift+Enter is read as a line break, and
an empty line between two of them as blank. On Windows, NVDA reads the line the cursor is
on at the start of a wrapped line, where it used to read the line above. A braille routing
key on the cell under the cursor no longer moves it a line up, and a braille display shows
a list line at once after Backspace, Undo or Redo
In a message with Show details, such as the one asking what to do when a project cannot
be saved, Enter on Show details shows them. It used to answer the question with the default
button. Once shown, the details can be reached with Tab, read, selected and copied, and a
message whose text wraps keeps its buttons inside it, where a click could miss them and count
as Cancel
