There are a number of good editors out there now with customisable keyboards. Daedalus has my favourite implementation to date for two reasons:
It lets you store multiple macros per button; and accessing the alternates is easy to do
You can design them with prefix/suffix forms, which is why I refer to them as macros instead of mere button enhancements. That means you can easily use one button to type in both the ( and the ). It will intelligently alternate as you use it.
It’s also a nicely designed editor from a functional and aesthetic standpoint, in my opinion, especially now that you can sync a stack to any folder in Dropbox.
Nebulous Notes would be my second favourite, but it’s a more “geeky” experience than either Daedalus or iA Writer.
I tried that split keyboard thing—doesn’t really make sense on an iPad I don’t think. It’s probably better on an iPhone, but holding the iPad like that, you need really long thumbs to use it the way it is designed to be used. And anyway, two thumbs can’t beat eight other fingers. Typing on glass might be immeasurably less efficient than on hardware; but you can at least do a semblence of touch typing on the regular keyboard, space destroying though it may be, I’d rather have 50wpm than 10 and more lines.
I downloaded Notability. It is very interesting, because it uses RTF format. The problem is that when I open the file in the App it loses all bold and italics (but it preserves underlines). If I modify the file and then sync back to Scrivener, the document is without italic and bold formatting.
This is a problem, because I use RTF for formatting.
Thanks for the comments and suggestions regarding writing apps, keyboards etc
Just to recap, the ‘iA Writer’ keyboard does pretty much everything I could hope for and the app syncs through Dropbox. ‘My Writing Spot’ syncs through a Google account.
I’d looked into Daedalus after seeing it recommended elsewhere in these forums. It’s probably a given that I will buy this at some point (I seem to be collecting writing and notebook apps as if they were stamps) but I’ll leave it for a bit as I’m still getting to know the ones I already have (having said that I’ve just bought ‘Notability’ as it’s on sale).
I’ve now tried the split keyboard, but was surprised at how teeny the keys are. I don’t have big hands but even so I think I’d find this a real challenge to use. I prefer larger keyboards which is why I invariably use the iPad in landscape when typing.
Before I bought the iPad I was quite concerned how easy it would be to type on a flat screen and found it hard work at first; then something ‘clicked’ (metaphorically) and I just took off. I have to use a PC at work and the clunky spring-loaded keys now strike me as annoyingly noisy and clumsy, thought I still find it easier to accurately touch-type on a real keyboard.
Add me into the group that would pay for a version of Scrivener for the iPad. Having just picked one up to supplement my Air and IMac for school, I’ve noticed that there are times when I could have just pulled out the laptop and started working on something…
I do currently use the simple note sync feature, however, I can’t create a new file for a new scene from within the simple note app. I’m limited to the file that are already in scrivener. If an iPad app does come to life, I wouldn’t care as much about my research folder, but more about my character sheets and manuscript…
Hello Keith, A full version of Scrivener for iPad is unrealistic. BUT, 15 million people bought iPads in the 4th quarter and the New iPad sold out initially. It is here to stay.
I think everyone would be happy with a Scrivener App that did exactly what PlainText does except sync the RTF files to and from DropBox.
That is all we really need portable device to do. Everyone is hobbling a solutions together because of the incompatibly of RTF. If it went from Scrivener Desktop to Scrivener App the RTF problem could be solved.
Does this make sense? I know you are not interested in money, but I think there are enough of us to make is a profitable venture. Then you would have a combined platform making the Scrivener Desktop even more attractive to new buyers.
Thanks for all you have done and are doing to make our writing life easier.
I misplaced the smiley in my response so it sounded narky - it should have read: "I’m not sure if latecomers in [I meant “to”!] this thread have missed that we already have an iOS version in development. "
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