I’m right there with you.
I think that honest questions, that are really meant for clarification, without underlying insinuations, are seldom stupid.
Why would you need to re-purchase Scrivener in the future? You already have Scrivener, so why not just keep using it?
Did you actually purchase Scrivener or did you purchase a lease to use Scrivener? Take a look at Microsoft’s licence conditions, for example, and you will see that someone who hands over money for one of their products has not purchased it but has a lease in exchange for a one-off payment. It isn’t even an lease in perpetuity as the right to pass that iicence on to someone else is limited. You dispose of the machine and your right to the licence goes too. You buy a second machine you do not have the right to use the licenced product on the new machine.
Even your Linux system(s) licence does not give you automatic rights to upgrades. Does it give you unpaid access to the sources even? The GPL confers the right that you can access the sources but not that if the sources are changed you then have a right to the new versions.
Technically it’s not a lease (for several reasons, but the primary one is that you don’t enjoy exclusive possession of the underlying property / asset). A license is less than a lease which is less than freehold. You can have a license in tangible property / real estate too.
Thanks for the legal clarification. Doesn’t change the situation though that whatever it is we buy from L&L or any other commercial software company does not provides rights of ownership or of continued maintenance.
Split for emphasis.
This is what I don’t understand. Why does anyone expect cos like L&L to operate more generously than the big boys? This illogical approach to consumerism (you are not big so give me stuff for free) has sprung up in my lifetime. I can not get anyone to justify their actions/statement in any way other than “I don’t want to give them my money”.
It is an illogical approach that is going to leave us with very very few options in the near future.
I’m not convinced that it has sprung up in your lifetime. Rather that it harks back to a previous age (perhaps only half a century ago) when community was more important than individualism. Recently the British newspaper The Guardian (I think it was) had a piece in which the suggestion was made that altruism had evolved and become deeply ingrained in human nature because mankind needs mutuality between people. The Gordon Gecko creed “greed is good” has (temporarily we have to hope) submerged that altruism producing the ego-sodden “me me me” generation.
Open source has brought some of that community sense back into computer usage. Primarily in protest to “the big boys” who are unresponsive to customer expectations and demands. They are dinosaurs who will die out; we’ve seen that with the changes to corporations such as IBM who once shifted tin but now get most of their revenue and profits from selling services. Niche companies, such as L&L, have been caught up in that backlash however they can respond quicker to customer requirements and provide products targeted at small audiences. Though open source raises livelihood issues for people like Keith who earn their crust from software licence sales. If you give your soruce code away for free how do you make a living?
Parallels Access… someone asked about speed… works fine for me on decent (at least 3 bars) 4G LTE cellular connections when remote controlling a Windows 8.1 desktop PC running Scrivener. There are single-bar situations where I don’t even bother attempting remote control. Whether one will like and trust using Scrivener or other apps remotely like this will vary from person to person. Try before you buy/commit. Also possibly try TeamViewer… the two have different approaches and strength/weaknesses.
My only complaint about Parallels Access on the iPad is that, unlike on the iPhone, it doesn’t support use in portrait mode… which seems desirable as it would allow showing the entire PC screen (admittedly compressed) and iPad on-screen keyboard simultaneously without the keyboard overlaying a portion of the PC screen.
2015/08/11 UPDATE:
After a day’s glitch, the latest version (v3, dated 8/11/2015) of Parallels Access remote control software, once updated on both iPad and PC/Windows side, now works with Windows 10 and adds use in portrait mode on the iPad (enabling full, if scrunched, PC screen and onscreen keyboard to both be visible without overlaying each other). Yay!
You mean you would like to have iPad in portrait mode, the Parallels PC-window in the upper part and the keyboard below?
Hmm… Is this an age thing, young and old eyes? I think my 13" MBP in landscape mode is small as it is, and prefer looking at my 27" display if possible. Compressing it to fit in portrait mode result in … what? Six inch?
Does anyone know of a nice magnifying glass that fits on an iPad in portrait mode?
Well, my eyes are old and peering through glasses 
It would be a useful feature at times. The aggravation is… it is supported on the iPhone (6 in my case)… but not on the iPad (Air in my case). Strange. TeamViewer supports it.
I have this:
amazon.com/ZAGG-Backlit-Blue … g+keyboard
…which negates the need for an onscreen keyboard. Again, this is not the perfect setup. But I’ve started using Parallels Access so much for other things. I now find myself getting up from my desk with the iPad and moving ten feet away to the couch and doing a lot of my computing there. I use it to move around the house rather than being bound to my desk. The desktop has always felt like a ball & chain. P.A. is more than just for Scrivener.
As to the philosophical discussions I seemed to have caused, I think we’re in a seismic shift with culture. And it’s world-wide. Many have seen through the lie that capitalism is humanity’s saving, having found cold consumerism not to be the solution for all their woes. Developing is a new Sharing Economy. An no, it is not communism. Uber is in fact an example of the phenomenon. Crowdfunding and Open Source two more examples. Wikipedia is perhaps the most ubiquitous example. In decades past how much would a set of encyclopedias have cost you? Such a shift in the zeitgeist has angered many, and caused many more to fear. Some of the posts here are representative of that anger and fear. But the change is here to stay I think.
Two more options that would be great. I’ve not used either but am considering the second. First, for the budget conscious:
amazon.com/Caseflex-Bluetoot … d+keyboard
And for those with deeper pockets:
clamcase.com/bluetooth-ipad-keyboard-case.html
For the record, these are just standard links, not affiliate links, so I am in no way involved or biased here. I just find Parallels Access to be a good a choice while they hopefully get a working app up and running, and that a keyboard is perhaps essential to making it all work.
There’s a least one well-written book on the subject of which I’m aware: amazon.com/Nonzero-Logic-Des … ds=nonzero
Again, not an affiliate link. From the Amazon page:
In other words, transcend your ego and cooperate, discover that giving to others is giving to oneself…
…or perish.
It occurs to me that we are way off topic.
Getting back to the topic at hand… I don’t post much but often lurk here. I use Splashtop for the same purpose that others have praised Parallels Access. I will give the free version of PA a shot, tho I’ve been happy with Splashtop.
But… Splashtop sucks up my data plan like crazy. I can’t believe that PA will be much better. And I end up in odd places working on my phone, for pity’s sake. Current solutions for offline work with Scriv on an iPad or iPhone are… less than adequate. The workflow with Index Card is manual. It’s too dang easy there to foul up and forget to copy one direction or the other. Text editors don’t have even Index Card’s visibility into synopses or document notes, although the ones with GOOD Dropbox support eliminate the sync problems of Index Card. Never mind the other capabilities of Scriv.
I’ve been writing on the go since I did it with a Palm PDA and an infrared keyboard, syncing to Word, so I’m not likely to adopt a laptop when I already own a desktop Mac and two perfectly adequate mobile devices. I use Scriv. I will keep on using Scriv. And I want iOS Scriv so bad my teeth ache. I will join the stampede to lay down my evil capitalist cash the moment v 1.0 appears in the App Store, because I know that a Lit & Latte product will be both worth the wait and worth whatever they charge.
Apple keyboard (bluetooth) is the perfect partner for iPad. I am not a writer, and have only really written during NaNoWriMo. When I did, over 50% of my writing was done on iPad on the train. It just meant I had to manually cut and paste stuff into my scrivener project.
I can wait (in whispered voice - but hurry up )
As coincidence would have it, my PA trial expired and was looking around for a way not to pay the fee and found Splashtop. Currently I’m using the iPad this way ‘in-house’, which is to say, on my local network, which is free for Splashtop. There was a bit more of a learning curve with Splashtop but now that I’m used to it I like it almost as well. Not quite. It’s also a bit buggier. But it’s comparable.
Instead of Index Card I use Simplenote, keep all my writing in plain text, name the files so that Scrivener organization is more or less mirrored with Simplenote, and further tag all notes of a type. The effect is very good. iPad app or not, I’m keeping Simplenote. Their dark theme is positively gorgeous. And with Simplenote you only have to sync Scrivener. I don’t imagine conflicts would be that hard to resolve in any case. I’m quite happy with the working method I’ve found. I will eventually splurge for a PA subscription and then take the show on the road.
In my experience, nothing else which syncs with Scrivener does it well it enough and seamlessly enough to make the cut. Simplenote only works as I’ve found the hoops I need to jump through to make it work.
Agree that Simplenote does work. My solution, though, is Writeroom. I know it is by now abandonware, but it performs a few things that I like.
When syncing with external folder all files are numbered in the present order of the binder, so that when they are sorted alphabetically/numerically at my iPad the file structure is preserved (which doesn’t work with e.g. iA writer, that only let you sort files in order of latest revised, or Simplenote, that sorts the files after title, which in my case are usually random).
Another, more recent, application that works similarly, is Byword. But with Byword I have to make double returns to finish a paragraph (I know this is the markdown convention, but definitely a deal-breaker for me).
Using an app that is no longer updated has it’s drawbacks. It can’t do some things that you take for granted in modern iOS software, like opening a text in another app. I, for example, would like to be able to open a fountain-format text in Weekend Read to check the formatting. So, if someone has a suggestion for a modern plain text app that in a simple way does what I want it to do, I’m all ears.
I don’t know if this helps, but there is an option in Mac Scrivener ‘Automatically convert plain text paragraph spacing’ which may help your problem with Byword’s double enter key.
From the manual:
Automatically convert plain text paragraph spacing When this option is engaged, Scrivener will intelligently convert your documents’ paragraph spacing to better suit the intended environment. Since plain-text editors cannot display pseudo- spacing between paragraphs, this option will insert a second carriage return to help set them apart from one another. Upon import, these extra carriage returns will be removed for you.
The option is in the File > Sync > With External Folder dialogue box.
Interesting. Thanks. I’ll try it.
And discussion of bluetooth keyboards isn’t?