I last worked in Scrivener for Windows some years ago and now need to work with some projects created at that time. I was using version 1.8.6.0, registered.
As I recall, there was a change made in the 1.9.x.x update that for some reason led me to hold off on updating, so I never got beyond 1.8. Maybe it was a change in the project format…?
I opened a copy of one of these projects in the current S3 release candidate, and it updated it to the new format, which I understand is not backwards compatible. The project opened and the program worked just as I remember it, though I’ve not explored too deeply.
I’m trying to decide how to proceed in opening and working with these older projects. Should I continue with 1.8, update the project to 1.9, move to S3 in prerelease.
Here are the [release notes page](literatureandlatte.com/scri … os=Windows), for your reference, but my guess would be you were holding back to avoid a project format upgrade (this would have been for mobile sync support), maybe because you were using Linux as well as a PC at the time? Honestly, while some bugs have been fixed since then, there probably isn’t a huge need to upgrade to 1.9, especially if you’re eyeing the beta as a replacement.
If you choose to upgrade to the latest version, be advised to have your registration details handy. We switched vendors around a year ago, and had to swap out all of the registration code. In theory it should pick up your activation from before, but I’m not sure how well they ever got that working in the end.
And of course for that reason if you were to lose the activation or switch machines, you would have to upgrade since the old version you are using can no longer contact the license servers (the old vendor went out of business).
Those two things, project format and registration, are the only two things that I think are worth consideration. It wasn’t long after that point that they switched over to full time v3 development.
Myself, I’d go for the v3 pre-release. It’s quite solid, being toward the end of the development cycle, and a lot of people have been using it exclusively for a while now. In terms of polish and design completion, it’s an evolutionary step up from v1.
Thank you, AmberV for that helpful reply. Just the perspective I was looking for.
I think for now I’ll stay with 1.8 for the projects that were last worked on in that version, with the exception of the one I’ve already opened in S3. It will make for an interesting reacquaintancing with Scrivener. Looking forward to seeing the implementation of styles in S3.
I did notice, while looking at an S3 project in Windows Explorer, that the folder structure for the rtf content files has been completely redesigned. Did that happen in 1.9? I can see how there’s no going back after that!
Is there a forum discussion anywhere on why the project structure was changed in that way? Is that how it works on the Mac side?
No, that change was just to make it compatible with the iOS version of Scrivener, and the v2 for Mac version of the time. It’s a relatively minor change, except that the .scrivx file started mirroring the name of the .scriv folder it’s contained in, instead of always being “project.scrivx”.
The version 3 format is the one that completely reorganized the folder structure. But do keep in mind that going to (or beyond) 1.9 will make an updated project that can’t be opened in 1.8.
This here is probably the best explanation made for it. In short, serial numbers bad, unique id numbers good—at least when it comes to sync.
The transitional format update, made for iOS, basically made it so the old format provided and tended the new internal file addressing scheme that would one day replace it. The iOS version was never coded to understand “21.rtf”, rather the incremental update added a UUID for it to use instead (among a few other tweaks).
