Scrivener 1.11 public beta 3 now available (13/11/07)

Scrivener Beta Testing (Mac)
21

Hi nib

(Love the name, nib - nice inky scrivener feel about it.)

Just a little Mac trick that might help a bit. When you have got CONSOLE up, it will appear as an icon in the Dock at the bottom of the screen. Click on the icon and hold the mouse button down then roll over the item that says KEEP IN DOCK and let go of the mouse when the pointer is over that option.

Then each time you are about to run Scrivener - or any app that you are trying to help the developer with just go to the icon in the dock and click it. it will open and then you can open the other app (Scrivener) and every strange thing that happens will be recorded in the console. Or, you can open it after you run the app and it will also be there in the log window.

A good trick is to start up your mac fresh and go straight to the app causing the problems, start it up and go to the action that causes the error and click on that action. Then go straight to the console when the action fails. This will give the developer a look at just the failed action with your key startup and computer info at the top of the log. That can often help.

Then you just copy and paste the console log as text into an email or post to the developer. It is also interesting to read the console log yourself for the information it shows you about what is called when an app fires up. You will find stuff on your computer you completely forgot you put there.

For example: here is a very short post start-up console log for a Safari hang on OSX 10.4.11.

[size=75]Mac OS X Version 10.4.11 (Build 8S165)
2007-11-15 12:29:43 +0900
2007-11-15 12:29:44.307 loginwindow[94] FSResolveAliasWithMountFlags returned err = -43
2007-11-15 12:29:48.500 SystemUIServer[221] lang is:en
2007-11-15 12:29:49.293 textsoapHelper[227] TextSoap Helper Version 5.6.1 launched
2007-11-15 12:29:54.050 MagicMenuHotKeyDaemon[233] Started
2007-11-15 12:30:05.409 Safari[234] *** WebKit discarded an uncaught exception in the webView:decidePolicyForNavigationAction:request:frame:decisionListener: delegate: decodeDataTo: unknown type descriptor ?@::
2007-11-15 12:30:06.130 Safari[234] *** -[NSAutoreleasePool dealloc]: Exception ignored while releasing an object in an autorelease pool: decodeDataTo: unknown type descriptor ?@::
[/size]

You can see the err and WebKit references that console identifies. All juicy stuff for a developer. It looks like Text Soap and Magic Menu started OK - the main thing is they are there properly listed in their start sequence ahead of Safari. It looks like poor old Safari can’t decide how to navigate to a URL. So it just hangs. Like senile dementia. This tells me that maybe something else could be trying to navigate past Safari for the same URL. Well, on reflection I realise that I am running PicLens. So I remove all traces of that and Safari opens with no problems.

Easy peasy!

Hope that helps a bit

:slight_smile:

22

Edit Scrivenings looks good here as well (Leopard).

23

Hi, Lord Lightning

Thanks for all the CONSOLE info. It was clear, concise, and just what I needed. I’ll do what you suggested and will be ready to send the info to KB if I encounter any more problems.

I’m probably extra slow learning the Mac way of doing things because I’m still using Windows as my main system (when I replace my desktop I’ll go iMac) and I haven’t yet had time to immerse myself in the Mac-iverse.

Iâ€

24

I just had a near-death experience in full screen mode. The screen was completely black and the ESC key didn’t work :open_mouth: ALT+CMD+ESC brought my Mac back to life. It goes without saying that I can not reproduce this behaviour :blush:

25

signinstranger - was that on Leopard or on Tiger? Did anything get output to the Console?
Best,
Keith

26

10.4.11, latest Scrivener Beta. The console said something like

2007-11-16 15:58:18.542 Scrivener[2624] -[NSLayoutManager _fillLayoutHoleAtIndex:desiredNumberOfLines:] *** attempted layout while textStorage is editing. It is not valid to cause the layoutManager to do layout while the textStorage is editing (ie the textStorage has been sent a beginEditing message without a matching endEditing.)

27

I am not sure when this happened, but in the latest beta, the label column cannot be collapsed down so that just the colour chip is visible. It can be shrunk so that only the first half of the first letter of the text part of the label is visible, but that looks kind of tacky.

28

Beta alternate background colors seem to work just fine in Leopard (10.5.1) for the 1.11 Beta 3 - I did adjust the color to a darker shade of blue as the darker color was almost invisible on my external monitor.

29

Thanks for testing.

Amber - yes, I noticed that myself yesterday, and have fixed it for 1.11. I’m not sure when that happened, either. Weird. I wonder if the padding is different on Tiger? I’ll have to check.

As for the full screen issue - that’s a weird one. I’ve checked through for the error indicated, but wherever there is a -beginEditing message there is also an -endEditing message. Moreover, I can’t think of a reason this would happen as you go into full screen. I’ll check the “launch full screen code”.

Best,
Keith

30

Here’s a REALLY stupid question. I hope you don’t have your grumpy head on.

I’ve held off upgrading to 1.1 because of the glitches. So right now I’m still running the original Scrivener (which I think is the greatest app. EVAH). I don’t even know the definition of “BETA,” that’s how clueless I am.

So when I read this:

I didn’t know whether I should upgrade to 1.1 first and then substitute the BETA, or whether I can just go straight to the BETA.

And by “replace the version,” do you mean I just drag Scrivener in Applications to the trash and drag the new one into Applications?

Sorry to be such an idiot. I need step by step directions for morons here.

:blush:

31

Yep, that’s exactly what you need to do. You might want to hold off a few days, though, as 1.11 will be out officially very soon.

A “beta” is just a sort of pre-release version that is distributed so that those who wish can test it out to make sure it doesn’t have any horrible bugs. Betas of Scrivener tend to be quite safe because they are more bug-fix releases than anything else, but generally you would expect beta-software to be less reliable and less-stable than the official version, because they are more experimental. It’s during the beta-testing stage that bugs get ironed out so that software becomes more stable for an official release.

That said, the Scrivener 1.11 beta isn’t like that, as it doesn’t have any experimental features in it. It just provides bug-fixes, and I release it here so that users can test to see if the bugs really have been fixed before I release it officially and tell everybody that the bugs are gone (so that I don’t get egg on my face and have users turn around and tell me that the bugs are actually still there!).

Hope that makes sense,
Best,
Keith

32

Mollys Mum,
bless your little cotton socks! What on Earth gave you the impression, that Captn Keith, possessed a grumpy head`. Never…never…ever :wink: :wink:

bilge rat vic

33

Vic!

No one has blessed my little cotton socks since my darling Irish mummy passed on last February. :smiley:

Gosh, I feel loved.

(Still hoping Keith doesn’t peg me for a total idiot)

34

You are talking to a man who has a Harry Potter-esque scar in the centre of his forehead because he once walked into a London bus. Yes, an auto-mobile of the large, red variety. I have no right to peg anyone as an idiot. :slight_smile:
Best,
Keith

35

Mollys Mum,
`twill be your darling Irish mummy, watching over you, and guiding my hand ( how else would you explain it :slight_smile:)

Failte romhat!! to Scrivener Mollys Mum.

Slan tamall. Go n-eiri leat :wink:

Vic

PS Actually the only time Captn Keith, realy`, gets grumpy, is when he runs out of cheese puffs :imp:

36

First, your judgement about Scrivener is perfectly right which clearly indicates that you are anything but clueless or an idiot or a moron!

There is nothing bad about not being a computer geek and it should be the technology that adapts to people and not vice versa. Chosing a Mac which is definitely less geeky than Windows or Linux PCs already was the right choice – so again: Molly can not be the offspring of an idiot.

But still even here you won’t make it completely without the knowledge of certain techniques and computer terms.

So here we go: There are official release of software and of not-yet official releases.

The first of these are often called Alpha versions which are only of interest for people who like to look at a construction site to imagine what the house will look like one day. You can not work with these.

Betas are one step further, normally every feature that is planned for the full release is implemented but all of this has not yet been tested thoroughly. People using these are Beta testers, sometimes it’s a public Beta for everyone, sometimes it’s only available for a dedicated group. Normally Betas are not recommended for being used in a ‘production environment’, meaning: Play around with it extensively, but don’t use it with important Data.

Sometimes another step follows that is called Release Candidate, a term that’s meant to indicate this version of the program is even better than the Beta but still there will be more fine tuning before the program gets released.

When it comes to Betas Scrivener is – again – exceptional. You can use them for important work. I know what I’m saying, I have been using several (pre 1.10) beta versions for weeks and never faced any problem.

Knowing about the quality of Scrivener Betas and about the bugs 1.10 has I installed the latest Beta without thinking twice about it and I recommend you to do the same.

The Betas are full versions and not just updates who replace just certain pieces of the last full version. So you could install the latest Scrivener Beta directly without installing 1.10 before.

To do so just drag the Scrivener program icon (if you are downloading with Safari it will have been unzipped automatically already) into the application folder. The OS will ask you if you want to replace the existing Scrivener version. Say loud and strong: ‘Yes I do!’ (or just click) and the installation starts.

If you check out the contents of the trash afterwards you will see that the OS has dropped the old Scrivener there all by itself (poor old Scriv, sob!).

Start Scrivener again (it must not be running while updating!) and every time you are asked if you want to update your old projects say ‘Yes!’ again. Backups in the old format are kept, just in case.

EDIT: Aw, too late! It’s not fair, I was typing a novel-like reply to Molly’s mum and you came up with these … these … haikus! Pshaw!

37

Good God, Vic, you’ll make me dig out my Gaelic dictionary!!

And Keith, Keith darlin, that lobotomy is showing! You haven’t told me how to install that BETA. I truly AM an idiot, now don’t disappoint me by ignoring that fact.

MM :slight_smile:

38

Suavito we crossed in cyberspace. Thank you thank you for the VERY helpful Guide to the Galaxy–I feel positively clearheaded now! :smiley:

And thank you for your kind words about Molly. Being as she is a horse (a Connemara, vic!!) she is biologically exempt from idiocy anyway, as her equine Mum was a sharp cookie.

MM

39

And I am BLIND as well as an idiot, because now I find out that Keith had ALREADY explained everything very clearly before his Harry Potter post, which is the one I zoomed in on.

Mea culpa.

Many thanks all. Time for another tea with gin.

Z

40

suavito,
to mm`s expression of gratitude, please add mine, danke :slight_smile:

mm,
I think youll soon come to realise, that: most of the brains on legs, that crew the Good Ship Scrivener, also have great big hearts` tattooed on those brains.

It kinda makes the going a bit easier for novices like you and noviciate eejits like me.

Go n-eiri leat.
Vic