Getting started with proze

Follow the steps in this document to learn how to use proze. This guide walks you through using proze to create a book about your memoir.

Use a proze-supported editor

Proze is a text-only format, so you can write proze documents in any text editor. But if you can use an editor with proze support, you'll get more out of it.

Currently, only the vim editor has a plugin for proze, although support for other editors is planned for the future. Vim users can install the plugin using vundle. See the instructions in the GitHub repository: https://github.com/RobotNerd/proze-english-vim.

Create a new project

The quickest way to start is to create a new file with an extension *.proze and just start writing. But let's be organized about it and create a new project, which will be easier to work with in the long run.

First, create a new folder on your computer and name it something related to your project. Since w'ere writing a book about your life in this guid, you can name the folder "my-memoir".

The proze config file

Next you'll want to add a config file to your project folder. There are many options for what can go in the config file, but we'll just add the most common ones here.

Config files can be formatted as either JSON or YAML. We'll choose YAML, since it's more human readable. Create a new file call config.yaml in your project directory. Copy the stub config file in this next sample and paste it into your file. But be careful! Spaces to the left of a line in YAML are important.

---
names:
  characters:
  places:
  things:
  invalid:

This config file has placeholder lists for unique names that you're planning to use in your story.

• character: Names of characters in your story. (like Bob, Susan, King Richard)
• places: Locations in your story. (Paris, Pleasantville, the hallway)
• things: Objects in your story. This is particularly useful for uncommon items or fictional items that you made up for your story. (laser cannon, ghost monster, power blade)
• invalid: Names of characters, places, or things that should NOT be in your story. A good reason to use this is if you change a character name. Let's say you had one character named Jackie, but you decide to rename her to Sally. In this case, you should put Sally in the character name list and Jackie in the invalid list. This way, if you accidently type Jackie again, her name will be highlighted as an error.

Now let's add the names of some characters, places, and things that are going to appear in your memoir. And just to be safe, you want to change the names of some people to maintain their anonymity (because they did some really embarrassing things).

---
names:
  characters:
    - Frank
    - Jill
    - Omar
    - William
  places:
    - William & Mary College
    - Paris
    - Dino's Diner
  things:
    - little red wagon
    - diary
    - toaster
  invalid:
    - Arnold
    - Casey
    - Hansel

When you write your story in an editor that supports proze, these names will be automatically highlighted as you type. This allows you to immediately catch misspelled names or warns you if you're using one of the invalid names. Later, when you're converting your proze project into a document to be published, the converter tool will warn you again you if you're using any of the names in the invalid list.

Write your story

Now we'll add proze files with the contents of the book. We'll start by creating a file called "chapter01.proze". You can write the first chapter of your life's story in that file using the proze syntax.

As your story grows, you can add more proze files. The files can be named anything. In this example we're using chapters, but that isn't a requirement. You could break up a single chapter into multiple files, or you could write your entire book in a single proze file (but that's not recommended).

Install the proze converter

TODO

Compile the project

TODO

Addendum: Recommended best practices

TODO