Does it seem that Keith is getting just a wee bit cocky? Look at some of the “wish list” requests. The man never comes right out and says “That is one of the dumbest, most useless, most self-centeredly redundant friggin’ wastes of time I’ve ever heard and I refuse even to consider it.” No, what he says, in his languid Christopher Hitchensesque voice, is “Thought about that, but didn’t feel like working on it,” or “Maybe in 2.583,” or “Tried it, didn’t like it,” or the ever-popular “We can’t because of underlying limitations of OS.”
Conclusion: The man is not being challenged hard enough.
I propose a contest. Who can devise the most difficult, most ridiculous, most unlikely feature request for Scrivener? The rules:
It must be something which – given time and resources and patience enough – actually could be implemented.
It cannot be something for which Ioa has already devised an esoteric script.
It cannot already have been requested.
Gain points if it’s something no one else would ever want.
Lose points if a generalized practical use can be found.
And – here’s the killer – it must be defined in 15 words or less.
(I came up with a couple myself, but had to discard them. Each, upon careful scrutiny, showed faint traces of practicality.)
When I’m writing I sometimes listen to music. I hereby request a feature in Scrivener that will monitor the tracks I’m playing in iTunes in the background, derive my mood from it (genius can do it, why can’t Scrivener?) and auto-suggest thesaurus words that match that mood while I’m typing. Scriv should also tint the paper of the text in this session with a ‘mood hue’.
If I decide my mood is not what it was, or that a better mood would have been more appropriate for the story, Scrivener should allow me to context click on the section, and select a different mood hue. It should then go back and either optionally one-by-one, or automatically ‘for all’ update all those words with suitable alternatives that best fit the selected mood.
This is obviously a killer feature missing from Scriv and if it’s not implemented then I think L&L are risking losing masses of potential customers as a result. I can’t believe anyone would be so stupid as to think that was a good thing to do and I HATE the fact that Scrivener is so close yet so far away from perfection as I see it. This is such an OBVIOUS feature that nobody would OBJECTIVELY disagree with it and if they do they are IDIOTS
Much-needed, of course, and therefore in violation of both spirit and letter of by-laws.
Perfect. Guaranteed to put the grump back in grumpy.
Quite promising, but much too long. Can you reframe it within the mandated 15 word limit?
One is altogether too easy, unless you stipulate that each novel must be different. Number two is interesting, but, like number one, may have just a bit too much general appeal and therefore will lose many bonus points. Number three may not be possible; perhaps if you require textual analysis which selects the most appropriate agent and/or publisher, we can consider it.
For an extra-extra bonus, be sure to make a point of telling me that Scrivener is very close to being the perfect tool for screenwriters, and with the feature you are suggesting (and the ten that will follow it), Scrivener would be adopted by “professionals” in the “industry”.
And don’t forget the snarky and/or patronizing comments about how pathetically limited and horribly overpriced Scrivener is, especially because it doesn’t have X feature. (Even though the programs that do have X feature cost orders of magnitude more.)
But it is not really random. This function should be able to span documents to actually insert the text in a document that is not currently open or in view. Additionally the function should do a vic-k type thing and set the font for the inserted text to match the background color. Don’t forget that the function needs to intelligently (or as intelligently and the +3 every behave) off topic the prose at that point of insertion. Some basic level of AI will be required. Might I recommend Lisp (which brings up an interesting medical cruelty that those who suffer from this condition can not actually say it).
If vic-k sees this thread, he’ll think Eliza is back from the dead, and he’ll go into shutdown. I had awful trouble with him last time.
Not happy Fluff
There was no planned time limit on the contest, so it ought to go on – who knows? forever? – for a while longer. However, I do want to note that two of Jaysen’s entries not only are strong of themselves, but stand to garner massive bonus points.
TYPE A WORD AND A SIDEBAR SHOWS YOU YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMOUS PEOPLE WHAT LIKE THIS WORD AND LETS YOU BUY WORDS LIKE IT. THIS WOULD BE AWESUM AND I WOULD PAY AN EXTRA $ FOR IT. CALL IT SCRING.
Why doesn’t Scrivener have educated semi-colons? We have educated quotes in Scrivener; what’s the problem with semi-colons? They’re altogether more sophisticated and interesting items of punctuation; if L&L’s personnel can spend the last two or three years educating quotation marks, why have they kept a decent liberal education from poor illiterate semi-colons? This has a whiff of discrimination to me; something needs to be done.
So that’s my make-or-break feature proposal; the absence of properly educated semi-colons is disrupting my workflow; it will have major life-consequences but I’m sorry to say I won’t be able to continue to use Scrivener without them.
I think we need to vote on this to convince KB; I’ll set up an opinion poll.
