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Although the project manager is fairly useful on its own, the editor is what makes this program a useful all-in-one tool.

At the top of the editor window is the title of the current file. Feel free to change this whenever you like. Dominating the screen is the edit window. It's pretty basic, as I already said. But you can enter text and that's the important bit.



New empty scene


Above the editor screen you will see a drop-down list. This is a short-cut to the rest of the files in the project. You can also use the F3 and F4 keys to move to the previous or next file in the list. Note that whenever you try to exit the editor or move to another file the program will prompt to save the current file IF it has been altered in any way. To the right of this you'll find a drop-down containing a list of scenes in the selected chapter.

In yWriter you will see a status bar at the bottom of the screen. This bar will update every 60 seconds or so, telling you when the last auto-backup was performed. If you have been editing a file for a while and the power suddenly goes off, you will find a backup in the "Autobackups" folder, in the yWriter program path. You can also use the Backup browser in the main yWriter menu.

In the status bar you will also see two word counts: one for the current chapter, and another for the current scene. These are updated every 60 seconds or whenever you save.

The SAVE button stores the current file on disk, overwriting the previous version.

The Save and Exit button will return you to the project list. Note that you will be prompted about saving the current file (if changed).

The Save and Next and Save and Prev buttons will save the current scene and then display the next or previous scene, changing chapters at the same time if necessary.

Click 'None' to select the viewpoint character for the scene. Click 'Dummy' to set the scene status - Outline, Draft and so on.

The white box containing 'N/A' (in this example) is where you enter the long scene description. When you print a project summary, this is the part which is printed.

The entry field next to 'Desc:' is where you enter the short scene description. This is displayed on the main yWriter screen, and is also printed in scene lists.

Click and of the other labels and you'll see the Details screen, where you can set up several other scene-specific options:

Scene Details


When you click OK on this page it will store your settings and redisplay the current scene.