Scrivener 1.11 public beta 3 now available (13/11/07)

[Typo]

Is anybody out there?... I really need to know how the Edit Scrivenings background colours are working for everyone on Leopard.

Everything fine here. (Leopard / Scrivener 1.11 Beta 3) The alternating colours are the same as always, and they're there in full screen with Edit Scrivenings as well.

(One little thing: Click a folder with a few files / Click Edit Scrivenings -> Only folder is selected in Binder. Then click Full Screen / Return to Editor via Esc -> Folder with all files is selected in Binder. This doesn't affect functionality at all, I just never saw this before.)

[KB]

That's just because the binder is set to show you what was last opened in full screen when you close full screen, as it could be confusing if you have navigated between documents in full screen and then return to the main window to find yourself back where you were before you were in FS mode. Thus, in E.S. mode in full screen, you end up with all of the documents in the E.S. mode being selected...

Thanks for testing! Glad it's all working okay.

Best,
Keith

[Typo]

Sounds logical, and it's useful. Thanks for the explanation!

[AmberV]

Oh! I thought you needed data from Tiger users. E.S. in full screen looks perfect for me. I've tried it quite a few ways; even changed colour preferences while full screen was active. Looks good to me. No re-draw glitches.

[KB]

Thanks! No, it's only in Leopard that the layout methods have changed. There is a new method in Leopard that makes text layout faster for large documents. Previously, the text system had to layout everything up to the part you are working on at the very least. Now, it only lays out what it needs to, which can speed things up. However, in an earlier seed this screwed up the background drawing when I turned this option on, but testing with the GM version seems to suggest that this is now OK... Hence I thought I'd test it out in this beta.

Thanks again,
Keith

[Lord Lightning]

Hi nib

(Love the name, nib - nice inky scrivener feel about it.)

Just a little Mac trick that might help a bit. When you have got CONSOLE up, it will appear as an icon in the Dock at the bottom of the screen. Click on the icon and hold the mouse button down then roll over the item that says KEEP IN DOCK and let go of the mouse when the pointer is over that option.

Then each time you are about to run Scrivener - or any app that you are trying to help the developer with just go to the icon in the dock and click it. it will open and then you can open the other app (Scrivener) and every strange thing that happens will be recorded in the console. Or, you can open it after you run the app and it will also be there in the log window.

A good trick is to start up your mac fresh and go straight to the app causing the problems, start it up and go to the action that causes the error and click on that action. Then go straight to the console when the action fails. This will give the developer a look at just the failed action with your key startup and computer info at the top of the log. That can often help.

Then you just copy and paste the console log as text into an email or post to the developer. It is also interesting to read the console log yourself for the information it shows you about what is called when an app fires up. You will find stuff on your computer you completely forgot you put there.

For example: here is a very short post start-up console log for a Safari hang on OSX 10.4.11.

Mac OS X Version 10.4.11 (Build 8S165)
2007-11-15 12:29:43 +0900
2007-11-15 12:29:44.307 loginwindow[94] FSResolveAliasWithMountFlags returned err = -43
2007-11-15 12:29:48.500 SystemUIServer[221] lang is:en
2007-11-15 12:29:49.293 textsoapHelper[227] TextSoap Helper Version 5.6.1 launched
2007-11-15 12:29:54.050 MagicMenuHotKeyDaemon[233] Started
2007-11-15 12:30:05.409 Safari[234] *** WebKit discarded an uncaught exception in the webView:decidePolicyForNavigationAction:request:frame:decisionListener: delegate: <NSGenericException> decodeDataTo: unknown type descriptor ?@::
2007-11-15 12:30:06.130 Safari[234] *** -[NSAutoreleasePool dealloc]: Exception ignored while releasing an object in an autorelease pool: decodeDataTo: unknown type descriptor ?@::


You can see the err and WebKit references that console identifies. All juicy stuff for a developer. It looks like Text Soap and Magic Menu started OK - the main thing is they are there properly listed in their start sequence ahead of Safari. It looks like poor old Safari can't decide how to navigate to a URL. So it just hangs. Like senile dementia. This tells me that maybe something else could be trying to navigate past Safari for the same URL. Well, on reflection I realise that I am running PicLens. So I remove all traces of that and Safari opens with no problems.

Easy peasy!

Hope that helps a bit

[RobertB]

Edit Scrivenings looks good here as well (Leopard).

[nib]

Hi, Lord Lightning

Thanks for all the CONSOLE info. It was clear, concise, and just what I needed. I’ll do what you suggested and will be ready to send the info to KB if I encounter any more problems.

I’m probably extra slow learning the Mac way of doing things because I’m still using Windows as my main system (when I replace my desktop I’ll go iMac) and I haven’t yet had time to immerse myself in the Mac-iverse.

Iâ€

[signinstranger]

I just had a near-death experience in full screen mode. The screen was completely black and the ESC key didn't work ALT+CMD+ESC brought my Mac back to life. It goes without saying that I can not reproduce this behaviour

[KB]

signinstranger - was that on Leopard or on Tiger? Did anything get output to the Console?
Best,
Keith

[signinstranger]

10.4.11, latest Scrivener Beta. The console said something like

2007-11-16 15:58:18.542 Scrivener[2624] -[NSLayoutManager _fillLayoutHoleAtIndex:desiredNumberOfLines:] *** attempted layout while textStorage is editing. It is not valid to cause the layoutManager to do layout while the textStorage is editing (ie the textStorage has been sent a beginEditing message without a matching endEditing.)

[AmberV]

I am not sure when this happened, but in the latest beta, the label column cannot be collapsed down so that just the colour chip is visible. It can be shrunk so that only the first half of the first letter of the text part of the label is visible, but that looks kind of tacky.

[dixonge]

Beta alternate background colors seem to work just fine in Leopard (10.5.1) for the 1.11 Beta 3 - I did adjust the color to a darker shade of blue as the darker color was almost invisible on my external monitor.

[KB]

Thanks for testing.

Amber - yes, I noticed that myself yesterday, and have fixed it for 1.11. I'm not sure when that happened, either. Weird. I wonder if the padding is different on Tiger? I'll have to check.

As for the full screen issue - that's a weird one. I've checked through for the error indicated, but wherever there is a -beginEditing message there is also an -endEditing message. Moreover, I can't think of a reason this would happen as you go into full screen. I'll check the "launch full screen code".

Best,
Keith

[Mollys Mum]

Here's a REALLY stupid question. I hope you don't have your grumpy head on.

I've held off upgrading to 1.1 because of the glitches. So right now I'm still running the original Scrivener (which I think is the greatest app. EVAH). I don't even know the definition of "BETA," that's how clueless I am.

So when I read this:


[quote] To install, just unzip and replace the version of Scrivener in your Applications folder with this one. [/quote]

I didn't know whether I should upgrade to 1.1 first and then substitute the BETA, or whether I can just go straight to the BETA.

And by "replace the version," do you mean I just drag Scrivener in Applications to the trash and drag the new one into Applications?

Sorry to be such an idiot. I need step by step directions for morons here.