The workspace

Five modes #

Along the top are Write, Plan, Design, Edit and Publish: five ways of working on the same book. Write is the manuscript. Plan holds the outline and your boards. Design is the pages you lay out. Edit takes one scene at a time, with its versions. Publish shows every page of the book, ready to export.

The feather at the top left takes you home. The project's title, in the middle, is a menu: it switches projects, and holds New project, Project settings, Share, Export, Import and Delete. Beside it are the save status, today's words against your goal, and your streak.

The rail and its drawers #

Each mode keeps its tools on a rail down the left. Click one and its drawer opens beside the page; click it again, or press Ctrl+/, to put it away. A few tools act rather than open a drawer: Reference opens the reference panel, Inspector pins Design's inspector open, and Compare sets two versions of a scene side by side.

The foot of every rail holds what you want within reach in every mode: the Dashboard, to start with.

The top bar #

On the right: Search, Project settings, Share, Reference, Appearance, Changes, Help and Account. Search covers the whole project. ? opens the help for what you are working on; hold it, or Shift-click it, then click any control to see what that control does.

The command menu #

Ctrl+K opens a box that finds any tool or command by name: type a few letters and press Enter. In Design and Plan, / opens it too. It is the quickest way to anything whose place you have not learned yet.

The dashboard #

Every project opens on its dashboard: where you left off, your streak, words written against your target, how much of the draft is done, your drafts and the project's documents. See The dashboard for what each part tells you.

Making it yours #

With the Publish plan, Customize on the dashboard arranges its blocks, each mode's rail, the top bar and the foot of the rails. Right-click any tool on a rail or the top bar to move it, pin it to every rail, or put it on the other. Dashboard and Account can go anywhere, but always keep a place on every screen.

Rail icons, in Appearance, sets the size of the hand-drawn icons on Daylight, or swaps them for simple ones.

The classic layout #

Layout, in Preferences under Appearance, switches back to the layout Charc had before the workspace, with a row of tabs along the top. The choice belongs to this browser, and a narrow window such as a phone's always uses the classic layout.