The novel writing software yWriter (via Barry) is such an application. It is compatible with both the Microsoft Windows and Linux operating system. The software divided novels into chapters and scenes which are all accessible from the same interface. Each chapter contains one or multiple scenes that can be filled with the actual text but also information like characters, locations, items, scene notes and goals.

Each chapter is displayed in the sidebar with its title and additional information. A click on a chapter will load the scenes into the main window that is immediately revealing important information to the author like the number of words, viewpoint or status. All the additional information that make up a scene like locations and characters are also listed in that overview.

The menu on top provides additional means to add or edit all aspects of the novel easily. The Tools menu for instance contains a link to the storyboard which will process all the information that has been entered into the application and display it in a timeline.

The text editor itself is a basic text editor that can be used to write a scene and enter detailed information about the scene’s characters, locations and objects.

Writing a novel with yWriter will take more time initially than writing it in another word processor if all the information that it can contain are added by the writer. It will however speed up the novel writing process tremendously over time as it provides better access to information needed. Try searching for character appearances in a novel written in Microsoft Word or Open Office and in yWriter to know how much faster and accessible this software is.

The so called Article Authoring Add-in is a Microsoft Word 2007 add-in that is currently supplied as a beta version on the official Microsoft homepage. The add-in enhanced the authoring of scientific and technical articles by providing the ability to read and write files from Word 2007 into the XML format used by the National Library of Medicine for archiving articles in the U.S., the National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature and PubMed Central.

Information on the Microsoft website is sparse but from the information provided it looks like a niche add-in targeting “the staff of scientific and technical journals, Information Repositories, and early adopters within the scholarly authoring community, as well as developers of publishing solutions and workflows”.