Meet the NarraCat

I finally got around to releasing NarraCat. It is a set of scripts for narrative catalysis I've been using and building for the past few years. You will find a page on NarraCat on the right side of the blog under "useful things."

I don't expect more than a handful of people to be very interested in using NarraCat. It's not a polished package, that's for sure. It has a face only a programmer could love, and you have to treat it like a baby to get it to do what you want. But I've come to respect and depend on it, so I think at least a few other people might like to use it too. If you want to work with stories and have the time and patience, or know somebody who is willing to have the time and patience for you, you might find NarraCat useful. If you do use it, let me know.

Why release NarraCat now? For one, we just put out some source code for our ancient-history projects PlantStudio and StoryHarp (due to that one more request that tipped it over into doing something about it), and that got me thinking about open source. Also, I'm starting to think about writing the catalysis part of the book, and it's hard to describe catalysis without referring to the tool I know best (even though I intend to describe things you can do without software as well). Write what you know, they say, so I will.

By the way, if and when Rakontu ever grows large enough and strong enough, it will probably swallow up NarraCat; but that may take a while, and besides there may be reasons to use NarraCat by itself even then. So for now I'll let it wander and see if it finds interesting places to go.