New in Ellipsus: October 2024

In October, we worked to make it easier to migrate your older documents, pick up on your WIPs, and share your work.

Import Markdown files

Markdown is an easy-to-use markup language—if you use programs like Discord and Slack, you’ve probably already used basic Markdown to format your text. Our rich text editor has long-supported Markdown shortcuts, so using this language for the first version of our importer was a natural choice.

Now, you can export files from Google Docs, Scrivener, or other sources and import them into Ellipsus.

This is the first of many steps toward a proper .docx importer. But to reach that goal, we need to make our editor more robust (think text colors, more flexible text styles, etc.). Watch this space. 👀

Export to Archive of Our Own

Did you know that 66% of Ellipsus writers have shared their writing on Archive of Our Own? We know that lots of writers struggle with formatting their work for AO3, so we wanted to take the pain out of publishing. (Sorry, whumpers.)

When you’re ready to share, click Export to AO3—Ellipsus will copy your work as HTML and open AO3 in a new tab. If you’re signed into AO3 on that browser, you can jump right in and post a new work.

While we may never make the collaborative process completely mess-free, we can make it much smoother, starting with user experience and additional permissions.

Invite recent collaborators

Entering the same email over and over gets old fast. Ellipsus now suggests your five most recent collaborators, so you can quickly invite them to new documents.

Choose which collaborators can merge

Collaboration can take a lot of forms—from co-authors to beta readers. We want Ellipsus to support these myriad relationships and offer helpful guardrails on how collaborators can (or can’t) interact with your writing.

To kick things off, we’re introducing a new role aimed at writing partners and co-authors. Open the Collaborators modal, enter an email, and choose a role.

• Collaborators who can edit can create and edit drafts, compare drafts to the main document, and collaborate via chat and comments.
• Collaborators who can merge can do all the above, plus they can merge drafts and write directly in the main document.

Along with this change, we’ll now notify you and your collaborators when drafts are merged so you can open the doc and check out the latest changes.

You won’t be shocked to learn that writers have Very Strong Opinions about the best way to set up their workspace and get words flowing. Since no two writers are exactly the same, we want to make Ellipsus flexible enough to cater to various workflows.

Format text faster on desktop

Key actions should be easily within reach. And sometimes shortcuts just can’t replace a good ol’ button. We’ve added an (optional!) formatting bar to the bottom of the editor so you can easily style your text and undo/redo actions when working on larger devices.

Set your editor preferences

We want writers to feel comfortable in Ellipsus. Part of that is making sure the functions they need are just a few taps away. Another part is making sure you can easily hide any potential distractions.

We’re introducing editor settings to give you more control over your writing experience.

• Manage smart formatting: Customize quotes, apostrophes, dashes, and ellipses. You can also turn off markdown formatting.
• Update collaboration settings: If you don’t like the feeling of being watched, you can hide live cursors and collaboration avatars.
• Update display settings: Show or hide the desktop formatting bar and word count, and switch between light and dark mode.

Want to hear about the latest updates as they happen? Join our Discord to follow announcements and share your feedback.