It appears I am coming to this discussion late, but reading this thread tells me that there are actually two desired features being discussed here, and confused.
A cloud-based application
Cloud-based storage and synchronised working.
Keith’s original suggestion clearly was only addressing the former. However, the no-admin install (stick it on a USB drive) gets around that easily.
The more important functionality is the ability to collaborate, without having to hand the whole thing over and no touch it for untold time. That can be achieved without a complete rewrite of the system - it can be handled in a way that will add to Keith’s revenue stream. This requires a syndicated mode, that allows locking of parts of the overall document - not allowing two people to make changes to the same text file at the same time (at least initially). It also requires a cloud-based service that hosts the master version (it’s a service, it has a cost). And lastly, as there are those ubiquitous network issues and times we need to work on the move without net connections (or in hotels with sesquidecade old internet contracts), it would need to be able to smartly synchronise anything that has been missed in the mean time.
Why do I revive this old discussion? Because we are not that far off the maybe’d 2015, and something even pretending to be real-time collaborative working is expected.
Expected by you, perhaps, but hardly something ubiquitous. Collaborative syncing is non-trivial - a huge, huge task - and something that we have discussed a lot, but not something with an easy solution. It is something that is still on the potential roadmap for the future, but it is not planned for the next major iteration. We have no intention of providing our own cloud-based service as that is not something, as a very small company, we are geared up to do. There is a reason why the best cloud-based collaboration service is currently provided only by Google - sadly we do not have their resources.
I have collaborative tasks with a couple of people for business reasons (project management stuff) which is achieved via web-based tools, but I realise that I tend to think of Scrivener as an entirely personal programme. It’s for my own writing, and even when a part of that is due to be shared (edited/commented on) with academic colleagues I still think of it as mine.
(Cue maniacal laughter as I shuffle off down the corridor, possessively clutching my MacBook Air …).
We have had enough users ask for collaborative functions for it to be something we’ve looked into, and something we seriously considered for the next major update, but the issues involved were just too prohibitive for where we are in terms of resources, experience and what we feel we could support right now. It’s something that would pretty much need a team working on it full-time in itself. So yes, Scrivener does better support individual writers, at the moment, or at least workflows where one writer is responsible for maintaining the core project.
My opinion is that collaborative is a dead end road commercially.
Positive:
A web app is an excellent concept. It would be cross platform and work with cloud side storage seemlessly. Commercially it would also be a positive note for the developers imho because an annual sub would be ok with users and attractive to L&L. Guaranteed backups would be a boon for many writers, and sharing selected files would be relatively easy to program in ttbomk.
Negative:
From my reading of the developers in my short time here, it’s not their style to completely re write the whole shabang 8)
Too many writers worry obsessively about losing their work into the cloud vapours.
Risk.
Negative: The current best-of-breed solution, Google Docs, is free for individuals and very cheap for businesses. It’s very hard to compete with “free,” even harder to compete with “provided for free by a company with semi-infinite resources.”
I’m too lazy to look up the link at the moment, but the Google team posted a series of articles about the technical underpinnings of Google Docs. They are justifiably very proud of what they’ve achieved: the technical issues to be solved were quite substantial.
Web Scrivener would be even harder, because it would also have to maintain the links among individual files within a project.
But L&L has fewer total employees than the Google Docs team has people in their on-call support rotation.
More difficult task, undertaken with much more limited resources, in order to compete with a well-established, low-cost market leader.
I believe this is an unfair comparison. From my conversations with G staff I would suggest his is a more accurate comparison
Google employs more people via direct and indirect methods (contact labor) than some significantly sized municipalities. The only groups in the software world that are fair comparisons are the major players. EX Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, IBM, HP, etc.
I have inside knowledge of the Docs team, and it seemed like the most direct comparison to the Scrivener team. Only a small fraction of Google’s total resources are devoted to Docs.
My info is not as direct. I do find the massive scale of google intriguing. For a company that was discredited in the marketplace as not having a “sell-able product”, they sure are refusing to die the predicted death.
I’m still not comfy with the “trust us” line. They are so ubiquitous that it feels like it is a matter of time until someone goes all evil …
At least I admit it.
After I posted that took a look at my personal interactions with google. out side of L&L they are on every site I hit with adds. Emails are all passed through them. Personal photos. If they do go dark side they have me.
I working on my hat right now!
My experience with them is the same as yours (regarding this topic of accountability). I’m just concerned for the day when there is less idealism in the company. But I’m a pessimist.
I had a long-term, intermittent, problem with my Mac suffering regular spinning beach ball, unresponsive apps, even the occasional complete system freeze. The latter happened today and I finally tracked down the culprit: Google.
Google installed a software updater that would bring my system to it’s knees. And not just my system, once I finally identified and used the right search terms, I found loges of references to it. Even instructions on Google’s forums on how to delete it (but no acknowledgement of all the issues people have linked to it, or an explanation as to why it ran hourly).
Deleted now. So far my system has been almost as stable as when it ran Snow Leopard, but the inter webs say that the offending Google app regularly re-installs itself, so I might need Jaysen’s tinfoil hat.
Nom, I don’t doubt your story, but I have to think your troubles are
specific to your system. You mention Snow Leopard. Have you upgraded since?
The latest OS is 10.9.3. I run it on an '08 iMac and a '10 MacBook Pro.
Have used Chrome as my sole browser since '11.
I never see any Google Software Updates except for Picasa & Google Earth.
Everything else Google runs in Chrome.
Easy update, just sign out and in.
On a Chromebook or Chromebox, no update troubles at all. :mrgreen:
Unlikely. For obvious reasons, They stopped making tinfoil a long time ago. As you know, what you will find in stores is a clever knock-off that uses aluminium, but has none of the original protective properties of tinfoil. Attempting to procure real tinfoil will register you in dozens of red-flag government databases around the world, so don’t even try searching for it.
Collaborative syncing is non-trivial - a huge, huge task - and something that we have discussed a lot, but not something with an easy solution. It is something that is still on the potential roadmap for the future, but it is not planned for the next major iteration. We have no intention of providing our own cloud-based service as that is not something, as a very small company, we are geared up to do. There is a reason why the best cloud-based collaboration service is currently provided only by Google - sadly we do not have their resources.
