manuSCRIPT – No bold, no italic, no layout. Just words.



# Writing Novels with Plain Text: Why I Built manuSCRIPT
I write novels one chapter per file. Each chapter is a plain `.txt` or `.md` file. No formatting. No bold, no italic, no layout. Just words and line breaks.

This approach has advantages. I can write on any device—laptop, phone, tablet—without worrying about software compatibility. Files sync via any basic cloud service. Version control works. I can use diff tools to see exactly what changed between drafts. Merge conflicts are manageable. The files are small, fast, and future-proof.

But turning 50 plain text files into a PDF or EPUB is tedious. Copy-paste into Word? Manually format each chapter? Export, troubleshoot: tedium that breaks the flow or adds an hour at the end of a session when my eyes are aching and I need to get out the chair!

## manuSCRIPT
So I built manuSCRIPT. A desktop app that takes chapter files and generates manuscripts in seconds.

### How It Works
1. **Select your chapter files** – Drag and drop, or browse. The app handles `.txt`, `.md`, and `.rtf` files.
2. **Automatic organization** – Extracts chapter numbers and titles from filenames. Sorts chapters automatically.
3. **Configure once** – Set your title, author, fonts, margins, line spacing. All settings persist between sessions.
4. **Generate** – Click once to create PDF, EPUB, and ZIP archive of source files.

The app recognizes standard chapter naming patterns:
– `1_chapter_title.txt`
– `Chapter 2 – Title.md`
– `03_1972_title.txt` (supports dates in filenames)

### Features
**PDF output** includes a cover page with title, author, word count, and page estimates. Configurable fonts (Georgia, Arial, Courier), page sizes (A4/A5), margins, and spacing.

**EPUB output** creates e-reader compatible files with a proper table of contents.

**ZIP archive** backs up your source files alongside the formatted manuscripts.

The app remembers your preferences. Output location, manuscript details, formatting choices—everything persists. Versioning is automatic: if `Novel_Title` exists, it creates `Novel_Title_v2` instead of overwriting.

Write in plain text. Keep it simple. When you’re ready to share, let manuSCRIPT handle the formatting.

The app is open source and available on GitHub. Built with Electron, PDFKit, and epub-gen. MIT licensed.

Plain text for writing. Professional output when you need it. That’s the workflow.

Drop me a DM or Tweet at me on Twitter if you don’t want to build it yourself and want the exe or app.

Ancient Precision Technology

Insert: Key Periods and Climate Context
Epoch Dates (approx.) Climate Character Relevance to Hypothesis

Eemian (Last Interglacial)
130 – 115 kya
Warm, high sea levels—analogous to modern Holocene
A putative window for an earlier, now-lost technological pulse. Artefacts surviving only in durable stone would be all that remain.

Late Pleistocene (MIS 3–2)
60–12kya
Fluctuating cold stadials & warmer interstadials
Denisovan jade bracelet (~40 kya) demonstrates isolated high-precision craft capability well before agriculture.

Holocene (Current Interglacial)
11.7 kya → present
Stable, warm



Emergence of Neolithic & early state societies, including Egypt. Predynastic vases appear halfway through this period.
Similarity of Eemian to Holocene: Both intervals show comparable CO2 levels, global mean temperature, and sea-level high stands. This parallel raises the theoretical possibility that an Eemian culture—if it achieved high technology—could have left stone artefacts whose technological signature rivals that of later Holocene civilizations.


… see pdfs …

Conclusion: Verified High-Precision Prehistoric Finds
In summary, archaeology does document verified sites with high-precision artifacts far earlier than the Bronze Age. Neolithic settlements like Bouqras and Hagoshrim yielded stone vases and bowls with shapes so true that researchers infer lathe-like methods. Predynastic Egyptian tombs produced hard-stone vessels of exquisite symmetry, with modern scans confirming machining-level accuracy in some (on the order of hundredths of millimeters)maximus.energymaximus.energy. And in the deep Paleolithic, the Denisovan jade bracelet demonstrates that even 40,000 years ago, humans (or close relatives) could drill, bore, and polish stone adornments to a jewel-like finisharchaeology.org. All these artifacts are accepted by mainstream archaeology and were excavated under controlled conditions. They collectively suggest that the ingenuity and fine-motor skills of ancient craftsmen were occasionally millennia ahead of what one might expect – providing tantalizing hints of “lost” or underappreciated technologies in prehistory. Each find, securely dated in its context, strengthens the case that ancient peoples achieved precision craftsmanship using tools and techniques we are only beginning to understandmaximus.energymaximus.energy.


Three persistent uncertainties temper any far-reaching conclusions:
1. Chronological attribution. Stratigraphy supplies latest-possible (burial) dates, not earliest-possible manufacture dates; some vases may predate their interment by unknown spans.
2. Technological context. No definitive predynastic workshops or toolkits match the finest Egyptian
examples; the tooling gap leaves room for alternative interpretations, including the survival of much earlier crafts.
3. Palaeoclimatic horizons. The Eemian Interglacial furnishes a plausible earlier window for lost high technology: a warm, stable period broadly analogous to the Holocene. If such capabilities arose then, only the most durable stone objects would survive in today’s record.

Taken together, the evidence points to isolated flashes of advanced craftsmanship deep in prehistory, while also reminding us that the true provenance and technological milieu of the most precise artefacts remain open questions. Further progress hinges on locating workshop contexts, applying novel surface-dating methods to stone, and expanding high-resolution scans to a global comparative corpus.

More with references and better formatting: Ancient Artefacts


More: Ancient Precision Technology

New Talk – AI FOoM



I was recently asked to give a talk for the DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION & INNOVATION IN BFSI SUMMIT 2024 in Vienna.

I haven’t done one of these things since Covid, so it was useful to update my priors with regard to the future…
…which is bearing down on us like some laser-eyed, fusion-powered Behemoth!

In this talk, I focus on how science fiction can prepare us for AI FOoM! (Fast Onset of Machine intelligence). A scenario that a minority of AI researchers are concerned about, but which has non-trivial consequences for our species.