I downloaded this on the weekend. Haven’t really written much in it but so far, but from an interface perspective, its the nicest writing app I’ve tried on the ipad.
What is interesting is it’s use of the paper stack metaphor to replace the normal file management systems used by other apps. This is especial interesting in-terms of the apple keynote yesterday, where apple reiterated it’s stance that it is out to be ride of file systems as a way of managing documents.
Hard to say how this system would hold up to lots of documents, but it works simply, quickly and intuitively. Still have yet to really do any serious writing on the ipad, but as a device for notes and thoughts, it is useful.
I tried it. I stopped using it, though. I found the navigation between single notes too tedious when you have more than, say, three or so. And Daedalus seems to use strange characters to separate the title from the text, which cause trouble (text is lost!) when syncing back and forth with Scrivener. It also required a flat folder structure (only one level deep) too work, and requires to keep it’s files in Daedalus’ own folder on Dropbox.
I hate it too, but actually just to be fair, you can have the stacks in whatever dropbox folder you choose, but then it is within that one folder after you made up your mind.
and it does not have to be “flat” you can choose as many subfolders as you like in terms of “subfolders” in the dropbox or just stack represented in daedalus.
I just wanted to post that, despite the previous posts for one of the older versions, Daedalus has really grown. I’ve been using it to work on a project that I have synced with an external folder in Scrivener and so far, so good. being able to sync on a Stack by Stack basis is a killer feature for me.
currently the best iOS app for writing, has all needed features, no other app is that complete (but hard to sync with scrivener with several projects).
So Daedalus can sync with Scrivener now without any problem? I agree that it is the coolest app for writing on the iPad. But doesn’t Daedalus still have a problem with the way it handles titles? It seems to change the title of the saved plain text files, as well as to add the title (and weirdo symbols) to the file itself. I would LOVE to commit to Daedalus. How do you handle this issue?
I haven’t noticed any syncing issues or weird issues with titles. I just synced everything over from Scrivener and then pointed a stack at it in Daedalus. I’ve synced both ways with edits and no issues so far. Maybe they fixed the issues?
I’m glad it works for you! There must be hope for me then. But I tried it after the latest update, and the title of each section was included as the first line of the document, following by something like {%$------- . I’m not sure why. You didn’t see any of that when you opened the files in Scrivener?
I have no problems with the new version of Daedalus either. It’s quite nice! I turned on the button row and added (( … )) {{ … }} sets so that it is easy to add Scrivener annotations and footnotes; added some useful MMD stuff. Looks like it will be a nice Scrivener companion, assuming the issues described here are not widespread—I don’t see anything like what you are describing with the changed names and weird character patterns in the file. Do they look that way on the disk prior to syncing, too?
After seeing these comments, I started to think there was a problem on my end. And I was right! I uninstalled, and reinstalled, Daedalus Touch, and now it works perfectly. Beautiful. For some reason it was still acting like it did before the updates. Since its behavior was no different than before, it didn’t occur to me that I might need to reinstall it. Thanks everyone!
I bought Daedalus a few days ago, but I didn’t try to sync it. I’m a complete MMD ignorant (I’m a bit lazy), but let me try to understand. Basically, if I use MMD codes (for bolds and italics, for example), when I open the document back in Scrivener it will immediately recognize the formatting I set in Daedalus?
Oh, no. Maybe some day we’ll find a good way to do that (there are some practical issues) but I write in MMD myself for everything, so I want the codes to come back in untouched. So for me, the way I write, I really like Daedalus’ keyboard as it works very well for MMD.
Thank you, Ioa. I’ve been testing Daedalus all week, but I have syncing issues. I already reinstalled the app, but it doesn’t trully behave. Can anyone share your syncing settins on Daedalus, so I can check what am I doing wrong?
Meanwhile, I’m going back to Notebooks for syncing.
There wasn’t anything fancy that I had to do. Basically I just gave it my login and password, then I tapped the Import icon in the toolbar (second from right), and selected “Import from Dropbox”. This gave me a folder navigation tool, which I used to drill down to the sync folder. I select the “Draft” folder for the project I wish to edit, and it downloads all of the text files in that folder to a Stack. At that point I can just edit freely. The Sync icon on the left side of the toolbar will acquire a dot. That means I’ve got unsynced changes. So when I’m done editing I can just tap that and any files I’ve touched will be updated on the server.
You can monitor the sync “health” of Stacks on their main overview. At the bottom it will state that it is a Dropbox stack, and there will be a checkbox beside it if the iPad and server are in agreement over the latest version of the files.
Thank you, Amber. I was wondering if my problem is with the deletion and ordering settings.
I succesfully synced a folder with Daedalus, and Scrivener of course, but the problem is that there were four documents that were sort of “unerasable”. I erased them from the app and reappeared on Scrivener, after they had been erased from Scrivener, erased from the folder and from the app. Besides, when a document has been deleted from Dropbox (by Scrivener or manually), but has not been deleted from the app, it keeps uploading it, creating duplicates, and so on. The documents I was trying to erase were precisely these duplicates. But there is more: one of them was a scene that I was trying to update, but couldn’t, because instead of inserting new text on the right document, it created a new one. When synced into Scrivener, the document that should have been synced was intact, but there was a new document in the binder, with a new name…
In the end, I just gave up. I guess I should start a clean sync, from scratch, in order to find out what’s happening.
Since you’ve been having a good experience, one question: what happens when you reorder the project from the app? Will it rename the files? Will Scrivener recognize that reordering? Just wondering…
Besides, I also have the problem of the bizarre code that appears randomly in some documents… It’s the same thing already reported {%----------
Well… it must be something I’ve done… I’ll try again later.
Oh okay, re-ordering isn’t going to do anything as the folder sync is just a content syncing tool, not an organisation tool, since it has to convert a hierarchy to a flat list. There wouldn’t be a logical way to convert flat list drags back into hierarchy. So even if Daedalus did magically change the file number for you, that wouldn’t accomplish anything. These numbers are not used, they are only there to keep things in order if you prefer.
With the weird character glitch, try uninstalling Daedalus and then downloading it again. Someone else solved the problem that way. It seems the updater doesn’t work flawlessly in some cases. I didn’t have this problem for whatever reason. Perhaps it is a localisation thing.
I hadn’t even tried the deleting thing yet. There might very well be issues there. That sounds like something they need to figure out, but its a tough one to solve. Consider it this way, if you delete a file from that folder and then sync with Scrivener, the same thing would happen. It is very difficult to logically determine the difference between a deleted file, and a new file. They both look the same from the host program’s point of view—some file in its system that isn’t on Dropbox for whatever reason.
The solution is just to not try and manage so much from the iPad. It’s the content editor, but little else. If you make structural changes to what is or isn’t included, then do so from Scrivener and then delete and redownload a fresh stack in Daedalus. I think anything else would be too confusing since it maintains its own internal storage system rather than just loading files directly off of the Dropbox server for editing. That method of course has its advantages as you always have access.
Thanks for the answer. I already deinstalled and reinstalled. As for the syncing issues, Notebooks works smoothly. I was just hoping Daedalus worked as well. So, for now, I’ll trust only on Notebooks for syncing.