Just a short note to re-assure you that I have not crawled under a rock in the fetal position grovelling - well not yet at least.
Work is progressing well, we’re still on track to release beta 1.5 on or before Christmas with all the fixing I mentioned in my previous post. Heck! we’ve even implemented line spacing: double space, triple, user define - would you like to up-size your fries with that?
This past month has been a cathartic process - the evolution of Microsoft’s RTF spec is horrid and incomplete to say the least. Charles Simonyi, a man I admire, no doubt started RTF in a graceful and elegant fashion - but as the years have past it has grown ugly - unlike his boat (type in ‘Charles Simonyi boat’ in Google images; I’m no boating man, but this is a boat.
I’ve been stressing in particular about complex table formats i.e. merged cells and tables within tables etc. and ensuring that Scrivener for Windows can perform some heavy lifting in this arena, I felt so much better after trying to create the same things in other applications like: Apple’s TextEdit and Pages and felt so much better when they just plain broke down when opened by the punitive headmaster - Microsoft Word. It seems that the benchmark in this area is generally fairly low and that Scrivener for Windows now exceeds the norm.
Most of the other RTF fixes we’re reasonably straight forward. We are now working on the Compile fixes such as the single letter down the side of the page (1,000’s of them). Encouragingly, there were hundreds of posts complaining of this outside of Scrivener with other applications - it would appear to be another undocumented RTF Word reader feature - nice one
Apologies for my truanting on the forums. Yes, I deserve to be punished for this - so feel free to throw some muck my way. The temptation just to get on and fix stuff seized me - so I have done just that. I’m indebted to many of you kind and civilized folk who have been helping each other out; thanks.
Well that’s it for now. Thanks again for your patience.
Welcome “back”! It is so great to get your update,and yes, a huge shout-out to the many amazing people who have been sharing their experience and insights with all of us: the explanations are clear and phenomenally helpful. Scrivener for Windows is completely, amazing awesome - I think I would just go POP with happiness if I saw what the Mac version can do - and this is going to be the best Christmas ever with your updates. (No pressure.) (OK, pressure.)
Never thought for a moment you were “truanting on the forums”. And you won’t be getting any muck from me. Sounds like you are making real progress, in spite of Microsoft, and that we will all be getting a nice Christmas present. Thanks for all you are doing to make Scrivener the premier tool for writers. Have great Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Yay! Here’s hoping you can enjoy the lovely weather you’re undoubtedly having down there. If it helps you enjoy it more, it’s supposed to snow here. (Because the KDE weather widget never lies.)
It’s amusing to me, because a lot of people will put a lot of store into Word, when really a lot of read errors are due to Word more than anything else. Thank you Windows.
BTW not only is that an AMAZING boat but the guy is also a Space Tourist. Neat.
Christmas can be tough in Oz too, especially being a British import with fair skin.
It does have its perks though, like sun cream and finishing up the Scrivener Christmas build at the local shared office - pretty busy this time of year though.
There’s a smile on my face this afternoon as this build has really come together nicely.
Opps, there’s someone coming. Oh, It’s okay, it’s just my lovely wife in a two piece bringing me a Sangria - she really understands how demanding this software business can be.
(Because the KDE weather widget never lies.)