features, release notes

Scrivener Windows Beta (Archived)
1

Hi Jennifer,

I’m really not trying to start something; too, well, what is it, experienced? to have other than kindly attitudes taken, here, or in fact in other venues as well.

You as a team are releasing increasingly capable versions of an elegant software construction. Yet how you guys are talking with us (or not) feels ever increasing in its distance.

I wanted to know what’s what with Version 7, such as state of Scrivenings mode, which has gained interest here.

I managed to shut the release notes that could be viewed for a moment after the update, so tried to find them elsewhere.

In your release thread, none. With a site-targeted Google search, nothing showed. I decided to run the actual installer, and where to download it is only under a post labelled November 2017. I got it and ran it, only to find no release or feature notes were offered this time at all.

To my feeling, it’s hard to separate this from other situations, such as the increasingly distanced replies (or just not) here where we’re being your testers.

Or the complete denial for suggestions others have made and i’ve tried to support, not least because I could benefit too, about very minor improvements to visibility in the UX, which can make all the difference in real ability to use Scrivener, for any of us who so our best with anything less than youth-perfect eyes.

Honestly, I don’t understand this, if I have understood and accepted what appears to be Keith’s actuality beside his stated motif, that once its felt you’ve been critical, you aren’t to be spoken with again. One person can do this, but when it becomes a general trend, when friendliness itself is left by the wayside, I don’t think you are helping yourselves, or then it comes down to, us.

t’s very easy to succumb to the feeling of being on the spot, to the flood that can open with a forum, yes.

Yet I think to do so is what invites the problems. I’ve also seen it work in an entirely different way – and the ebbs and flows that arise very quickly when those practitioners stumble. It’s a pretty direct relationship, would have to think, and they save themselves each time by coming back as cleverly human, interested, responsive, enccouraging, and friendly.

Those other friends of mine mean what they do, intend it. I suspect you Scrivenerish actually do just as much.

I’ve lived in England, and a host of other worldly places for long acquaintances, and could be very specific as to how this shouldn’t be any problem, especially in our contemporary world, with local practices or cultures. Even of software itself :slight_smile:

Well, I probably sound as I have been, someone who consults on problems. I guess I’ll just have to offer it as is, with all the intention first stated, and hope it is the help I suspect it can be.

Anyway, release notes? Feature comment, as in what I first wanted to know, the state of Scrivenings? Thanks.

Best to each of you,
Clive

2

With all due respect, Clive, they have responded (at least on the forums) to some of your queries. Let’s see if this quote from a different thread works here…

In case the quote doesn’t appear… I understand that you have legitimate reasons for your requests on some features (you’ve brought up your health in other threads) or other things, but since I have seen their responses, I know that have heard you and even responded to you. If they have ceased responding, it could be because the answer has not changed…

L&L has made it pretty clear that at this point the target for Scrivener 3 for Windows is set. They are not looking for new feature requests (though that’s not to say they won’t be open to that once Scrivener 3 is out for a potential non-paid update). They have also made it clear that this is not due to whether or not a request is a good idea or not. It’s simply they have a goal set for how Scrivener 3 will be for launch. They are literally just trying to squish known bugs and get the features already planned working properly,

They also release new bug fixes and known bugs still causing problem with each BETA.

I guess I’m not sure what more your expecting them to say. I think they’ve been pretty responsive, even while trying to develop this behemoth. Certainly as responsive, if not more so, than we can seriously expect from them.

I have also requested some updates and a running list of features, and even Keith responded that was just not something they were going to provide, with other commenting that it would take up too much time. I mean, L&L is a team of 12, and its users, even BETA users, many. I don’t think expecting them to respond to every single request is reasonable. We are not their BFFs, we are their clients, and they work very hard to provide us with the best they can, as fast as they can, and, if it’s good enough, we pay them for the Software. If it’s not, that’s your decision, and they’ve said many times they understand and respect that they can’t develop the perfect system for everyone.

Anyway, just thought I’d throw in my two cents. From my perspective, they’ve been very responsive, certainly more so than any other company I’ve BETA tested for.

-Eric

3

The release notes, as they have been for each prior beta release, can be found near the top of the release thread, under Refinements and Changes, and Bugs Fixed.

[url]Scrivener 3.0 Beta - Release Candidate 10 (Download Links & Change List)]

4

Jim, thank you.

I have to say, I actually had to use a page text search on a title you gave to find these – thinking it was perhaps those eyes of mine…

But indeed, I recognized the first bunch that showed on this search – only because I remembered the top couple of items from the actual r7 list which momentarily was present from the upgrade.

The problem is, that post with all the information is still dated 20 November 2017, and who would look there?

I guess from now on , I would, but it does seem this pushes idiosyncracy we all sort of enjoy seeing…to the point of perplexification :slight_smile:

I rest on this one, and again, thanks for making it possible to find.

I never thought I cared so much about revision notes, but for Scrivener (and one or two others, like Craft CMS which is who I was referring to in speaking about estimable practices and their relations, I guess I do!

5

Eric/Ged, that’s quite nicely and well put, thank you.

I think the key is in this portion of what you say, if I’d generally agree and stipulate to all you discussed with regard to beta testing, feature requests during development which might disturb aim, and so forth. Experience does include quite much of this.

Where my feeling comes is that we are dealing here with something a bit different, which is generally spoken of as accessibility.

I confess also to having jumped in at all where you quoted, because someone who has apparently more issues than I have was being given the ok, we spoke, and now silent treatment.

I went back to look, and indeed where Stacey’s carefully limited thoughts and my reckoning afterwards led was to suggest that the problematic-to-recognize action buttons be given actual button shaped backgrounds, as the cure!

As noted, besides being fundamental in the Mac version, just as Stacey illustrated, this color-distinguished button design is already in use elsewhere in the Windows refactor, so it should take literally a matter of some minutes to make it so the other places it’s needed, as in those Stacey pointed out.

Knowing all too well how design thinking works actually, let’s amplify that to one day, split overnight for second realizations. And also maybe think how nice it would be if the Windows button appearances became that much more familiar to persons used to the Mac arrangement? Which also helps accessibility…

I honestly think L&L didn’t see this idea, or judge its simple effectiveness and doability, because they’d turned off the discussion.

I thought to stop talking then, to give a chance for them to recover, and you see where that has led :slight_smile:

Ok, I do that again, and hold off describing what several quite different personalities do at Craft CMS which has the fine results and immense community support they enjoy. Except to say that the most instantly bright-style mannered of them also can say (he does) ‘doh!’ at any moment he sees what someone is talking about, and immediately change course to a fix. He’s also the MD/CEO, and I remark to see youth showing such leadership, not just in this way.

One last note on relevance. What I have as damage due to now-arrested diabetes is complicated, has taken two years, an excellent retinologist’s unusual tactics employed, and then my own recent finding to absolutely cut the blue spectrum from screens at all times except color work, via f.lux used a little unconventionally, if anyone needs that.

It however presents much like various aspects of age-related macular or cataract issues anyone can have. As well, this kind of thing where actions are hard to discoverr gets into dyslexic etc. territory as well, or other things visual recognition factors can do.

So I think very minor design tweaks to help, the sort of thing you’d do just for aesthetics, could be helpful to many here – and that’s what I’d like actually seen.

An architect might say, it’s just a better aesthetic, that lets persons in, no?

I’d like it, anyway :slight_smile:

Again, best to all.
Clive

[apologies to anyone seeing the before-edit version of this – got fooled by the forum editor/preview and had doubled statements of several points…]

6

just a comment or two on the now-discovered release notes, thanks to Jim:

  • that’s a lot of nice work done!
  • there are some really good tips as workarounds, in the Known Issues items, given proper moments to understand them
  • I’ve probably got my answer on state of Scrivenings – quite useful, with tip especially, to make it smooth
  • you got a really nice and informative mention from the Lulu people, just newslettered now: http://www.lulu.com/blog/2018/06/11/guest-post-3-writing-tools-to-ease-your-author-woes/
  • thanks for all :slight_smile:
7

Still, accessibility issue or not, L&L have answered, haven’t they? You don’t like their answer but that doesn’t mean that they have to change it. L&L have no obligation to change Scrivener to accomodate every user wish or request, not even when a user is referring to accessibility issues.

I guess I am an unusual kind of software customer. When I find a software and start using it, I assume that wiiiwig applies (what it is is what I get). If it doesn’t do what I want it to do, I move on to something else. If it doesn’t do everything I want it to do but mostly so, I accept the inherent limitations. What I don’t do is contact the manufacturer and say “Hey, I bought this really nice blue tractor from you, but could you please make it look a bit more like a red Ferrari and also be much faster, and have smaller wheels, and…”.

8

Well, actually, lunk, I just looked, and they did not respond, to anyone on it.

(The quote from Jennifer above is from a different discussion, one about dark screen mode.)

In this case, we are talking only about changing the color of a few buttons!

Can there be no exceptions, for such a good cause, gaining a lot of help for so little effort?

Stacey and I have been contributing in time and positivity since the beginning of Windows Scrivener.

I can remember working out so many keying points with Lee, giving where I could, and she as much, as here.

[url]UI issues that are Windows beta version specific]
.

9

Well narrsd, I made a quick search for the threads that discuss ’accessibility’ and most of the questions have been answered. Sometimes pointing to things that will have to wait to be fixed in the future and sometimes explaining why it’s not an easy fix.
There are also answers explaining that the current look is a deliberate design choice.

So we’re back at square one and ’wiiiwyg’, or explained in a different way: it is what it is. If you like it, use it. If you don’t like it, use something else.

10

Well, I am not rising to your bait, lunk; just mention this is a very tired argument.

Especially when you are speaking to persons who have used and helped Scrivener for eight years.

Try the link I gave. No ‘design changes’, just slightly more according to stated intentions, to emulate the Mac…

Nice pictures given by Stacey, to show how easy, nice, and effective the request.

It’s possible I shouldn’t have tried to amplify that, but…when should we speak??

I think you know the answer better than you are saying. Which I don’t feel helps Scrivener persons, sorry, does it?.

11

L&L have answered.
Read the last post in this thread:

literatureandlatte.com/foru … ty#p243836

You also have some answers here:

literatureandlatte.com/foru … 14#p266114

Maybe long forum posts isn’t the best way to influence L&L. Have you mailed support about accessibility issues?

12

This is what I was going to suggest. The forums are primarily intended for user-to-user support and discussion. We do not promise that L&L staff will respond to, or even read, forum posts. If you want to have an “official” conversation about accessibility or any other issue with an L&L representative, open a support ticket. Contact information is here:
literatureandlatte.com/contact-us

Katherine

13

Katherine, it’s late, and the forum editor just ate the entirety of a nicely intended reply.

I myself only saying, then, that this suggestion just doesn’t seem to click, within a location forthrightly labelled as a Beta Testing Forum.

If this is the way some of you have come to think at the moment, that it is become only a place 'for others to ‘talk among yourselves’ , it would however explain a lot of the behaviors.-- and the growing sociological emergence of foghorns bent on protecting shores. Which gives me more respect than ever for the stalwart old friends who do hang in there.

The funny thing experience tells, though, as a story over and again, is that when there’s the need to lead, or as some of us, consult, keeping a visible open-mindedness is the shortest bridge, to being able to keep balances where they should be.

And then everyone gains.

Ok, and you’re saved the stories of old hands and how we used to help mutually with the team here,

Except for the memory that always teases, the missing voice of Lee, softly ironical in his sincerity, insight, and friendliness, always ready to do the thing as it could be done, and sensibly done.

He deserves having moved on.

And I don’t know what further I would do, but I’ll think about it. Not too much.

Clive

14

It’s more of a comment on the fact that the forums are bigger than we can keep tabs on. There was once a time when I could read every new post and keep threads answered where help was needed, and I was also answering every single tech support email as well by myself, too. That was—a different time. :slight_smile: What you are seemingly reflecting upon is more a matter of dilution than a factual waning of our interest here. I would kindly suggest running a few advanced forum searches and looking at some raw data before jumping to conclusions. Speaking for myself anyway, if I write on average a response about this long (and we all know how much I can inflate my averages in some posts!), then since the launch of 3.0 I’ve contributed roughly half a million words to this here forum.

That said, I would add a caveat to what Katherine posted above, that while that is generally true for the board as a whole—the beta forum here is the primary venue for bug reporting and testing feedback. We do have a way to send emails regarding it as well, but that is going to be more for those cases where you need to demonstrate a bug with information you do not want posted on a public forum.

We may not have time to personally respond to every single thread, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t seen, tested and worked on behind the scenes. And as pointed out—a response was indeed made regarding the UI feedback. That it was made in another thread entirely, one you seemingly did not ever come across, is perhaps suitable testament to what I’m talking about above. :wink:

15

This was very fine to discover this morning, Ioa.

You are very true to yourself, as always, and you’re the other I thought to mention last night, along with Jennifer who does as we understand she does. Just was too far gone here :slight_smile:

I’m not leaving anyone else out, either – each of you is appreciated.

You take care, and I will think on this as can – somehow, getting a few buttons colored like their Mac counterparrts are should not be this big problem for anyone, should it.

And for so much gain.

Maybe we all learn something here…

C.