Scrivener for Windows Phone

[leighe]

Ok, so I know this is going to be a long way off given that the obvious focus for a mobile platform would be iOS and then Android, given the userbase of Scrivener and the various platforms, so I don't expect anything anytime soon, but what are the chances of getting Scrivener on Windows Phone?

It would be a simple enough process as far as the programming goes because it can easily be copied (and modified where needed) from the existing Windows source code, and once you have the layout planned based on iOS that would be simple enough.

So like I said, it would be nice to have at some point in the future.

[AmberV]

It may not be as simple as it seems, since the Windows version is written using a cross-platform toolkit called Qt. That is required for it to function, so thus Qt would need to be available on the mobile Windows platform, and in a rather full capacity at that. Like you say though, it is a rather low priority right now, and that will probably work to our advantage as the time it takes to get to the point where we could think about it would be enough time for the world to decide if Windows Phone is going to be the next iOS, or another WinCE.

[izzikat]

Hi! I'd just like to add my adamant support of this idea - I am actually an employee of Microsoft working on the Windows Phone, and have actually started to consider trying my hand at a third-party app. The developer platform for WIndows Phone has REALLY improved and I think a "Scrivener Lite" - basically a note saver/text-only editor - would make users very happy.

I'd be happy to help with anything I can in order to make it an easier process! I have contacts, knowledge, enthusiasm, etc.

Basically, my Windows Phone experience would be utterly complete if I could make notes about my novel on the go.

[The Great Edhead]

How about an android version? Android has the largest market share (last I heard it was over sixty percent) of any mobile operating system so speaking from a purely profit based stand point it makes the most sense... Windows phone has a market share of less than ten percent.

[KB]

How about an android version? Android has the largest market share (last I heard it was over sixty percent) of any mobile operating system so speaking from a purely profit based stand point it makes the most sense... Windows phone has a market share of less than ten percent.

From a purely profit-base stand point, iOS is the winner, as although Android has a slightly larger market share these days, iOS is still the most profitable for developers by a fair margin.

It would be great to look at all of these platforms, but it wouldn't make sense for us to jump feet-first into all these markets at the same time. We are building the iOS version carefully (and painfully slowly, I am aware ), and that will be the testbed for everything else, ensuring we get the touch interface and syncing right. So between that and getting the Windows version up to speed, it will be some time before we can think about Android, let alone the Windows Phone, but that's not to say we don't want to do these things.

All the best,
Keith

[Jaysen]

KB,

Stop being logical and thoughtful.

[izzikat]

Totally feel ya, KB. You gotta go about it the way that makes the most financial sense and you're right, iPhone is the clear winner there.

The one thing I will say about Windows Phone that is beneficial over what I've experienced on both iPhones and Android devices is that it can handle loading text better than either of the other two platforms. I wrote my NaNoWriMo novel last year on an iPad with a keyboard, and the worst part of it wasn't the device size...it was the fact that I had to break a document under 25k words into six parts just to get it to load. My Windows Phone can handle those (now much larger) documents within seconds. It also does organization trees much better, in my opinion, than iPhone at least (I don't have enough Android experience to compare).

Anyway, good luck with all of your pursuits! If you do release an iOS version I may very well pick it up for the aforementioned iPad...

[AmberV]

Well one thing about mobile Scrivener is that it will essentially give you access to your Binder. So the whole issue of trying to edit unwieldy 25k+ word chunks of text would be kind of moot given how Scrivener encourages much smaller section sizes to begin with.

That aside, this is generally more down to the software and how well it has been optimised, for this kind of stuff. You can't really benchmark hardware or the OS by testing two entirely different programs with on two different devices. On the iPad, I compiled a 240,000 word .docx (not breaking it up into 25k chunks!), then loaded it into Pages for iPad and there were absolutely no performance issues. It took a few seconds to load it, naturally, but I could edit at full speed and scrolling was not a problem.

[The Great Edhead]

How about an android version? Android has the largest market share (last I heard it was over sixty percent) of any mobile operating system so speaking from a purely profit based stand point it makes the most sense... Windows phone has a market share of less than ten percent.

From a purely profit-base stand point, iOS is the winner, as although Android has a slightly larger market share these days, iOS is still the most profitable for developers by a fair margin.

It would be great to look at all of these platforms, but it wouldn't make sense for us to jump feet-first into all these markets at the same time. We are building the iOS version carefully (and painfully slowly, I am aware ), and that will be the testbed for everything else, ensuring we get the touch interface and syncing right. So between that and getting the Windows version up to speed, it will be some time before we can think about Android, let alone the Windows Phone, but that's not to say we don't want to do these things.

All the best,
Keith

Whoops guess I should have phrased that a bit differently, I wasn't trying to suggest that android development was more profitable than iOS I merely meant to point out that in comparison to Windows phone, the android platform would be the far more profitable option.

KB,

Stop being logical and thoughtful.

What?! You mean to say someone is being logical on the internet?! My goodness! Is that even possible?