1. Creative Writer’s Editor
Group 7
Project 3
Nick Pollett
Harsh Chokshi
Nick Lawton
Emma McMillan

2. Background
Nick Pollett

3. 01 02 03 04 Motivation Few editors geared for creative writing
No version control for non-technical users 02
Managing versions in non-technical manner 03
Bespoke, technical editors for other purposes 04

4. Research Question
Is an editor available for non- technical creative writers, With effective and usable version control? If not, is one feasible?

5. Related Work Deep Diffs1 Version-Aware Word Documents2
Visualise a document’s entire history
Text-highlighting of latest version
Extension for Word
Version creation within Word
Versions stored in normal DOCX file
Files compatible with vanilla installation
Shannon, R., Quigley, A., and Nixon, P. Deep diffs: visually exploring the history of a document. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, ACM (2010), 361–364.
Oakley, S. M., Mischka, J., and Thao, C. Version-aware word documents. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on (Document) Changes: modeling, detection, storage and visualization, ACM (2014), Article 2.

6. Related Work Text-Animated Transitions3 Chronicle4
Diffs between subsequent version pairs
Visualised as animated transitions
Captures GUI events
Playback as interactive video
Shows recreation of a document in image editor
Chevalier, F., Dragicevic, P., Bezerianos, A., and Fekete, J.-D. Using text animated transitions to support navigation in document histories. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM (2010), 683–692.
Grossman, T., Matejka, J., and Fitzmaurice, G. Chronicle: Capture, exploration, and playback of document workflow histories. In UIST ’10 Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, ACM (2010), 143–152.

7. Proposed Implementation
Harsh Chokshi

8. Proposed Features Simple GUI
Typical text editor features (as time allowed)
“Refactorable” names
Saving and restoring projects
Unobtrusive copy-based versioning
Seamless version merging

9. Interface Ideas - Writing

10. Interface Ideas - Writing

11. Interface Ideas - Naming

12. Other libraries as necessary
Technology
Java for development
JavaFX for UI
Other libraries as necessary

13. Implemented Features Create Link Replace text documents
sections of text to each other (even across documents)
Link
sections of linked text
Replace

14. Implementation
Nick Lawton

15. Creating Text Documents
Create, write & delete text
Tabs to switch between documents
Text editor using RichTextFX library

16. Saving Projects Documents saved into projects
Most recent project is loaded on launch
Projects stored in embedded NoSQL solution (Nitrite)

17. Linking Text Link a passage of text to another
Rework – e.g. change tone, improve flow
Link sections across different files

18. Merging Links Review differences between linked sections
Replace original with new version

19. 1 2 3 4 Details Matter Work on new project, save it later
Save on close 2
Deleting child sections deletes links 3
Merge / delete multiple sections at once 4

20. Evaluation
Emma McMillan

21. 01 02 03 Methodology Usability study based on Likert scales
Focus on ease of completing tasks 02
Yes/No questions to evaluate overall usefulness 03

22. 1 2 3 4 Limitations Small number of participants
Participants had technical background 2
Participants have used version control 3
Users found tasks harder on first attempt 4

23. 1 2 Evaluation Progress Currently evaluated with a small sample
Testing will continue – aiming for 10+ 2

24. Preliminary Results
Even split on liking or not liking tool
Liked version control aspects
Fixes “finalFINALFINAL.doc”
Liked ease of navigation

25. Preliminary Results
Users not liking tool had preferred alternatives
Lacking expected features
Available features were hard to discover

26. 1 2 3 4 Future Work Implement other typical text editor features
Interactions with link history 2
Finer control over link merging 3
Tooltips and help functionality to aid feature discovery 4