Visual Studio Code

Electron?

Forgot: it cannot be electron-based.

A stray thought that occurred to me is that I'm surprised that no writing program has tried to use the same trick as Obsidian by defining all the contents of a folder as a project/document. It could keep a small database about the project in the folder and have a separate folder elsewhere which contains information from all projects. This would make it easy to calculate words per day etc across all projects, sequence fo files in a project etc etc. And no need for the program to be designed as a database hidden from other programs.

felt clunky - particularly the shift from the outline to the writing

obvious to put the section details into YAML format in Workflowy bullets

Possibly not clunky, but unnecessary friction. So I've given that up. I did try alternative approaches but they clunked too.
And, anyway, it's as easy to use the information in native Workflowy as it is to use in a YAML or other adjunct of the writing file.

So now that's what I'll do. Creating, devising, planning, organising in mindmap, kanban and outline. (In the main that's just a single OPML mediated export from Mindomo to workflowy.)
First draft writing in IW and/or iAW.
Then editing, rewriting & the multiple & etcs in Word.

I'm trying to get this right because I'm just starting a huge project, and messing about in the future will be time consuming.

My personal view is that Word has progressed right down the food chain. I don't like it for first draft writing yet, but it wouldn't take much for that to happen. Markdown syntax is a pita and can only do what I want by adding HTML.

Many programs that claim to use Markdown are actually databases. Roam, Amplenote, Trello, Logseq etc
Obsidian is fundamentally files, but supplemented by many small databases.
docx is just a database in a file

This post is interesting describing abandoning the PKM tools he had presumably been very keen on at one point.

I used to think that once I have collected and organized these great ideas, I will be better thinker and produce better results.
I was wrong.
...
notes are useless after some time. I either forget about them, or I don’t know why I wrote them in the first place.

I find most of the notes I wrote a few years ago pretty useless for the current me

the idea that notes are used to store information (knowledge) for a long term is misguided. There is no permanent storing or organizing of knowledge. Knowledge is highly transient stuff.

I need to think of myself as writer than a knowledge worker

I've never been in the same position he was in as far as collecting thousands of notes is concnerned. I have fewer; they all had, and retain, a potential use; and I'm well aware that stuff I have apparently abandoned can suddenly return as active work - but the reversion to rich text is.

Another revision after playing around more. I'm about to start a huge project, so I want the workflow to be as right as possible before I start because changing things around later might be time consuming.

Programs:
Inspire Writer - the nicest environment to write in from my personal point of view. But hit a clunk when I saw it didn't treat HTML comments as comments and just exported them into Word. Ulysses has similar issues apparently, and according to David Hewson also breaks front matter in external files. idk if IW does that, but it has made me wary about relying on it - there's already the issues with idiosyncratic markdown and useful features being in the database. I don't believe it plays as nicely with other programs as I need.
iA Writer - a nice enough writing environment, but it's pretty hardline and rigid. Works okay with other programs. No WYSIWYG mode. Available on all platforms.
Word - it's not a lightweight text entry program, but it is to my mind much more useable than it used to be for writing, and no need to look at previews to estimate how a document will look in Word. Definitely the one to use once I have finished first draft, and not impossible before that. And, of coure, I could use Wordpad as my lightweight data entry program, excepting the lack of dark mode . But then there are the other lighter word processors - and Atlantis does have many writer oriented features.
Pure Writer (Android) - this is my favourite writing program on Android. I may need to remember to change the default setting to txt instead of md.

One of the big issues with this project is that I want a clear idea of the whitespace on pages as I am writing, and markdown is particularly poor for this. Specifically I need to see paragraph indents as I write and this requires new lines being paragraphs.
I tried looking at other programs like Typora (probably not out of it, though it has no specifically useful features), and I know Typora can do this. But when I pasted example markdown text, it didn't pick up all the paragraphs that needed indenting. It did pick the missing ones  as lines, which is more that iA Writer did. Markdown quirks and incompatibilities are extraordinarily irritating. I don't know about it keeping things safe for the long-term, because it's not great at passing them from one program to another. For a project his size, I need everything to run predicably and reliably.

Database or files?
Strong preference for files. Willing to accept database for a given period. But not minded to trust IW's database for this project. I'm not familiar enough with it, I've seen a few glitches in its interactions with other programs and its Ulysses syntax is eccentric. Interoperability is not a strength of databases.

Markdown or Rich Text?
This wasn't a question until recently - it was markdown of course. But markdown's not very interoperable, as I'm finding. You can shift from one program to another simply enough - it's just a few changes, and all is done - but constant switching between one program and another is a very different beast. `I'd assumed that I would settle on one program to use, and I very nearly did - more than once, but always there were little glitches - like the paragraph indent of iAW appearing only in the preview pane (in Pure Writer, they appear in the edit pane, but not in the preview pane, which strikes me as the more correct behaviour; I don't need indents exported, other programs will have their own settings). Minor but it will always niggle.
I haven't decided, but I'm starting to veer towards rich text. I know that works.

One long file or many short?
I haven't decided this. It will depend on how well it works. OPML export from Workflowy isn't really a constraintas it can be exported  in chunks, and it is easy to combine or split files by heading.
I'll start long and go from there.
If I go initial markdown, then I'll use HTML comments to contain section information from Workflowy.

Reflection on journey, Obsidian and all.
In practice, even if I go to rich text for this project, that's not a change of direction. This is just for writing, which I've not been examining in detail. I'd hoped Obsidian would become a good program for writing, but it has gone in the other direction and is increasingly becoming a programmers' (and students) program. I don't trust IW sufficiently, and Ulysses is Mac only. All other markdown editors tick some boxes, but not enough, and while they will all work on the same file, they don't always agree on the syntax. I might still go that way but I'm starting to feel not. I'm likely to go txt and docx. Which is where I have before, from time to time.

For research now, notes etc, it is wikilinks all the way and I'm agnostic whether that's with Workflowy or Obsidian or another PKM app, Not many focus on files unfortunately, so I will have to make the best of what I can find. But the important thing is the files and the folder structure. Or so I tell myself.

And after all that humming and hawing, and playing with the programs again, I'm going to go with Inspire Writer for the writing. The reason is simply that I know I will write more words using it than any alternative. And get them in the right order easier. I'll mitigate the risks of the database (I will use the database rather than external files) with daily exports to md and docx. It's an odd thing, I sit down with it and want to write; I sit down with the others and there are endless temptations to fiddle with the program.

Update - Now feels even odder. I've set Atlantis up to imitate, as best I can, the display settings in IW, using the same font/spacing etc. But it is still not quite the same. Feels heavier and not as easy to read. Nevertheless I've managed to get Atlantis into contender territory.And I'd forgotten Atlantis' blazing speed; other programs struggle to match it, depite being plaintext only: Atlantis is faster loading and working with the docx version of a document than they are with the markdown version. (tested with War and Peace)..

That's a somewhat unfair comparison, as docx is a compressed container format (you can view the contents using a tool like 7-zip), where the other 3 are uncompressed. If you compress those files to f.e. zip files, the figures will be more comparable. And most likely docx will then be the largest, but also contain the most elaborate mark-up/formatting data.

But with current (low) prices for storage, why does it matter?

After quite a bit of testing what works and what doesn't work, I have arrived at a Plan A for writing.

Creation, Planning, Development - Mindmap, Kanban, Outline (Mindomo, Workflowy enabled by OPML). I find trying to write much in a Workflowy note too high friction (the text is faded and hard for me to read), so I'll do the ad hoc writing in iA Writer which I find simple enough.

Actual writing and early stages of editing - Inspire Writer and Atlantis. I have them set up to look very similar. I'm leaving the possibility of writing in Atlantis open. It has projects, combining and splitting files and one of the better implementations of an outline view (works fast & good visually) - the Outline in Word, while effective, still feels like an afterthought. In the later, pure docx, stage of editing, I'll also use Word.

David Hewson describes writing a book as like combining small tiles into a mosaic. I agree, but I'm a big-endian not a little-endian (usage derived directly from Jonathan Swift, not computing). I like being secure in the big picture with the tiles deriving from that. I see Scrivener as a little-endian program which always seems to focus my attention on the smallest elements); Atlantis is a big-endian (you can use many small files in a project and join them later, but it's not convenient; easier to work with the outline view imho); Inspire Writer/Ulysses is somewhere in the middle - little is easy, but the big view is always easy to see, and can work with big documents using headings (though it's not great for that). At the first draft stage, this Ulysses design feels easier to work with; we'll see - easy enough to just do more of the writing in Atlantis.

looks like logseq is making really fast progress. I'm amazed at what this team can do. Obsidian has a good community that pumps out plugins, and some look very interesting, like this one https://github.com/kevboh/longform that could be an alternative to scrivener.

@dormouse, I definitely understand what you are going through with so many tools. I spent the last two days doing some similar search, and I even considered going down to paper zettelkasten. I'm probably moving away from amplenote and into logseq, but starting my zettel from scratch there. Oh, and I now read on an ereader (Onyx air note 2), which adds a lot of constraints.

Where do you publish what you write?

Oh, and I now read on an ereader (Onyx air note 2), which adds a lot of constraints.

I have a Boox too. But it's not my main reader (or writer). It's for when light conditions - or my eyes - require e-ink and I need a bigger scale than a kindle or need to be able to use a wider range of programs and functions. I tried using Obsidian on it; it works, but not well enough to be especially productive, and I've largely given up using the mobile versions of Obsidian anyway.

Just bought a bluetooth mechanical keyboard (I type faster/bettr on a mechanical) and so far I only have it paired with laptop, Samsung tablet and phone. Maybe I'll use it with the Boox sometime (midsummer most likely), but only when the other options don't work with the light.

Where do you publish what you write?

I have worn, and wear, many hats but the short answer is that, in one way or another, I have always had publishers.

Although most pieces have have a restricted circulation and aren't accessible to the public (just about the opposite of a blog). Might require storytelling, but most hasn't been fiction. I suspect that most writers are like me in writing in specialised non-fiction niches. All my writing is print, or digital print equivalent, none is on the web.

After reading Alito's opinion in the news, I recognised his whole process as being same as any other writer - drafting, revising, receiving comments; and a very careful use of words; I expect he sees himself as a lawyer rather than a writer because he only has one niche but he has to have a writer's skill set - most judges do. Many excellent writers of fiction have also been lawyers (I assume they think of themselves as lawyers write fiction on the side); most fiction writers have to earn their money at something else to live (somehow translated in some writing circles to not being proper writers) because it's difficult to generate much income from fiction unless you are also, and principally, a marketer or have someone who does it for you. So there's a question about identity; personally, I'm happy to describe them all as writers, but probably not professional writers, unless Alito identifies as a writer.

But those who write in many (paid) niches I would describe as professional writers. I think this describes many people. And I suspect that most write, have written, or will write, fiction but not as their main activity because it's too hard to generat a sufficient reliable income. My income depends on delivering MSS

My new project is is fiction of a type I haven't tackled previously and I don't know what I'll do about publishing that. I have the luxury of not needing to make money with it, so I'm under no pressure apart from actually producing the words.

I'm probably moving away from amplenote and into logseq,

Any particular reason for moving from Amplenote, or is it purely the attraction of Logseq?

I now read on an ereader (Onyx air note 2),

In case you haven't seen it, this thread on the Obsidian forum is still going. Quite a lot of Boox users there.

I'm very happy with logseq so far. Plus neovide, a nvim frontend, that does something really interesting with the cursor (check this: https://youtu.be/Vd5AACp6GG0?t=112) because it has better typing latency. I don't like modal interfaces though. And the many trips to 'esc' are ditracting.