Will iOS Scriv Work in iPad OS?

This is an important point. In my informal observations, Scrivener users are much more concerned than most with maintaining backward compatibility, often a long way back.

Currently, I use Noteshelf for drawings and handwritten musings, particularly in the early stages of a project. It’s not unimaginable that creating these with PencilKit and storing them in the Research folder might be within the design goal of having all one’s research inside Scrivener. I’m not saying I want it or that KB will see it that way, but it’s conceivable.

I had no idea that this was the case. I am sincerely grateful. Truly. Thank you.

First, I’d like to publicly and humbly apologize for causing you upset.
I’m very sorry. It was not my intent to vex you in any way.

Frankly, it was not my intent to engage you in any of this discussion. I was blowing off some steam with other users arguing over issues that frustrate us, with the reasonable expectation that you keep your own counsel and do whatever you want to do.

In the interest of clarity, I’ll respond to your post. Again, I’m not trying to provoke or otherwise upset you, just clarify my position.

I appreciate excellence in tools. Scrivener, long before it had any screenwriting-specific features, was clearly a tool designed and built with excellence. It had the hallmarks of the “insanely great” product: it was simultaneously innovative and inevitable. It worked so well, it was bewildering that no-one had built it before.

This is exactly why I and other Scrivener users begged, pestered and hectored you about adding screenwriting features. We wanted to be able to use Scrivener’s genius design and workflow to write screenplays.

When you announced that you were adding screenwriting, I (and I imagine the other screenwriters) were elated. It was going to revolutionize our writing careers.

Then we tried it. I was a little disappointing. Compared to other screenwriting software, (even the free ones), it made it more difficult to write. It made it more difficult to edit. Unlike the rest of Scrivener, screenplay processing wasn’t excellent.

You also made it clear that it wasn’t going to get any better. Your heart wasn’t in it. Scrivener was your writing tool, and you don’t write screenplays. It was an aspect of the product that you added to please the users, instead of pleasing yourself.

I don’t want something entirely different from Scrivener. I want Scrivener to fulfill its promise, and live up to its own level of excellence.

I don’t care if you build a custom text engine. I just want screenplay pages to work really well. If you came up with a way to use Apple’s frameworks that solved the current problems, I would applaud your creative and innovative thinking.

My frustration comes from my love of Scrivener. It’s an astounding and powerful writing tool. I’m reminded of this whenever I need to write something that isn’t a screenplay. It’s like photoshop for the written word, honestly. Game-changing.

I just wish the screenplay features were excellent, too.

Again, no insult intended, and apologies for doing so inadvertently.

I understand that you made your best efforts at the time to find the best coder for the job. That doesn’t mean that L&L couldn’t find a top-flight iOS coder if you sought one now. Availability changes, search tool changes, people’s careers change.

I was just making the point that I value scrivenings and collections so much that I would pay more if that’s what it took to fix those features in iOS.

…and hear, hear to KB, AmberV, Kewms and the rest of the L&L team. The public, objective evidence is clear whether this small company deserves admiration. Thanks for the software and inspiration.

I think you have misunderstood my argument.

I have been told by L&L repeatedly that Scrivener’s screenplay formatting problems are due to limitations in the Apple text system, and therefore cannot be fixed. Your (and your team’s) words, not mine.

In order to encourage L&L to find solutions, I have suggested building your own text engine as an adjunct. I pointed out that all of the screenwriting apps I am aware of wrote their own text engine. This was an effort to not give up, to find a way to fix Scrivener.

I believe wholeheartedly that you could solve the screenplay problems using Apple’s text system. You’re an accomplished and innovative developer. I don’t think the limitation is in Apple’s text system. I think the problem is motivation.

Screenwriting is not your passion. You have more enthusiasm and creativity for the parts of Scrivener that you use personally. Despite the problems in Scrivener’s screenplay formatting, you seem to feel that it’s good enough, and doesn’t warrant improvement.

So I agree with you – Apple’s text system is not the problem.

I got the same impression, which is why I thought it was important to be clear on what is a design choice and what is a problem with the framework.

Promise??
Maybe it’s a language thing but to me your explanation isn’t making things better. Honestly, you are coming through as a spoiled child.

I can confirm this. On the Mac side, we just recently got a query from someone who wanted to use Scrivener with Mac OS 10.5. (Sorry, can’t be done. We have no way to issue a license that will work that far back.) Lots of writers are using the least expensive machine they can manage, which often means the oldest.

Katherine

And if a lot of custom code (for a text engine, for example) had to be written, this would certainly not be the case – and that would be even more code that would have to be balanced across the various OS versions for bugs/conditional workarounds/etc.

I think you have misunderstood KB’s argument. I believe he is saying your conclusion “build a custom text system” is wrong.

Yeah, I think it’s a language thing. I was using “promise” meaning “the quality of potential excellence.” Like a “promising student.”

So you could reparse that sentence as:

I want Scrivener to fulfill its potential excellence

Okay, my mistake, and a sincere apology for the harsh words.

A question: are you above referring to Scrivener in general or only the iOS version? (asking because this thread started with a question about iPadOS and Scrivener, not Mac Scrivener)

Apology accepted.

I was referring to both versions of Scrivener. I recognize that I am one of the culprits in derailing this thread. The conversation about our shared frustration with lack of parity in iOS spilled over to my frustration with OSX version’s screenplay formatting issues.

“Our” shared frustration?

But even that part was a derailing as the initial question was “Will iOS Scriv Work in iPad OS?”, not “Will iOS Scriv reach feature parity with Mac OS Scriv?”. And by the way, that second question has been answered by KB with “No”, and he has also given his reasons. So that subject can be closed, right? Pursuing it would be a bit childish, don’t you think?

Ah, but you have received an answer from KB for this part as well, haven’t you? So why do you continue on this subject?

There comes a time when the passionate pursuit of feature tweaks drifts from desire to procrastination and then from procrastination to a favourite excuse.

Every now again I like to remind myself that:

If you have issues with me, I suggest you send me a private message and spare the rest of the forum participants.

Let’s calm down everyone. KB will do what he will do, we can ask what we want, but at the end of the day, it is his product.

Pop, you seem to be a passionate screenwriter. While Scrivener does have some screenwriting features, it was always conceived a novel writing software, mainly because there was nothing like it on the market to help novelist. Not only was this where Keith’s “passion” was - it was where a hole in the market was, but from a business standpoint, you are far more likely to succeed by filling a void than by trying to compete with someone who has a massive and happy customer base. Forgetting questioning Keith’s passion, which is a little presumptuous (correct or not), Scrivener from a business standpoint will always cater first to novelists because that is its primary niche from a business perspective (as evidneced by the professional testimonials), not just KB’s storytelling choice. Trying to be everything to everybody is how we got Microsoft Word - certainly an amazing piece of software, but a jack of all trades and master of none.

There has, however, been a very powerful screenwriting tool long before Scrivener ever existed: Final Draft - available for Mac, PC, and iOS. Based on your comments here and even your profile name, screenwriting seems to be your primary story medium. Even if you also write novels or other story forms in Scrivener, if your main passion is screenwriting, why do you not use the industry standard for it? What does Scrivener do better for screenwriters than Final Draft? It seems like you are trying to use a screwdriver like a hammer even though there is a hammer at hand. Sure, you CAN hit a nail with a screwdriver - especially the butt of it - but it’s not the screwdriver’s fault that it punches nails through wood worse than a hammer. In a pinch, maybe it makes sense short term if you don’t have a hammer with you, but if spend most of your day hammering at nails, it might be best to buy a hammer and save your screwdriver for its intended use instead of asking the manufacture to add a hammerhead to the screwdriver - which could definitely be done, but would make the screwdriver heavier and make the user tired more quickly when used for what it was originally designed for.

One of the best things about Scrivener is its cost. It is something that you can add to your toolbelt fairly cheaply for when the situation calls for it, even if the bulk of your resources go to securing the best tool for your main project.

I don’t. It was a question, out of curiosity. :slight_smile:

I’m going to answer for Pop’s place: Final Draft is really not that good of a piece of software. Agreed, I was on version 9 when I was working with it, but it’s Index Card feature was unstable and not as featured as the one of Scrivener. It really was a mess, and it had weird limitations. Scrivener has all the other features that some screenwriters love but Final Draft doesn’t have: the ability to open research, work with multiple windows, have notes, link to documents, work with keywords, … Final Draft is much more limited, the features were well less thought out and stable, all at 5 times the price of Scrivener.
When I had Final Draft and used it, it did the basics well but I was shocked at how badly some features, like the Index Cards, were implemented. Maybe this changed (they are now at version 11) but Scrivener at the time already did it much better.

Lately, I personally have been using a combination of Scrivener to do all of my groundwork (putting the story together) and Highland 2, a fountain based app made by screenwriter John August, to write the final thing. I do copy back to Scrivener, because I want my projects ‘complete’ in Scrivener. And because I’m an aspiring filmmaker, Scrivener also allows me to have folders with pictures for locations, link to video pieces, etc etc etc.