This was in fact one thing I had been considering. The main reason I am wary of doing something like this is that it reminds me of educational word processors that have different “levels” for different ages which turn on or turn off certain features, and I also think that as soon as you put in buttons that open “Advanced” options, it’s like a red flag to some users telling them to stay away. So my first approach will be to try to simplify access to existing options, I think, but I certainly don’t rule this approach out if it could be done right (another problem is deciding exactly which options would be “advanced”, of course…).
I’ve just ordered it from Amazon. I like how it’s less than 200 pages, which is apt - too many authors take 500 pages to lecture on simplicity of design. It’s also nice to receive a recommendation for a book on design from someone who appreciates Scrivener as-is - I have been know to run swiftly in the opposite direction from UI book recommendations made by users writing to us to tell us how Scrivener is just too complex, they’re not going to use it, we should totally redesign it etc (fortunately we get very few such emails; they just tend to stick in the mind more than the nice ones). I also appreciate these points:
Because some things make life simpler only because you first went through a learning curve (I always compare it to driving, and have an image of some of the more vocal “everything-should-be-as-simple-as-Notes-on-iPhone” crowd refusing to use a car because it has too many pedals and mirrors, which could surely be simplified). It’s always good to step back and take a fresh look at your work, though, because as a program evolves, it’s easy to miss where new features could have better been combined with old features.
I very much doubt they’d accept not being able to read any text documents, sync with the desktop version, add new documents, or have the inspector work consistently - there’s a big difference between an early version of software and software that’s not finished.
Just to clarify, I don’t want to rethink anything major. I’m only talking about reorganisation of the Preferences and some of the options that really belong together, along with continuing to refine Compile so that it doesn’t completely baffle new users.
In total agreement ref the OS X simplification purists.
One feature I personally would love to see is a plain text mode so that all writing under the draft folder structure was saved as .txt files rather than .rtf. That would would really suit those of us that love to write all our content using Markdown. And further to that it would be great if the integration with Marked went further so you could preview individual elements rather than the compiled document.
Apologies for slipping in a feature request, I just couldn’t resist knowing that I had your attention.
I’d like to mention that I (as somebody who doesn’t write scripts) never felt irritated or annoyed by the presence of Scrivener’s script-writing features; I am almost not aware of the fact that they exist. If the scriptwriters are happy with them, I would suggest to simply let them as they are.
I second the “Advanced” button for Preferences. Better, I would like a “More/Less” button, that expands the current preference pane, showing the advanced features.
I think I saw something in the Adobe suite. I like it more than buttons opening dialog boxes, and more than too many Preference panels.
I can’t agree more! Maybe I hoped in a more advanced stage of development of iOS version!
However, I’m very fond of the great job you made with Mac and Windows versions of Scrivener. We will wait as needed (as a matter of fact we must wait!), but we want also let you know how anxious we are to see your mobile version!
What do you mean, “new” users? Suddenly us old-timers are forgotten? Well. You may be fishing for compliments but what the hell; here’s one: I’m STILL completely baffled. Now that’s what I call design integrity.
No doubt, plain text is inviting for some writing projects, especially in the early stages. However, I’ve never understood the supposed advantage of semantic formatting. I mean, I get the theory of it, but the practicality never really resonated with me. All that said, I like the new Ulysses, because it takes the emphasis off semantic formatting without limiting it.
It’s a personal choice but the great advantage of keeping everything in plain text is roundtrip editing across multiple platforms and programs. No matter the number of programs and platforms used to edit text, it never gets corrupted in any manner (even plain RTF formatting gets corrupted when moving beween say Windows & OS X or IOS). We’re increasingly in a world where we’re using multiple devices and programs to edit our text so this has become far more relevant in recent years. The fashion for writing using Markdown is especially pertinent to those of us who’s writing ends up on screen based devices (which with the proliferation of e-readers will soon be most of us - it’s not solely for writing that ends up on the web).
Yeah, definitely don’t promote any screenwriting features, Keith. I mean, from a marketing point of view it’s definitely in my, er, your interest.
Speaking completely impartially, of course.
I was interested to read about what you said about the Ulysses team starting from scratch though as that’s something I’ve seriously considered doing over the last few months, but whenever I jot down what I’d do if I did start over it always comes up as an end product which barely resembles the current Movie Draft incarnation. So much so that I feel it should be a completely different product - which got me thinking: perhaps that’s what I should do. Take Movie Draft to the next major release and start again on a separate product. Kinda like having a Ford Fiesta and a Ford Focus.
Now, I don’t know Ulysses’ history, but if U-III (as they’re referring to it - is that in itself markdown for something?) is vastly different from U-II, do you think they should have done something similar, or is U-III more of an evolution from U-II and not a “revolution”?
I’ve also always wondered how to handle a “major” upgrade on the MAS. Do you just end up having multiple versions of your app on there? Most confusing.
To your point about not having to cater for versions older than OS X 10.7: Can you not specify that Scrivener v3 (S-III?) requires 10.7 or greater to run? Surely there’ll be a time when you’ll have to drop support for 10.6.x being that it’s two versions behind the latest OS offering…?
Mark.
P.s. I was really pleased to hear about your iOS progress. Looking forward to checking that out when it’s released, Keith.
I think they’re excellent as they are – the thing is most of the preferences are things most users will never need to touch, but it’s nice to have if you need it. When new users see the vast array of options, they’re bound to freak out a bit, but once they start using it for a real project, they’ll realise they don’t need to go into it to the preferences at all for most of what they do. I bet for the majority of people the problem is not that they can’t find out how to do something they want or need to do.
For example, after years of using Scrivener, I had never before used the outline view to sort a long list of documents into a long list of folders – I did today, and very easily found the ‘Collapse auto-expanded outline…’ preference. I had no idea that was there before and had no need to know before now. I might never have needed it, but I’m very glad today that it was there.
Right, if we are talking about the rebuild using the new Cocoa-compatible RealBasic then you should definitely finish that before going on to a major rebuild. This would give you an income and an incentive for the next rewrite. But are you sure that MovieDraft needs such a rewrite anyway?
It’s vastly different in that, at the moment, it doesn’t do half as much. That’s not a criticism because after a few more iterations then it’ll probably be just as functional. What it brings to the table is synchronisation, versions, and the new Apple way of file-handling. The export still needs a lot of work though.
To keep the old version then your new version will need a completely different name. Apple doesn’t allow more than one version of the same app to be sold on the app store.
Oh, totally agree. Don’t want to turn this into a thread about Movie Draft though, was just commenting on Ulysses starting from scratch and how it had crossed my mind also.
Hmm. Well, half of it is that some of the original code base was written 10 years go when I started writing it as a hobby in my spare time and didn’t really know that much about programming. I’ve learnt a LOT since then, both about programming and what I want from Movie Draft. But anyway…
It’s interesting that they would release a new version which does less. According to their blog they spent 18 months working on this release so I guess most of that time must have been spent reworking the underlying code to act as a better foundation for moving forward with updates in the future?
I just took a look at the MAS and it seems Ulysses III is now the only listed app - which is fine from their point of view - but what happens to the users whom bought a previous version and their computer crashed. Can they still download the old version or would they have to buy Ulysses III? Having never released a major update onto the MAS I’m not entirely sure how that works.
I’m pretty sure I saw Ulysses listed on the MAS a few months ago and it was around $9.99 (or that could have been in £, not sure) so $39.99 seems a heck of a jump from that price point for something which does less. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I think $39.99 is too expensive for such an app, not at all, I’m just having a hard time understanding why they are charging 4 time more for an app which does less. Or am I missing something? (It’s difficult for me to to understand as I don’t know Ulysses 2 to compre it to)
I have been having fun playing with Ulysses. It is an interesting extension of plain text markup. The UI is gorgeous, colour scheme easily changeable.
But, after playing with the editor more and comparing it to Multimarkdown Composer, its deficiencies were more glaring.
There were some concepts that I did not find especially useful but the candler blog had a different take on documents vs. stacks and sheets. I suspect this is more a limitation of my own metaphors — I still can not wrap my headbaround tagging either.
Ulysses is still a v.1.0 product. I do love its UI and the icloud integration. It has to be the best looking plain text editor with Scrivener-like features. I think this would be a great product to see mature.
Reminds me of Scrivener-Gold. I liked the concept, but the initial execution worked very slowly; it has matured beautifully.
