We have another two weeks to slip in remaining features and any bonus items that are going to make version 1.0, as well as fix existing critical bugs. After that, as I stated previously, we’ll be freezing the code and focus purely on fixing existing functionality. We’re going to be very very busy, so forum checks will be sporadic for the next two weeks, but I will keep you updated as to progress. Once we get the new beta out I will once again focus back on finalizing the bug list. I wish I could multi-task better, but alas, I am male.
Last week we did manage to get collections implemented, but not footnotes and annotations Mac 2.0 style. We simply ran out of time as both were bigger jobs than anticipated. But hey, these were never on the cards for 1.0 anyway, so 1 out of 2 ain’t bad I guess. We also managed to get merge documents working, and self defined auto-correction and replacements working. We made good progress on finalizing the installer and auto-update function which will go into the next release.
Another focus point was on file conversion engine where we made good progress. We have also spent a significant amount of time investigating ePub and Mobi formats as well as Multi Markdown (MMD) and LaTex. All these formats will be added, it’s just the timing we are looking at now; unfortunately, at this point in time I can’t say what will make it and what will not. It’s a bit like the Mac 2.0 footnotes and annotations, we’ll time-box a function and if we can get it working we’ll implement it, if not it will just be added after the release. I must confess though, after looking into MMD I’m really looking forward to getting this working for our academic, business and technical writers. If you’ve never heard of MMD here’s a brief intro slide pack - http://github.com/fletcher/MultiMarkdown-Gallery/raw/master/What-Is-MMD/what_is_mmd.pdf.
Oh, and before I forget. I meant to mention what’s going to happen to our good Linux folks after the Windows release. At this stage, we’re still not decided as Linux was never on the immediate cards for release - long story. We will probably extend the trial on this platform until we work out how we can cater and support it properly.
I’m also well aware of the existing dictionary bug underlining learned words and the scriptwriting bugs that we introduced with our last update - these will be fixed.
Sounds good, and Collections was the main thing I was personally hopeful to have out of your quick addition list, so many thanks for that exploration, and I hope it also helped the sense of accomplishment.
Applauding your choice to go into fix and then polish mode. I think that’s the one danger you face most, that our enthusiasm over what you’ve brought us confuses the issue that a release does need to be pretty polished. There are a lot of corners in the interface that are still at the programmers-accomplishment stage, rather than the ‘Uncle Willy can use this whichever way he thinks about it’ result that GUIs need.
This will make your reviews the positive thing they should be, and keep the bug reports from the less tolerant from eating one or two of you alive .
§8.4, page 55 (or thereabouts…printed number says 55, number in the contents pane of Preview says 56 and number in the Preview’s header says 63…). Collections are basically flat groups of aliases of your documents. There are two types, dynamic and static. Dynamic are essentially saved searches: you put in a term, say all scenes labeled “POV: Jamie” and then save that search as a collection. Any scenes you add that label to will be added to the collection, inserted in the proper order (before or after other documents as they appear in the binder); any scenes you remove the label from will disappear from the collection. If you rearrange items in the binder, the dynamic collection will be updated to show that (inasmuch as the reorganization affects the order of the items appearing there). So you can quickly see the flow of one character’s set of scenes, for example, and work on them without distraction of the other documents or having to re-do the search every time.
Static collections you make yourself, selecting whatever documents you want and adding them to the collection; none of these will ever get added or deleted automatically. You can rearrange items in static collections to try out different organizations without it affecting your actual Binder hierarchy (and vice versa). But the documents are still the same documents, so any changes you make to the document are reflected in the Binder. Items can be in as many collections as you want (dynamic and static).
…but I’m REALLY hoping the mobi format makes it in. Preparing for the Kindle is pain today, exporting to HTML from Word, cleaning the HTML to remove Microsoft specific gunk, then using Mobi Pocket Creator to get it looking just right before uploading to Amazon.
I’d rather dump Word with the other tools and use Scrivener, one stop shopping.
[size=200]Do[/size] worry about the Linux crowd! We need Scrivener as well. It also makes good business sense since the Linux population is growing very rapidly. A quick search revealed that there are about 1.5 billion PCs in use. According to the stats at w3schools.com, about 4.5% of web browsers detected by them are on Linux Oses. So a very rough guess would be 65 million Linux users. I don’t know how many of them would buy Scrivener but given the great reviews it gets all over the internet I can’t see why it wouldn’t be bought by Linux users. I’m a software engineer so I appreciate that you will have to do some code changes but I think the financial return would more than compensate for the work needed?
Could you elaborate a bit on this? I’m going to be using the same technology to create the Windows PDF, and I want to make sure that it works well. I see nothing untoward when viewing the Mac PDF in Adobe Reader. I can search and use the table of contents. What software are you using to view the PDF?
I don’t use the Adober reader, I use PDF-XChange Viewer (it came top in some group test I read once). I loaded the Scrivener manual using it and pressed Ctrl+F to find something (as I’m used to in chrome) and nothing happened. I went to the menu and selected ‘Find’ there but, again, nothing.
Then… ahem… (is it getting hot in ‘ere?) I just took another look after seeing your post and guess what? Below the ‘Find’ item there’s a ‘Search’ option and when I select that… well… you can probably guess.
[mumble] that allowed me to search the text [mumble, cough]
Anyway, false alarm – sorry to bother you… move along now.
Whew, okay! Thanks for the update as that would have been really annoying to fix since I wasn’t expressly setting any feature content controls like copy protection or other prohibitions.
That makes for very pretty papers.
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Wait does that make me a forum old-timer now?