Again, we will not be announcing a release date for Windows Scrivener 3 in advance.
Again, you can find both the latest beta and the list of changes from previous betas here:
https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/scrivener-3-0-beta-release-candidate-10-download-links-change-list/38228/1
Katherine
Responding just to this excerpt, I don’t think we know what the prevailing assumptions are just from a limited number of critical or aggrieved posts here. Without some research, we can’t know what prevails in the majority of users’ minds or feelings. Quite a few of us seem to be carrying on with v. 1.9, or with the beta as it currently exists and continues to improve.
Right now those are the most vocal assumptions. A very, very small segment of Scrivener users ever actually utilize the forum and among those the largest groups are those who pop in to complain or seeking help. When you poll from that select group of users, of course, the prevailing opinion is going to be negative, but they only represent a very small group of people.
Some folks, like myself, understand how the development process works, especially for a complex piece of software like Scrivener, and appreciate that Literature and Latte is trying to bring us the most stable, feature-rich Scrivener they possibly can.
I know it’s become something of an itch to scratch, checking if v3 for Windows is out yet, but…
It really makes no difference to me whatsoever. I’m using the v3 beta very happily, have been for ages, and if it suddenly became non-beta my writing life wouldn’t change one iota. I probably wouldn’t notice, apart from the fact that I’d have to pay again, as it’s so long since I bought v1.
I’ve had a few sites pushing me to pay MONTHLY for desktop software that looks similar to Scriv - $15 every month, and that’s not even including an online version for which they’d have to keep servers running .That’s a few hundred dollars I’ve saved from using the Scrivener beta.
OK, I understand that some people might be scared that a beta might break everything, or there might not be a new beta if a meteor lands on Cornwall, but there’s no need to fear, because:
a) it won’t happen - the betas are incredibly stable and have been for months.
b) the files live on your PC - if for any reason you can’t open Scrivener in the future, they’re all there, every chapter in its own folder along with its synopsis text file. And there’s a manifest file describing the order of the chapters.
Sure, you might not want to go digging, but the point is that nothing is lost - someone will write a mini program to extract all those docs in the right order if the meteor hits. I will, if no-one else does.
c) if something spectacularly disastrous happened, like the new version of the beta wiped all the files, you could just look in your backup to get them back. Because you must take backs of anything you’re writing, even if you use notepad, you still don’t KNOW that your work won’t get corrupted.
The other thing is that there might be bugs in the beta which affect things I don’t use very often, I guess compiling might be one? But it doesn’t affect me, I write a lot more than I compile. If that’s a blocker for you, then fair enough, it’s a bummer. But I’m not seeing hordes of angry villagers on here complaining about the beta’s compile options, it seems more that people are just annoyed that they have to wait for something, which is only natural.
My advice is - just forget it’s a beta, unless it’s absolutely unusable for you. Treat it as a wonderful piece of free software that you have to update occasionally.
I think L&L could be a little bit more visible with the updates - release candidate notes tucked away on a forum aren’t very findable, so it seems like the ‘official’ status update is the Blog, which hasn’t given an update on Win v3 for nearly eight months. Plus, the relevant forum post makes it look as if it hasn’t been updated since January 15th, so people might not be aware of the great bug-stomping that’s going on. Maybe a release candidate update on the main site now and then would help.
Thanks to L&L for a great writing tool, and good luck with the bug fixing.