Help

Heron Binder organises a long document kept as Markdown files: a novel, non-fiction book, script, campaign or collection of articles. You write in your own Markdown editor; Heron Binder keeps the order, the notes about each chapter, and turns it all into a Word manuscript when you’re ready.

The examples below talk about chapters and scenes. Call them what suits your work: in Settings, rename “Chapter” to Section, Episode, Article or anything else.

1. Install a Markdown editor if you don’t have one. On the Mac, for example MDHero or BBEdit; on the iPad, for example Markdown Editor. Heron Binder offers to find one on the App Store.
2. Open Heron Binder and choose your document. Choose Start a New Document… to begin one in iCloud Drive, or choose the folder that already holds your files. If the folder has no binder yet, give the document its title and Heron Binder creates one; your files appear under Unsorted, ready to drag into place.
3. Choose your editor. On the Mac, pick it from the list. On the iPad, tapping a chapter shows iPad’s list of apps: tap your editor there. (Tip: in that list, scroll to the end, tap More, then Edit, and add your editor to Favourites so it’s always first.)

Keep your document in iCloud Drive to use it on both Mac and iPad: changes on one appear on the other.

• Sections: Manuscript (what gets compiled), Research, Characters, Places, Notes and Trash.
• Open a chapter: double-click it on the Mac, or tap it on the iPad.
• Rearrange: drag items. A chapter can hold scenes; a part holds chapters.
• Add: the Add button (parts, chapters in a part or after another chapter, scenes, front and back matter), or right-click (long-press on iPad) an item.
• Everything else is in menus (right-click or long-press). The title has the item’s menu: rename, tags, colour label, move, trash and more. Each column has its own: right-click a status for just the statuses.
• Undo reverses the last change to the binder. Moving to the Trash never deletes files.

Columns

Synopsis, Status, POV (point-of-view characters as coloured initials), Words, Target (orange while short, red once over), Created and Last Edit. Columns drop away as the window narrows. Click a synopsis, status, POV or target to change it. Under each title, its characters, places and tags are listed. An orange pencil marks a chapter being edited: one you opened from Heron Binder, here or on your other device. On the Mac with Obsidian, it goes when you close the chapter’s tab; with other editors, which don’t report when a file closes, it stays until the editor quits, or you choose Clear Being-Edited Mark from the title’s menu. On the iPad it goes when you come back to Heron Binder.

Status labels

No Status, Outline, First Draft, Revised Draft, Final Draft and Complete. Choose Edit Status Labels… from any status menu to rename, reorder or add your own.

Filter

Show only chapters with a given status, character, place or tag.

Add one item per character to the Characters folder (and per location to Places), named as they appear in the text. On each, Names… lists other names (Issy, Izzy) and former names. Tag chapters with the characters and places in them, and choose point-of-view characters; POV Colours… sets each character’s colour.

Name Check

The Names button reads the whole manuscript and reports likely misspellings of names, former names still in use, how often each name appears and where, and suggested tags. Open opens the chapter in your editor with the name copied: press ⌘F then ⌘V to jump to it.

The Search Document box in the toolbar (or ⇧⌘F on the Mac) searches every chapter, scene and note at once, with Match Case and Whole Words Only. Each match shows its passage; Open takes you to the file with the words copied for your editor’s Find. Make changes in your editor.

Write a short synopsis for each chapter, scene or section in the Synopsis column. When you’re ready to write the whole document’s synopsis, choose Add › Synopsis from Chapter Synopses: they’re gathered, in order, into one document in Notes, with its word count, to edit into shape.

The Compile button builds a Word manuscript of everything in the Manuscript that’s included: an optional title page with your contact details and word count, chapter headings as you choose, scene dividers, a running header, and endnotes or footnotes (written in your chapters as ^[note text] or [^1]). Every paragraph uses a named Word style, so you can restyle the whole manuscript in Word, or compile with your own Word template.

Export Outline saves the chapter list with synopses, word counts and targets as a table, to share your plan.

Using Obsidian or another editor

Your chapters are plain text, so any Markdown editor can open them, and you can switch at any time in the Editor field. Paragraphs, headings, *italic*, **bold**, quotes and links look the same everywhere. A few extras are Obsidian’s own: [[links]], ==highlights==, %%comments%% and callouts. Other editors show those as typed, but Compile handles them: the Word manuscript gets the words, and comments are left out.

• Leave a blank line between paragraphs. Obsidian can show a single Return as a new line, but other editors and Compile join those lines into one paragraph.
• Rename chapters in Heron Binder, not in the editor, so the chapter stays linked to its place in the binder.
• Keep a chapter open in only one editor at a time. Two editors saving the same file is how iCloud ends up with two versions.

Heron Binder merges changes from both devices item by item, so reordering on one and editing a synopsis on the other both survive. A red bar shows when the document is open on your other device; if a chapter was opened there recently, you’re asked before opening it again. Edit a chapter on one device at a time: Markdown editors don’t combine two people’s typing.

If iCloud ends up with two versions of a chapter, opening it keeps both: the other version appears in Unsorted as “… – other version”, with its date, for you to compare and copy from.

Writing with a co-author

In Settings › Share Document Folder…, choose Collaborate to invite a co-author to the document’s iCloud folder. You each see the other’s changes; take turns on any one chapter. Settings shows whether the folder is shared. Apple doesn’t let apps see who has accepted, so check that in Finder (right-click the folder, Share, Manage Shared Folder) or the Files app.

Your document folder in iCloud is the off-site copy. In Settings › Backups, choose a folder on your Mac and one on a removable drive: Heron Binder saves a dated backup when the document opens (if the last is over a day old), every 30 minutes while it changes, and when you quit. Old backups are thinned out over time. If the drive hasn’t been connected for a week, you’ll be reminded.

To get back an earlier version of a file, right-click it and choose Restore from Backup….

• Nothing of your own handy? Choose Try the Sample Novel when setting up (or File › Try the Sample Novel… on the Mac): a copy of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, set up with every feature, including Save the Cat beats.
• Send feedback with the Feedback button in Heron Binder’s toolbar (or Help › Send Feedback… on the Mac). It opens an email with the version and device filled in. iPad testers can also use the TestFlight app.
• New versions (Mac): download the latest from the home page and replace the copy in Applications. Your documents and settings are kept. (Version 1.0 (8) is the exception: it’s set up as its own Mac app for the App Store, so choose your document, editor and backup folders again once. Your documents and backups aren’t touched.)
• Try it on a copy of your document to begin with, and keep backups on, as you would with any test version.
• Tell us what confused you, what you looked for and couldn’t find, and anything that didn’t work as you expected.

Known limitations in this test

• On the iPad, the editor is chosen in iPad’s own list of apps each time a chapter opens; iPadOS doesn’t let apps open a file directly in a chosen app.
• Only one person or device should edit a given chapter at a time.
• Folders in Dropbox or Google Drive work, but if both devices change the binder at the same moment, those services make a “conflicted copy” that Heron Binder doesn’t merge yet. iCloud Drive is recommended.
• Backups are made on the Mac only.

Questions and feedback: use the contact form, or email support@gavinheron.com.