Future of Scrivener?

[Timotheus]

Keith, if I were you, I wouldn’t be too worried about recent, nice looking (and nicely working) updates of other applications. For in my opinion, as a working environment Scrivener has no real competitors; at least not for a certain kind of writing activity.

Ulysses certainly is a quality program, but it’s not the best possible choice for writing really complex things, like for instance PhD theses. But probably one must have written similar things in order to fully realize this, and to fully appreciate Scrivener, with its great versatility, its crystal clear UI and its wealth of inline notes, inspector notes, annotations, comments and the like. It is in this field that Scrivener really shines, and proves itself by far superior to all other applications. To many, all these options may seem overkill; but not to those who have gone through certain creative experiences.

And LaTeX is of course by many miles the best thing in the world as a layout tool. But it is not (and was never intended to be) a working environment. Or perhaps it is, but only for experts in mathematics, theoretical physics and the like; not for experts in ancient philosophy or medieval history or female literature.

And I can understand the decision to make an iOS version of Scrivener: people want it, scream and shout for it, and blame you for being old-fashioned (to say the least) if you don’t offer it. And of course commercially it may be quite interesting; and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But personally, I wouldn’t care if there never came an iOS version; and not only because I don’t have an iphone nor an iPad. Because if I did, for jotting down some random ideas on these any decent application would suffice. And it would never cross my mind (nor would it cross anybody else’s, I suppose) to do any really serious writing on an iPad. So I don’t think I would ever feel an impellent need for an iOS version of Scrivener.

But of course I fully understand and respect the wishes and needs of others, and the strategy of the company.

[Briar_Kit]

@KB

@Rayz

I average about four hours a day writing. In the last six years or so, Scrivener has only been shut down for OS upgrades, two house moves and a suspected heart attack (to bring the laptop to A&E so I could finish the back cover blurb). It clocks up more hours of usage than anything else on my Mac, including Safari.

That’s some serious commitment - I hope your health is fine now, though.

Wishing you well, Rayz.

As someone who has had four operations in the last 18 months (two for cancer), you can add me to the list of writers reaching longingly for theirs Macs and Scrivener when in hospital.

Being overwhelmed by tsunamis of pain, I just wouldn’t be able to construct articles or novels without the accretive tools available in Scrivener. When you are so powerless in the physical world (save for determination and hope), the chance to create a fictional world in Scrivener is simply cathartic. A drug.

A second catharsis comes when people read your articles or buy your books. No individual – whether in the house next door or on the other side of the planet – can possibly know how much it means to a writer on a personal level to have someone buy their novel and enter into their world. I love seeing that someone in Japan or Brazil or America or wherever has bought a copy of HANSON DRAKE and started a journey with me. Even if they don’t like it in the end, their exegesis of the book means that I can, in some small way, still feel the earth move on its axis.

I am so grateful to all the devs for creating a gateway tool that allows me to write and hold on to creative thoughts and ideas, especially at a time like this.

Happy birthday, Keith. And eternal thanks.

[KB]

Just a polite reminder: users are more than welcome to express their opinions here, both positive and negative. Please remember the chief forum rule of being polite, however. Moderators will remove posts that are deemed to be “trolling”, by which I mean those that continually reiterate the same points over and over, ignoring polite responses, apparently to no other end than to provoke or continue an argument. If you’re just after a fight, please take it elsewhere.

Let’s please return this thread to the original topic, which was the future of Scrivener for the Mac.

Many thanks,
Keith

[KB]

@Briar Kit

Happy birthday, Keith. And eternal thanks.

Thanks, Briar Kit! Although it’s a week away yet… I hope you are all fully recovered too.

Thanks for the kind words,
Keith

[Timotheus]

To be honest: I frankly don’t understand all these (sometimes rather aggressive) complaints about non delivering soon enough, about not keeping the community periodically informed, and so on.

In my opinion, in this respect Keith c.s. clearly have fallen victim to their openness and their willingness to discuss each and every aspect of their products and politics with their customers. Paradoxically, they get these angry reactions because they are more, not less open than the vast majority of other companies.

Try to ask the developers of Mellel, of Nisus, of the Omni Group, of Tinderbox, of Curio, of Ulysses (not to speak about Apple, about Adobe, about other big companies) what their plans are, and when the next version of their product will ship. In all probability, you won’t get any answer at all. When you’re lucky, you will be told that it will ship when it’s ready, period. And if you don’t like it, please go elsewhere. Ulysses has already closed down its forum. Mellel does still have a forum, but if you expect to find the developers there, and to get an answer to your questions, please don’t hold your breath! The Nisus people are very kind and ready to answer on their forum to all kinds of questions, with the clear exception of those regarding the strategy of the company. And one could continue.

So it would do no harm, if some members of our community began to see certain things a bit more in perspective.

[Rayz]

@Briar Kit

@KB

@Rayz

I average about four hours a day writing. In the last six years or so, Scrivener has only been shut down for OS upgrades, two house moves and a suspected heart attack (to bring the laptop to A&E so I could finish the back cover blurb). It clocks up more hours of usage than anything else on my Mac, including Safari.

That’s some serious commitment - I hope your health is fine now, though.

Wishing you well, Rayz.

As someone who has had four operations in the last 18 months (two for cancer), you can add me to the list of writers reaching longingly for theirs Macs and Scrivener when in hospital.

Thank you very much, but relatively speaking it was nothing (complications following pericarditis, they decided), unlike your situation

Being overwhelmed by tsunamis of pain, I just wouldn’t be able to construct articles or novels without the accretive tools available in Scrivener. When you are so powerless in the physical world (save for determination and hope), the chance to create a fictional world in Scrivener is simply cathartic. A drug.

Yes, I understand that. I really did have an overwhelming desire to be somewhere else.
Actually, I remember having an overwhelming desire to be somebody else.

The writing is important at times like that, almost as important as friends and family.

I hope you’re much better.

[Rayz]

@reepicheep

It’s called not “managing customer expectations”. I admit to being one of those very vocal and vociferous people complaining about the nonappearance of Scrivener for iOS even going so far as a call it “vapourware” because there was no information being given out. Months would go by with no mention of the iOS version at all.

Okay . . .

@reepicheep

Back when I worked in software R&D with some customer facing roles our company’s policy was we never ever talked about new product until we had the gold master in our hands and could release it to customers.

I’m a little bit unclear. Do you want information or not?

[Briar_Kit]

@KB

@Briar Kit

Happy birthday, Keith. And eternal thanks.

Thanks, Briar Kit! Although it’s a week away yet… I hope you are all fully recovered too.

Thanks for the kind words,
Keith

HB for next week. Looking for a sign of light at the end of the tunnel.

[Briar_Kit]

@Rayz

Yes, I understand that. I really did have an overwhelming desire to be somewhere else.
Actually, I remember having an overwhelming desire to be somebody else.

The writing is important at times like that, almost as important as friends and family.

I hope you’re much better.

Thanks, Rayz. Yes. A desire to be somebody else. Occasionally to be no one at all, just to escape the worst that nature can throw at you.

[gr]

@KB

Lots of plans and it’s March already, and only a week until I reach the age of the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Argh.

First explicit allusion that I know of to what is so deeply funny (and sad) and cleverly understated about that joke. Perhaps it is commonplace over there, but everyone I know over here seems to have taken it to be a random number.

Greg

[gr]

@ptram

L&L’s approach has been very different from a traditional software house: the forum, the place where the developers interact with the users, is not merely a support tool, but the place where software development begins. So, when Scrivener for iPad was announced it was not the beginning of a commercial agreement, but a talk between friends about a possible creation. That will eventually become a commercial enterprise.

Nicely put. --gr

[nontroppo]

I assume the age that cannot be named is this week – Happy Meaning-of-lifeday to you!

Although I use MultiMarkdown exclusively in Scrivener, I was curious as you are in the nuts-n-bolts stage, whether the rich text engine has seen any useful updates over the last few OS releases? I remember back in the day you had to fight quite a bit against the bugs/features of the rich text system…

I think IINM that the switch to all those extra bits will make the PDF viewer less buggy and much faster?

Also, will any changes in the document bundle format mean for example that PDF could finally be exported for indexing in spotlight?

[KB]

@nontroppo

I assume the age that cannot be named is this week – Happy Meaning-of-lifeday to you!

Thanks! 'Tis today.

whether the rich text engine has seen any useful updates over the last few OS releases?

Pfft - you mean since Tiger? Vertical text was added for languages that require it, but that’s about all that’s happened in the text system in the past five years. I have a tonne of bugs logged with Apple that have been outstanding for years, now. They did port the text system to iOS, though, so maybe they’ll do some more work on it now (although I suppose they may only improve the iOS layer…).

I think IINM that the switch to all those extra bits will make the PDF viewer less buggy and much faster?

Indeed, going 64-bit will get rid of the problem of the white rectangles that can appear in PDF files - this was a bug Apple introduced into its 32-bit PDFKit. (There’s another bug in the PDFKit that is purely a Yosemite bug and that this won’t fix, though.)

Also, will any changes in the document bundle format mean for example that PDF could finally be exported for indexing in spotlight?

No, nothing will change there. The bundle format will remain much the same, but tweaked for mobile syncing and other improvements.

All the best,
Keith

[nontroppo]

Out of curiosity, does Pages use the OS X text system at its foundation and then build private frameworks on top, i.e. do they eat their own dogfood?

As they don’t charge for Pages any more why not expose its text engine for any other developers? Or is this because they think their proprietary format is beneficial for them somehow?

[KB]

Pages uses a completely different text system, sadly…

[nontroppo]

Not surprising. When Apple were attacking Adobe on the 64bit transition, their own professional software was stuck in the same state they were asking others to resolve…

[KB]

Indeed - when they introduced sandboxing to the App Store, they set a date by which every app had to be sandboxed or updates wouldn’t be accepted, but they didn’t sandbox all of their own applications. It was a hugely frustrating experience because there were a lot of teething problems with sandboxing (and it remains imperfect), and third-party developers were left to find all of the problems because Apple hadn’t properly “dog-folded” the technology. This seems to happen all too often, sadly.

[DJL]

Dog fooding = eating your own dog food to see if it’s ok. I think my dog would object to being folded…

[gr]

Dog folding = Folding your own dog to see if it is ok. Hint: if it folds, not ok.

[KB]

Damn auto-correct!