Manuscript Files Overview

A manuscript is a longer document (a book, multi-part grant proposal, or manual) composed of individual files (such as chapters) which are normally created and edited as separate files until combined into a manuscript, usually for printing.

Nota Bene's manuscript file feature lets you take advantage of the benefits of two ways of working:

•You can work on individual chapters during the initial stages of writing and editing, or whenever doing so makes sense.

•You can work on the entire document, especially during the last stages of editing and when printing out the final copy.

Benefits of working on individual chapters separately

When working on a longer project, many people prefer to work on shorter individual sections, such as chapters, at a time. This not only makes writing and editing faster (since all software can handle smaller sections of text more easily), but also enables other options not possible when working on the entire document at once.

For example, if you are working on a book with seven chapters, and want to see how the argument in chapter three is related to the analysis in chapter five, you could (assuming you've decided to create individual chapters) open both chapters in separate windows, find the relevant portion of each chapter, and then (whether you split the screen to show both chapters on the screen at the same time or not) move between the two locations by simply switching windows. If you tried to do the same thing without having created individual chapters, instead combining all the individual chapters into a single file, it would be much more difficult to move back and forth between the two sections you were working on -- you would have to search to find the second section, read or edit what is there, and then try to find your way back to the first section that you were editing.

Another context where working on individual chapters may make more sense is when the larger document you are working on requires end notes from all the chapters to be gathered together at the end of the document. But in most cases, you don't need to see all the end notes from the entire document while working on a particular chapter -- in fact, seeing all end notes, rather than only those associated with the current chapter, may be confusing.

Benefits of working on full manuscript at once

On the other hand, there are clearly times when it is advantageous to work on the entire project at once, such as when you want to:

•Spell check

•Search for the same text throughout the entire document

•Perform last-minute checks for consistency

•Print the entire longer document at once

And there are still other times when there is no alternative to working on the entire document as a single file. You would need to do so:

•To generate a bibliography for the entire document

•To enable cross referencing (backwards and forwards)

•To enable automatic numbering (pages, notes, counters) across the entire document (you could always, of course, manually reset the starting numbers of pages, notes, and counters in each chapter, but this requires more work)

•If you want all the end notes from the entire document to be printed together at the end of the document, rather than at the end of each individual chapter

Manuscript Control Files and Manuscript Text Files

Nota Bene makes both ways of working possible by using a "manuscript control file." This file lists the names and order of all the individual chapters in the larger document, along with other properties of each chapter, such as whether you want end notes which may originally appear at the end of each chapter to be instead gathered at the end of the entire larger document. The manuscript control file has the extension .MSC. The Manuscript Files dialog (File, Manuscript Files) is used to create the manuscript control file, and to change its properties.

When you want to work on the full manuscript, the Manuscript Files dialog can be used to open a "manuscript text file" that contains all of the individual files that are specified in the manuscript control file. The manuscript text file has the extension .MST. You can edit your manuscript text file directly, and when you close the file, Nota Bene splits the file up again into its component parts, preserving in each individual file whatever changes you made to that portion of the larger file. You can use the spell checker, print or anything else in the manuscript text file just as you would in any Nota Bene file. As long as the file has the .MST extension, any changes that you make will be written back to the component files when the file is closed.

You can work in the manuscript text file or in the component files (i.e., the chapter files), but not simultaneously. Component files should be closed before opening the manuscript text file, and they should not be opened until the manuscript text file is closed.

The manuscript text file or .MST file is linked to the component files and cannot be used on a computer that does not have the same component files and the same manuscript control file. If you want to use the full manuscript on another computer, you should save the file as an .NB file. Click File, Save As and change the extension to .NB (or choose your own extension, but not .MST). If you want to transmit the manuscript text file to someone who does not have Nota Bene, you can save it as an RTF file (click File, Save As and choose Rich Text Format in the Formats box of the Save As dialog). An RTF file can be opened by Word or WordPerfect. Once you have saved the file as an .NB file or an .RTF file, any changes that you make will no longer be written back to the component files.