#Features

Version v0.4.0 marks the final feature release for Phase 1 with the implementation of FEAT-0226 “Unarchive scene”. Archived scenes can now be displayed as cards on a dashboard and restored back to their original chapter.

A small, feature related, release today that implements FEAT-0303 Lossless navigation.

Previously, if you were writing a scene and clicked on the in-application navigation (breadcrumbs) you got a very ugly browser dialogue asking you to confirm the navigation. This feature introduces a more user friendly confirmation dialogue if you try to leave the writing editor with unsaved changes.

Today I’m delighted to announce the release of Novel-It v0.2.0.

This release introduces novel parts as a structural layer within the novel. Now you can create novels with multiple parts, each with multiple chapters and scenes. Parts are optional, not every novel has parts, and you can enable or disable them for each novel on the novel details page.

If you start a novel with parts, and then decide you don’t want them later, you can simply disable them. In this case any exisitng chapters/scenes will be relocated to the novel so you don’t loose anything. Conversely, if you start a novel without parts and enable them later you can assign the existing chapters to the parts when you create or edit them.

Following the features, requirements and tests for phase 1 I’m pleased to announce that I’ve published the Trace Matrix on the documentation site.

The Trace Matrix provides a cross-reference between the features, requirements and their tests. This ensures that all feaatures have requirements, and all requirements have tests. The table also contains the results of the most recent test run and a link to any issues, should there be any.

As testing proceeds the test IDs will become active links to a test results page for each test case.

The recently completed review and rework of the feature specification has allow me to make an accurate assessment of where there development of phase 1 is.

There are 35 features slated for the phase 1. Of these there are:

• 20 already fully implemented
• 10 that are partially implemented and need further work before release 1.0.0
• 5 that are not started yet.

Those last 5 are all related to the feature that implements novel parts as a structural layer above chapters. As parts are not used that often in novels (or the ones I read anyway) I had intended to postpone parts until a later phase. However, while reworking the features, I realized how disruptive it would be to implement it later. So it’s going into phase 1.

I’m pleased to report that the work to rewrite the Feature Specification has been completed. The specification now covers all areas of the application in detail, including the all important plotting module. In all there are now 13 feature sections to be implemented across 4 phases.

Now begins the work on the requirement specifications, which will feed into the test specifications. This will quite some time (the feature specification took 9 days) to complete, so I think I will upload the requirements as sections are completed instead of a single big commit.

Documentation Review

When I first started working on Novel-It I mapped out the features I want the application to have, and a very sketchy requirements document.

I’ve got to the point now where I have, what I consider, a minimum viable product available in GitHub. It’s no where near all the features I put into the specification. And some of the features that have been implemented deviate somewhat from their feature descriptions.