Ulysses III

I have to step in here at this point and share my own personal experiences with Ulysses 3. I have been a long time Scrivener user, first off, and I’ve praised it up and down to everyone I could. I would swear by it, all throughout Grad School. And I give Scrivener much respect as a brilliant piece of software for writers.

Then I began to discover something about the way that I write. I’ve never been a planner. I would have one central idea (I guess a Writer’s Statement) and I would begin my novel heading toward that idea, or even building up around it. It’s off the cuff. And the most important thing to me was just writing. Yet often times, while in RTF software, I would find myself spending more time formatting and setting type and forcing outlines, and all these distractions that kept me from writing.

Then I discovered Ulysses 3. Not only is it geared toward getting the writing down, it makes it easy and brings the joy back. I found myself writing more with Ulysses and my productivity as a novelist increased. It was like a re-birth. I began seeing my projects through to their ends, instead of abandoning them halfway through bogged down under over-planning.

This year I have decided to do NaNoWriMo with Ulysses and so far it’s been a smashing success for me.

With the way Ulysses is set up there’s a “Library” instead of a “Binder”… you can divide it—make groups, filters, chapter sheets, all the necessary tools you need to organize your novel. I find the UI simply breathtaking, and the themes are easy to set, there’s only the preferences you need, no more no less. It’s streamline and deft. It is strictly geared to sticking the writing down. And stick it does.

As far as those who say it is best for short pieces… I strongly disagree with that, and I am living proof that it can handle large novels. I even threw in my 275,000 word opus into it, and am giving it a thrice over in the editing process. Ulysses is formidable.

And as far as output, there are style templates in the exporting process. You can select from various purposes—it will save your work in a novel submission, article submission, French Novel format and many more: styles.ulyssesapp.com. It formats itself in the exporting process. It can convert your plain text sheets and projects to Word docs, RTF docs, and Text Edit, or HTML.

And as far as the split screen and two documents side by side. In Ulysses you can do this by opening one of your projects in a window, resize it, and open your other document and resize it… and you can have two documents on the same screen side by side. Pretty simple.

One more thing… I don’t understand why some people post reviews upon never using a product, or even only scratching the surface of it. I have used both Ulysses and Scrivener throughout large projects and both of them are incredible. And I don’t ever plan on abandoning Scrivener forever. I plan on coming back to it from time to time, and I look forward to the strides that Scrivener makes in the future, and I especially look forward to their IOS app. But for now, I have found my home and writer’s studio in Ulysses 3.

Thanks for this report. I definitely know what you mean about the formatting paralysis, which is why I like using iAWriter so much – no choices! And that’s why I’ve set up Scrivener (which admittedly took quite awhile) in a way that frees me from having to make those choices again. Of course, a writer who owns neither app might have to account for that formatting paralysis in making a choice between Scrivener and Ulysses.

I’d love to hear more about how our fellow Scriveners are using Ulysses, especially if they can detail specific steps in the process, and what Ulysses does for them that Scrivener doesn’t. I don’t know what Keith thinks, but I’d also welcome specific suggestions about what aspects of the Ulysses experience/UI Scrivener might adopt.

As for why

The answer is: I’m trying help my fellow Scriveners by sharing MY experience with Ulysses. Maybe I was able to only scratch the surface, but I spent as much time with Ulysses as its free trial period and my experimentation time would allow. I actually make my living through my writing, and need to devote most of my time to actually writing rather than experimenting with software preferences, and I expect many of the other working writers here would face the same limits, so I hoped to save them some time by sharing my experience. Then I spent more than a little more time that I could otherwise be using to earn money instead sharing the results (with appropriate caveats so readers can judge them accordingly) in the hope that reporting my limited experience would be more valuable to some of my fellow Scriveners than not reporting anything at all. That’s why I invited others who used Ulysses more than I was able to to weigh in as well.

The only way to experiment further would be to drop $30 or $50 on the app, and even then I can’t see what it would do for me that I can’t already do with the way I’ve set up Scrivener. Still, I’d love to hear from Ulysses users how they use the app in ways that Scrivener doesn’t permit (or makes more difficult), and if I hear about some capability it offers that Scrivener doesn’t and might be useful to me, I’d be happy to join Ulysses on another test voyage.

And I was not "posting a review upon never using a product”. I was responding to Brett’s perfectly valid comment about his experience of Ulysses 3, adding my basic agreement with his position while disagreeing on the question of using all the features of an app and on software that requires you to work its way, or, to use a different metaphor culled from a long ago thread in the Linux forum, one “which I have to beat into submission”. Nor was I intending to imply that I presumed Ulysses would come into either of those latter categories — having made it clear that I’d not tried Ulysses, I would never have done such a thing.

I am happy for you and anyone else who have now found that Ulysses 3 suits your needs better than Scrivener does. That I prefer to have my source text and translation open as different panes in the same application interface, rather than two windows opened in the same program — as I used to have with NWP — that is simply a personal preference, and the first feature that wedded me to Scrivener.

Mr X

The reason I switched from Scrivener to Ulysses is that it has an iOS app that syncs easily and reliably with the Mac app. The sync between Scrivener and various iOS apps never really seemed to work properly. Files were doubled or deleted etc…
I prefer a minimalist UI so Ulysses works well for me in this respect; Scrivener also worked well for me as it is so adaptable. I mainly used the full screen view.
Also: Ulysses is all Markdown which syncs very, very quickly. Another plus for me.
I like Scrivener very much and I really appreciate Keith’s work which I have told him several times. It’s just that I needed good syncing.

I had good experiences with syncing Scrivener with WriteRoom, ByWord or Nebulous Notes via an external folder. Obviously, you have to think plain text/markdown when writing in Scrivener.

The reason why I’m testing Ulysses is that it is gorgeous looking, and Daedalus Touch is an interesting new concept. Plus, it seems integration between Mac and iPad/iPhone was done the right way. And it is the ideal Markdown editor when needed. However, I still feel that Scrivener is a more complete solution (something that might be a minus when you only need a place to write).

If only Scrivener had the Binder selection automatically syncronized with the selected document in the Editor, and used text styles as semantic indicators (rather than just visual embellishments), I doubt I would need anything else. But I would still use Ulysses from time to time for how beautiful it looks.

Paolo

Thank goodness for Ulysses. I’ve been using it since its reincarnation as Ulysses III and find it the ideal solution for my multi-valent and “weird” writing. It has an elegant interface, uses Markdown and.txt files, and is nimble and nomadic. I have seamless syncing with my iPad, upon which I now do 75% of my work going to my MacBook and external display for working with images and video.

I was an early adopter of Scrivener and had 6 or 8 multi-year projects in it but I cringed every time I launched it. I knew it wouldn’t be long before its interface reduced me to near-tears.

I’m happy for all of those who love Scrivener but it just doesn’t fit me and the way I work. I extracted what I needed from my Scrivener files and finally threw away the app last month.

Ulysses has, for me, restored the joy of writing.

(Related to using Ulysses, I made the decision “a while” ago to work with .txt files, not proprietary formats, and I started using nvALT to manage all manner of information, notes, workflow notes and course materials for the courses I teach. nvALT also syncs like a dream with my iPad, using Byword and has become my most used app. I followed the method of Michael Schecter of “A Better Mess” and use keyboard shortcuts to assign a topic-title-date name to each file so projects clump together.)

My Grandma used to tell me that it was bad manners to p** on the carpet as I walked out the door.

And did your grandma have reasons to tell you that, I mean, in your case?

Actually, I think it’s OK to politely tell Keith and the rest of us why Scrivener didn’t work as well as something else for some users. It might help them in planning Scriv’s evolution. And no one ever claimed Scrivener would ever be the best tool for everyone, or even for Scrivener users in all cases.

Actually, the definition of this subforum states:

This is a very open community indeed! In fact, It’s very rare to find a developer willing to host other people’s software --and even for competing apps comments in a formal space.

Even though I don’t use Scrivener at this time (while eagerly waiting for the iOS version) I keep coming back to this forum almost daily as it offers so much useful information about many topics related to writing. This is a great place. We should respect the proprietor of the house and, no, we should not p*** on the carpet.

Yes, I hear this occasionally and always find it a little bit odd. There is nothing in Scrivener that forces you to do this. I open it up, pick a template (or not) and just go.

Unlike Scrivener, Ulysses cannot handle automatic chapter headings/numbering and the page numbering is a little rigid. It supports a small number of paragraph types and I can’t add my own. Although Keith always denies it, Scrivener can compile a book of several hundred pages into different formats without having to use a word processor to typeset a single thing. I started the current book with Ulysses, but when I found that I would have to manually number all the chapter numbers myself, I went straight back to Scrivener.

I’m also not sure about having all my writing projects in a single database, but that is a personal preference more than anything else.

I’m a big fan of the CSS stylesheet system that Ulysses uses, but again, I find that small changes to the layout are a lot quicker in Scrivener.

But the typography in the Ulysses editor cannot be beaten. I’m not sure but I don’t think that’s a native framework they’re using; there’s no other app quite like it. I’d love to see it in Scrivener, but I imagine that would be a lot of work.

That’s a fair comment, but if you pick up a new app, the first thing you do is try the most important things you used in your old app. If the new app can’t do them then it’s an immediate deal breaker.

This is also the main reason I’m not using Ulysses III “in production”. I know others find the idea of the centralized database easier, but I don’t get the idea. The Finder is already a database - with a powerful classification system, tagging, and intelligent searching. So, why duplicating it, and making access to individual documents so complicate?

On the other side, I admit that the filing system of UIII is fast and effective. The versioning system is nice, but here, again, I find it to be a duplicate of Time Machine (even if more elegant and meaninful, since you can see the current and old text side by side). However, the snapshot system in Scrivener is far superior, in finding the differences for you.

I’m in love for these two chicks. The one is pragmatic and a great worker, the other is smart and nice. Sharing time between them may become a dangerous addiction? Will they abandon me? Will I end like the protagonist of McEwan’s Pornography?

Paolo

There’s a limited public beta of the Ulysses for iPad starting soon.
ulyssesapp.com/ipad/

I second the sentiments expressed by rochefore (not p*** on the carpet)… Keith is a hospitable landlord and he and this group has encouraged and fostered the development of many (sometimes competing) products. Speaking of myself, my earlier product Published! grew out of the discussions with the very
friendly community here. Also, being a long time Scrivener user, I loved the cork-board interface of Scrivener. Its influence can be seen in the “Pins” view of MyStacki.com.

(sidenote about the Markdown and Rich-text options-- when developing Mystacki.com, I initially only had markdown. The Idea was that I would be later building iPhone/iPad interfaces and Markdown would be the best option from these devices (no formatting, text only going to and fro etc) My teenage daughter was my first “beta” tester and she declared that “Markdown was no fun” – she wanted fonts, colors, smilies etc… so I now have both markdown & rich text as options!)

It’s out—well, nearly:

ulyssesapp.com/blog/2015/01/ulysses-for-ipad/

ulyssesapp.com/blog/2015/01/writ … es-recipe/

ulyssesapp.com/ipad/

I’ve been beta-testing it, and it’s solid—still missing a few features, like word count goals, but they should be there by the time it’s released.

I’m loving Ulysses.

However, I’m hating more than ever iCloud. Apple has never been (at least, not in the last decade) very careful about customer’s data integrity. Syncing between my two Macs and two iPads has been a nightmare. Sometimes, the files simply do not appear for several minutes and after repeated tries.

On the contrary, the years syncing Scrivener with WriteRoom and other editors via Dropbox and Box has been faultless, effortless, fast. I really hope Scrivener for Mac and the iPad will sync via these third-party services, in addition to iCloud. They may not be as easy, but at least they work.

Paolo

Yeah, we’re using Dropbox for the initial launch, and will look into other services (such as iClod) once we have time to do so. I can say in my own testing, even over my hideously slow home network connection, that syncing is quite fast and once it is up on Dropbox it is available immediately on the devices, no internal server waiting time as it sounds iCloud may suffer from. Really, it’s identical to what you have experienced with external folder syncing in terms of responsiveness.

Just a comment on cloud syncing (I haven’t used Ulysses – can’t justify the cost). I disagree with your comment about Apple’s approach to data integrity as I have found iCloud syncing to be rock solid. Since the transition from MobileMe* to iCloud, I have not had any corrupted files, data loss or unexplained conflicts. The same cannot be said of my experiences with either DropBox or Cubby. On the other hand, however, iCloud is not fast and I resonate strongly with your description of frustrated waiting. While iCloud sometimes syncs almost instantaneously, at other times it can take from several minutes to an hour for changes to sync. My only beef with iCloud is that there seems to be no way to trigger synchronisation on demand – you just have to wait until Apple is ready to pass on your data.

[size=85]*MobileMe was a different story: trying to piece together 6 years of corrupted calendar data from backups is not something easily forgotten. So when you repeat the experience… [/size]