Bought and read, both of Rayz books. Abso-bloody-lootly fascinating reading.
Regarding Avalon, by Dom Ossiah: amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_nos … Dom+Ossiah
Leonard Bliss and the Accountant of the Apocalypse:
amazon.co.uk/Leonard-Account … 0956882986
I’m just waiting for the films to be released, but at this 
rate, it could be a long wait. 
Ditto. Where do we sign up if we can?
And thanks very much for the kind words, Vic.
I just want to say thank you, this is the only reason why I finally purchased this program. I am happy to learn that the sync and app is coming out soon! Thank you so much!
There are two things that will determine my next iPod purchase. (1) Scrivener iOS (2) Apple’s much needed iPod update (they haven’t updated since 2011 I think). The latter, I can’t really complain about. The former…I can…well…at least try…
Sire Keith Blount, it seems that your central response to anyone whining about Scrivener iOS is that you are a very small company with a handful of employees, and that you want everything to be perfect, yatta, yatta, yatta
While I’m no programmer and certainly do not know the complexities of what I’m about to suggest, I’ll suggest it anyways so that it’s in the collective Scrivener zeitgeist:
Have you ever thought about making Scrivener iOS, or Scrivener for Mac/Windows, for that matter partly open-source? In the same vein as Safari, it would interesting if there was a way for programmers to load up and distribute free ‘add-ons’ to make the app better. This way, it might lighten the load on you guys…I’m thinking…
Fred Brooks’ seminal book The Mythical Man Month is worth reading. Especially the section in which he describes how adding more programmers to a project did change the development speed dramatically downward.
Have you ever thought about giving all the fruits of your labour away for free? Same thing. 
Because there’s no real way to make it “partly” open-source.
As Reepicheep says, though, more programmers don’t necessarily mean things happen more quickly. More programmers means more communication, and lots of time spent writing up specs, checking work, etc. Besides which, our iOS version is feature-complete and in the bug-fixing stage.
I would be concerned over loss of control when making any application open-source, especially with a relatively small user base. How do you determine that changes are what users want, as opposed to those that programmers think are interesting and/or easy? How do you manage updates? Is everyone then a volunteer?
It’s very easy to give ebooks away for free. I wonder why more writers don’t do it.
/sarcasm
Except for a few very large efforts – which in most cases have some kind of major corporate support – most open source projects are a mess. Open source for smaller projects seems to mean, “the developer lost interest, so he’s giving the code away in case anyone else wants it.”
It’s certainly not a viable solution to the problem here: how to deliver a commercial-quality product more quickly while maintaining software quality and the integrity of the design vision.
Katherine
Yeah, I’m a newbie when it comes to programming, but it was just a thought.
Essentially I guess I’m looking at the ‘Safari’ model. The app isn’t free, technically, as it requires one to have a mac. And yet, there’s a portion that’s ‘free’ enabling users to create extensions…unless I’m mistaken.
This is all I meant. That is, the ability for users to create ‘extensions’ for Scrivener, while still allowing Sire Keith to make a profit (one has to buy scrivener to use it). This might separated Scrivener from its competition.
But this might I guess probably complicate things as supposed to make things simpler, so I won’t postulate further…
Looking forward to Scrivener iOS…
And many of us with Macs ditch Safari at the first opportunity. It might once have been open source (konqueror) and indeed the heart of Mac OS X is open source being a modified version of FreeBSD. If I could ditch Safari from my iPad and have full FIrefox I would have done it years ago. But your analogy doesn’t hold as both Safari and Darwin have dedicated teams within Apple doing the majority of the work. As to “extensions” that model doesn’t hold at all for Safari on iOS as it doesn’t support them. (I wish it did. The first extension I would install would be AdBlock followed immediately by Ghostery.)
Don’t forget that KB is committed to both Mac and Windows being feature equivalent. So that extensions mechanism would have to work on both platforms (and on iOS too eventually). As a software engineer who worked on products that were extensible with customer code and on products exploiting such extensiblity there are major issues involved. Not least is preventing a malicious user from writing an extension and getting access to data they are not meant to see. Take a look at the histories of Safari, Internet Explorer, etc etc to see how messed up those products have been (and still are).
Oh and the news yesterday that many Networking flaw opens millions of iOS app users to data theft. AFNetworking is vulnerable and makes OpenSSL crackable. Then there’s the OpenSSL Heartbeat fiasco. Hell even Apple messed with Safari—including iOS’— and its use of OpenSSL; a one line patch complely cocking up the browser’s security.
A program can allow extensions and add-ons by way of an application programming interface (API). Many many different programs do this, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the underlying code is open source or not. In fact, the whole point of a well-designed API is to allow third-party programmers to treat the underlying application as a black box: if you give X inputs, Y will happen to them.
I’m not sure how extensions figure into the discussion of Scrivener for iOS, though. Extensions – as their name implies – generally involve “niche” features for a fraction of the user base, not major functionality that’s part of the core of the program.
Katherine
Indeed and that API needs to be watertight or someone will find a crack and the water will leak. Good APIs require effort. Effort that for Scrivener would be better spent working on the product be it the Mac, Window or iOS version.
Oh come on you know us, we want it all on all platforms. The Windows people want parity with Mac and it won’t be long before those of us who want the iOS version will be calling for parity too. Put extensibility into Mac and the user communities will want it too.
But I agree the original call is highly muddled. Going from open source-ing the code to down playing to wanting an extension mechanism.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. My point was that offering an API – on any platform – is not a substitute for development of core Scrivener features by L&L. If you want, say, a more streamlined Compile function, or a version of Scrivener for Android, release of an API is unlikely to help. And may hurt, because of the time it takes away from core development.
Katherine
I agreed with you. Good APIs are expensive to define and create. And as I said in the part you didn’t quote creating one would seriously detract from the development of Scrivener.
Add-ons don’t work well if there isn’t a strong central architecture that allows them to get and modify the information they need…and that isolates them from each other as much as possible. All of which would take more time, effort, and coordination, not less.
How is the internal Beta testing coming along? Just wondering if you have a date in mind yet for the external Beta testing.
Thanks
Ugh - the internal beta testing has thrown up way more bugs than we expected or would have liked. At this point, I can only offer my sincere apologies to all our users who are waiting on our iOS version, because it has now taken way too long and we’re tearing our hair out too. Given that it’s feature-complete but just bug-squashing, though, we are looking to bring an extra coder in for June to help with a solid month of bug-fixing so that we can get this out to public beta without another two months passing.
Again, I’m really sorry for how long this is taking.
All the best,
Keith
You said the magic words “feature complete”, seasoned them with “bug fixing” and then added some special sauce with the words “extra coder”. With that to fill our bellies, no need for apologies!
Despite how frustrating it is for you, I will confess that it’s good to hear there is progress (even if that progress amounts to finding out how much more progress is needed). Keep it up!
^^^ THIS!!
Good luck with everything – and thanks for keeping us all posted! In this case, “no news [very much isn’t] good news” – so great to hear things are moving!