Greetings my name is Christopher Ryan and I am a Scrivener cultist. I’m the person that asked Keith to make cursor blinking optional and also to add the unicorn of text editing in the POST-DOS era – to bring back the old school square cursor. I have since moved back to Microsoft Windows by necessity not by choice and am thus going to ask that you guys attempt the impossible; I figure that its best if I ask now while the windows version is still in BETA and thus still needs a ton of work under the hood, but this is by far the biggest request for a feature that anybody has made. My reason for moving back to windows is because I have to have an eight core eight gig of RAM desktop replacement that does not come with the macbookpro $3600 price tag. My disability has finally progressed to the point that its affecting my ability to type one handed and while totally losing the ability to type is (hopefully) still a long ways off, I decided to make the move because it was time to buy Dragon Naturally Speaking Professional and get used to doing things by voice rather than with a mouse and a keyboard because i know deep down that NOT being able to use a keyboard is in the mail… Thus, with my back against the wall I humbly request that you guys look into what it would take to make Scrivener for windows play nice with Dragon Professional. It requires that you adhere to API’s that go above and beyond the norm, but Ive talked to the people that MAKE dragon pro and they said that any Word Processor that adheres to the basic API’s that make word processing possible work properly in a windows environment the odds are good that Dragon will work - but believe me when I tell you that if you take the time to make sure Scrivener can be controlled entirely by Dragon that handicapped people will line up in droves to buy your product, and I give my word that if you ensure that Scrivener interfaces properly with Dragon Pro I will personally see to it that Scrivener gains a fully scripted module that makes every command in Scriveners bag of tricks accessible by voice. I know for a fact that Scrivener in its current state DOES NOT play nice with Dragon. I can get Scrivener to launch but after that it crashes.
Now I know this means that to get Scrivener to the point where it DOES play nice with dragon could mean a ton of extra work - but then again it might not. Unfortunately I am not a coder and would not have the slightest idea where to start but if you got Scrivener to the point that it can accept full voice command and control that you’ll get certification from nuance and that means that once all the people that use Dragon will buy Scrivener in droves for two reasons: Scriveners full screen mode is something people that dictate need to be really successful, and for whatever reason they ripped it out of word 2010.
In closing I have a financial question: are people that have paid for version 1.2 and 2.0 of the Mac flavor going to be required to pay full price for the windows version? I personally don’t care either way - 2.0 for the mac version is so awesome that i would have paid the cost of a Microsoft Office license to own my copy – that is how much I care about this piece of software and the people that have bled to make it what it is. I just never saw any clarification as to whether those of us who have bought Mac licenses will be requested to pony up for the windows equivalent… Believe me when I tell you that if you take the time to make sure its Dragon Naturally Speaking compatible you could ask $300 a license and people that cant type will pay it (i had to pay $600 for dragon pro and $250 for a decent wireless mike to use it with - id pay the $40 asking price for Scrivener many times over without hesitation REGARDLESS of if in the end it plays nice with Dragon or not.) But I cannot stress to you how many people would buy Scrivener if it DID play nice with Dragon. And by the way – if you make it capable of playing nice with the Pro version of Dragon you will enable all the cheaper versions to utilize it as well.
…not to mention the fact that I will make the command module for Scrivener via Dragon for free on my own time and expect nothing in return - I owe it to Keith and the Scrivener for mac team. Because of Scrivener for mac, and Keith’s willingness to help a nobody I got the drive to make something of myself and am today somebody as a result. I’m down to ride with the Scrivener community and its developers for as long as I continue to leave tire tracks. My devotion to the developers is absolute and if you tame Dragon and successfully integrate it into Scrivener then I will make it my mission to put as much money from the disabled population at large into your pockets. There are more of us out there than you might think, and Keith along with everyone else on the Scrivener team deserve every dime we can send their way…
Thanks for the Clarification of Details and Consideration,
Most Sincerely
Christopher Ryan
(ShadeofGrey)
p.s. someone needs to make some banners that can be put at the top and bottom of blogs and websites so that we can proudly state that all the copy for the given site was originally conceived and forged in Scrivener. I’d put them on all my blogs… Id said banners exist elsewhere on the site please send along a proper link to them.