Hi Christopher,
Depending how many pieces you currently have in Ulysses and how you’ve organised them will make a bit of difference to your experience and the time involved in getting your content out and then into iA Writer. It could get quite messy. If you’ve been using markdown heading level 1 for titles of the pieces within Ulysses’ library, for example “#Piece Title” then you may get a slightly easier run.
I had quite a bit of hierarchical structure. I found the quickest way was to highlight all the individual pieces of writing under a single “folder” and then export to markdown and a set location. This will generate a single file (annoying but still useable) from each section of the Ulysses Library.
Having decided on the default location for iA Writer files I created a folder structure replicating the structure I’d created in the Library within Ulysses. I then just moved each file into the desired folder. After you’ve done that you’ll see the “structure” reflected in iA Writer when you open it up again.
Now I changed the default extension in iA Writer to “md”, it helps stop me mixing up .txt files from other applications: up to you if you feel that’s of benefit to your way of working.
After opening each file from that export I used my “#” heading as a signpost for me to highlight a block of text, cut it, create a new file then paste that text from the clipboard. Using keyboard shortcuts it’s a fairly quick process once you get a run up: hold shift arrow down to just above next “#”, Command + X, Command + N, Command + V, Command + Q. The most annoying part was that iA Writer creates a new “window” each time you create a new file (no tab support at this stage) however the “Command + Q” takes care of that at the end.
I hope that helps and I hope it’s clear enough because I didn’t write the process down, expecting it to be a one off exercise. I think I have it correct from memory as I’m sorry I can’t (or maybe I should really say won’t) reinstall Ulysses to check the export process for you. For me it was actually quite painless and quick given the amount of writing I had to get out.
Good luck and if you have further questions feel free to ask. Also let me know how you go and if my “destructions” made sense once you started.
Regards,
Craig.
