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Comment by giantDinosaur | Hacker News Reader

Why can't you edit it with some fraction at a time?

I could, and I did for some time, but it's a PITA. The question should be "why should I?". I've since found a Markdown editor that works well for a file this size (Typora - I also had good experiences with Texts).

Why should you? Perhaps if there are other features of a particular editor that make it worth it. I'm otherwise not one to defend anything that's potentially unnecessarily slow :)

I've done this in various formats, including single editor, scrivener, and so forth.

I've found that the process of breaking a book up into "chunks" to be a useful one to me. If I can't chunk it, there's probably something wrong with the structure.

But hell, if what you have works for you, go for it. I'm currently using the LeanPub build system which seems to be just enough structure without getting in the way.

Sure, I could edit chapters, or even "acts", separately, and I did for some time; but the novel is a single work, and searching text, replacing text, etc, is much simpler with a single file.

I can see both sides of this. In some ways, this is the old "seat of your pants" vs. "plot the book out" discussion. The important thing is whatever works for you.

Oh, I'm extremely on the plotting end of the spectrum :) I could have written the chapters individually and in a random order. More details: https://gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_swiss_trains.html

You could help future readers by mentioning the name of your discovered-editor.

(Me? I'd use Emacs..)

Good point! Edited.

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