Compiling a Long Document
A thesis, a report, a paper, a book: too big for one page, and written in pieces. In MojoPad
those pieces are ordinary pages in a folder — and File ▸ Compile… turns the folder into
the finished thing, in the order the pages sit in your sidebar.
Three people who need this
- The academic with a paper due. Abstract, Introduction, a Method folder holding
Participants and Measures, Results, Discussion. Each is its own page, written on its own day.
Compile hands you the manuscript, with the headings already in the right order and at the right
level.
- The consultant writing a report. Sections drafted out of order, some borrowed from the
last report, one still a stub. Compile whenever you want to see the whole thing, send the PDF to
a colleague, and go back to editing pieces.
- Anyone with a long argument. Writing in pieces keeps each piece short enough to finish.
The document only has to exist at the end.
How it works — the one rule
How deep a page sits decides its heading level. A page at the top of the folder becomes a
top-level heading; a page inside a sub-folder becomes a heading one level down; the sub-folder
itself becomes the heading above them. The page's own headings slide down to sit underneath its
title, so nothing ends up outranking the section it belongs to.
It's the same rule a storyboard uses when it becomes a paper — structure in, document out.
Doing it
- Put the pieces in a folder. One folder per paper. Drag the pages into the order you want
to read them; nest a sub-folder wherever a section has parts.
- File ▸ Compile… and pick that folder. (Sub-folders are listed too, so you can compile a
single chapter.)
- Choose how it should read. Names become headings gives each page and folder its own
heading — turn it off if your pages already carry their own titles. Start with a title page
puts the folder's name and today's date on a page of their own. Each part on a new page keeps
top-level sections from running together on paper.
- Choose what you get. Make a page writes the whole thing into a new page in this
wiki — the one to use while you're still working, because you can then polish it, and everything
in MojoPad works on it. Or write a file straight out: PDF, Word, Markdown,
plain text.
Your folder is never touched. Compile as often as you like — each run makes a fresh page or a
fresh file, so there's no state to keep track of and nothing to undo.
Paper size, margins, line spacing and page numbers come from Settings ▸ Files &
Backups ▸ Paper. A journal asking for A4, one-inch margins and double spacing is three
choices there, made once.
What comes along, and what doesn't
- Everything a page holds comes: pictures, tables, quotes, equations, diagrams, footnotes,
and pages you've embedded with
![[Page name]].
- Pages you've marked Skip on export stay out, which is how you keep a scratch page or a
private note inside the folder without it turning up in the manuscript.
- Encrypted pages stay out too — a locked page is locked.
Working this way
Keep a Research sub-folder in the same paper folder and mark those pages Skip on
export: your sources live beside the writing, in the same place, and never leak into the
output. Open one beside your draft with ◫ Split while you write — and if you'd rather listen
than read, the speaker reads whichever pane you're pointing at.