Skip to content
Ripple Effect

How to create or import a project

The home screen is a grid of the projects the app knows about. It has two buttons: New project and Import a folder.

Create a blank project

Section titled “Create a blank project”
  1. On the home screen, choose New project.
  2. Leave the dialog’s left rail on Blank (An empty folder).
  3. Enter a Title. Add a Description and a Cover if you want them; a colour is generated for the cover otherwise.
  4. Choose where the new folder goes.
  5. Under Written in, check the language. The starting point comes from your computer’s settings, but the choice is yours. Your passages start in this language; the ones you translate into are chosen later, in project settings.
  6. Choose Create.

The app creates the folder and one file in it, .ripple/project.json, and nothing else.

If a folder with that name already exists at the location you chose, the dialog refuses and tells you to use Import a folder instead.

Start from an example project

Section titled “Start from an example project”
  1. Choose New project.
  2. In the dialog’s left rail, choose Templates (A copy of an example).
  3. Pick an example. This build carries The City Of Elsenmar.
  4. Choose where the copy goes, then choose Create.

The copy is yours to change, and you can make another later.

Import a folder you already have

Section titled “Import a folder you already have”
  1. Choose Import a folder.
  2. Pick the directory. The Import a project dialog opens.
  3. Check what the dialog shows, then choose Import.
  • If the folder was a project before, check the prefilled fields and choose Import. Its title, description, cover and language arrive already filled in, and nothing is written into it. To change any of them, open the project and use project settings.
  • If it was not, name it and choose Import. The language is guessed from your computer and written down, because nothing in the folder says yet. The only thing written into it is a small .ripple/ folder holding the project’s settings; your files are shown as they are.
  • If the cover the folder names is missing, a colour is generated instead.
  • If the folder’s settings were written by a newer version of the app, they are left alone rather than read and written back over. The folder is still imported, and opening it says the same thing. Update the app to read them.

When the folder is already a project

Section titled “When the folder is already a project”

If the folder you choose, for a new project or an import, is already used by another project on the home screen, the app says so and does not add a second. See A project is a folder for why.

A project that another program has moved or deleted disappears from the grid; there is nothing else to keep in step.

Section titled “Related”