Applies to ScribeWright 1.1.117
The Workspace
One window is one book. The pieces, top to bottom: the title bar with the quick-access buttons (Save, Undo, Redo), the ribbon, the chapter panel on the left, the editor in the middle, and the status bar along the bottom.
Help is never far: the ? at the right end of the title bar (and F1) opens this help at the topic for whatever you are looking at (the chapter list, the editor, or the Code pane), and every dialog and tool window carries the same ? in its caption for its own topic.
The Ribbon
Commands are grouped under the ribbon tabs. Double-click a tab (or press Ctrl+F1, or use the ˅ pin at the ribbon’s right edge) to collapse the ribbon to its tabs alone; it drops down when you click a tab and tucks away again after each command. ScribeWright remembers your choice.
Prefer the keyboard? Press Alt or F10 and a traditional menu bar appears with every command in the app; navigate with the arrow keys or the underlined letters, and it hides itself when you’re done. You can also Tab into the ribbon and move between buttons with the arrow keys; Enter presses one.
With several books open, View ▸ Open Books ▸ Switch Window ▾ lists them (Ctrl+F6 cycles); the same list sits under the keyboard menu’s Window heading.
The Chapter Panel
The list on the left is your manuscript’s spine. Drag chapters to reorder them (or Alt+Up / Alt+Down), press F2 to rename, and Ctrl-click or Shift-click to select several chapters at once; Delete removes the whole selection after one confirmation. Add inserts a new chapter right after the one you’re on, not at the end.
The 📌 pin (or Ctrl+Shift+C) collapses the panel to a slim strip when you want the full width for writing.
The Editor
The page in the middle is the book: what you type is what the EPUB will say. Two optional side panes join it:
- Code (Ctrl+E) shows the chapter’s XHTML and stays in sync with the page in both directions. You never need it, but it’s there when you want exact control.
- Notes (Ctrl+Shift+N) is your scratch pad for the chapter you are on: research, reminders, what still needs doing. Each chapter has its own; they are saved with the book but never appear in the exported EPUB, PDF, Word file or print, and never count as words. Close the pane with its × or the same toggle; it comes back where you left it.
Prefer to write in XHTML? Turn off View ▸ Show ▸ Visual Editor and the Code pane fills the editor area. See Code-first editing for what changes.
Focus Mode (F11)
For a drafting session, View ▸ Focus Mode (F11, or the Focus button on the View tab) leaves the page alone: the ribbon collapses to its tabs, the chapter panel, Code pane and Notes pane tuck away, the book’s own status strip hides, and the paper sits centred with wide margins. Word count and save state stay on the window’s status bar. Press Esc in the editor (or F11 again) to come back. Every pane that was open before returns exactly as it was. Focus mode is for the session; it never changes the layout ScribeWright remembers.
Zoom the editor with Ctrl + mouse wheel or Ctrl+= / Ctrl+- / Ctrl+0.
ScribeWright remembers how you arrange all of this (the chapter panel’s width and whether it is pinned, which side panes are open and where their dividers sit, the reader tint, and the zoom) and opens every book the same way. It is one layout for all your books, not a setting stored in the manuscript.
The Status Bar
The bottom edge keeps the numbers: the current chapter’s word count, the whole book’s, and, if you’ve set writing goals in Preferences, your progress toward today’s target and the book’s. The goal readout turns green with a ✓ when today’s words are in the bank.
Below that, the window’s own status bar carries two items you can click:
- Save state at the right: Saved 12:41, Unsaved changes, or Not saved yet for a book that has no file on disk. Click it to save (the same as Ctrl+S).
- Formatting warnings: after a book opens or imports, ScribeWright quietly runs the formatting rules and shows the count here, for example 3 formatting warnings. Click it to open Layout Review (F9). It disappears when there is nothing to report, and refreshes when you close Layout Review.
Messages about what has happened ("Opened…", "Exported to…", "Auto-Fix repaired…") show at the left of the same bar; ScribeWright never stops you with a box to say that something worked. A dialog appears only when there is a choice to make (deleting chapters, saving before closing, or replacing across the whole book), and its buttons say what they do (Delete / Keep, Save / Don’t save). When something goes wrong, the message says what failed in plain words; Show details reveals the technical reason and Copy details puts it on the clipboard for a bug report. Commands that need an open book are greyed out on the start screen, in the ribbon and in the menus alike, so their shortcuts do nothing there.