novelWriter VS Zettlr

Never buy the book, start writing the book, https://novelwriter.io/ ;)

novelwriter.io

https://novelwriter.io/ is free and open source (I haven't used it, only know about it).

novelWriter for books is like building a dungeon in D&D I might add. All it needs is a map editor ;)

Novelwriter almost hits the sweet spot, but misses some features and is written in python, which makes some features hard to implement due to the nature of the programming language.

Try this software. It may well help you to write better -> novelWriter.

Alternatively, if you want Scrivener-like and are happy with open source projects, novelWriter scratches some of the same itch and is (a) free and (b) available on Linux, Windows, and macOS: it has a similar project-oriented interface to Scrivener, can export projects in HTML, Open Document, Markdown, Plain Text, or PDF, supports tagging and metadata, and uses Markdown for authoring. It's much less hot on importing foreign files (it's really an authoring tool) but is implemented in Python, uses XML/Json for internal files/metadata/configuration, and in use feels like an early version of Scrivener 1.x (which is really what your students want, but Lit'n'Latte discontinued it about a decade ago and you can no longer buy it).

MSWord is surprising to hear. I would've thought some specific tools like Vellum. There are free and open source tools as well, like https://novelwriter.io/

I wanted to apply this theme (https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/discussion/3211) to my Zettlr, as these preset themes are kind of an eye sore. But, while it changes the toolbar and surrounding menus, it does not apply any changes whatsoever to the editor.

> Your One-Stop Publication Workbench.

https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr#readme (GPLv3)

Direct link to GitHub: https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/releases

I can't recommend the Zettlekasten Method enough: https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/

You can do it with index cards or you can use software to practice the method and grow your note collection. I now prefer Zettlr (https://www.zettlr.com) after using Joplin (https://joplinapp.org), which are both FOSS.

One of the core strategies of the Zettlekasten Method is to link notes to each other. That's how knowledge grows: connections and synthesis (internalization/application of the connections)

Here's a 3-year-old video on the method that serves as a good primer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFZHuWLA09M

Zettlr - Price: Free (with optional donations) Markdown editor for Mac that features a user-friendly interface and advanced features for writers.

There is https://www.zettlr.com/.

I discovered recently [logseq](https://logseq.com/) and it's beautiful. I use quite a lot Zettlr for taking notes on concepts and ideas but I have to say that logseq has become my starting point for daily, short, notes and tasks. I need to work on an integration with Zettlr however, I like the possibility of the latter to organize and connect the texts, especially convenient when writing essays.