18th MARCH - LEE'S UPDATE

Hi All,

My sincere apologies for being MIA (missing in action) this week. I’ve been consumed with some urgent personal matters - nothing dramatic, just things that came to a head due to me neglecting them for far too long for Scriveners sake. So, I’ve only got three days coding in. Ian, likewise has been sick for most of the week. So, it’s just been one of those weeks you’d rather not have but it’s almost over now.

So, we’re a few days behind schedule which we hope to make up next week. Scrivener however, is coming along nicely. Despite the 2-3 days we both focused on Scrivener this week we got a lot done. Last count we had closed out on another 30 odd bugs.

We will be looking to delay the next beta release until next week - sorry . I’m tempted to release on Tuesday, but it’s probably wiser to release Friday so we’ll a full weeks worth of bug fixing in the release. We’ll be releasing both for Windows and Linux. We should be very close to 1.0 release by that stage anyway.

I will endeavour to respond to posts on my previous update over the coming weekend.

Thanks for your continued patience.

Lee

Grateful for any improvements and happy to wait. Love the software.

It matters not a jot that you have to find time for yourself - do so - this is an amazing job you are doing, and I, for one, am grateful …

Take care and have a pleasant weekend (which by my reckoning has already started your side of the Globe).

THIS.

No worries Lee. We are happy to keep working with Scrivener when you have something come up that requires your attention, and happy to try out the fixes and new features as you are able to implement them.

You are doing an amazing job, and we’re all cheering for you!!!

Lee, I’ve waited a bit to see what others will say, but I don’t doubt that most of us feel much the same about this.

You and your partner(s) are in an effort in some senses parallel to Charles Simonyi’s long ago at Microsoft, to make a Word that works. Remember that it took them literally years - or at least some of us do remember.

I believe you are each showing effects of a very natural fatigue.

To get such an effort right enough in each of its aspects is always an expanding situation, because of the many details, and the way they hide behind each other.

Probably some of us are also holding items back, because we can see the result of the floods you get, including ours.

I keep seeing these short-fire cut-off dates for releases, and…thinking.

Please, for your sake and ours, make use of the great personal support and resilience of the community.

I know I’ve harped on you about polish, and the importance of that is also reason to take more time.

You have something so substantial here, and so many of us are, quite happily, using it. We are even offering more than once to purchase ahead for the product. You are in excellent communication, and your performance makes us confident. It’s not a situation as in big companies that over promise, then as foolishly go silent and stretch even a first delivery. You are making excellent deliveries.

Let us all go the distance with you – at least some variation of that does seem a wise way. You guys can think about it.

Best to each, and a wish for that balance to catch you - where you can work happily, and relax happily.

Probably, it’s important.

Regards,
Clive

Truly touched emotionally by all your comments. Many thanks.
Lee

Real life > game, as my fellow WoW guildies would say.

Bah, and all this time I’ve been doing Real Life ⊆ Game.

I just want a way to give you money soon. That way I’m sure I actually have the funds on hand so I don’t have downtime from my general lack of cash :mrgreen:

I’m new to Scrivener but it’s already made a huge impact in organizing years of ideas and scribbles.

And thank YOU for your continued work. Scriv is an amazing product and you are keeping up an amazing pace. I don’t think I’m speaking for myself when I say that we’d rather you balance dev time with time to take care of you and yours.

I can’t thank you enough for this incredible Windows version of Scrivener. Today I found out that I’m finallly able to open my Windows projects on my Mac :mrgreen: . This is almost heaven for me, after all you have already improved, such as collections, and zoom. A week longer will be nothing compared to what life is for a Windows user who doesn’t have Scrivener. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Good Job on the rollback fix: It seems to be working perfectly now

Lee, I can’t say anything that hasn’t been said, so I’ll just add another thanks. Your dedication blows me away.

We’re pretty much all amazed and delighted with Scrivener, methinks. thumbs up Keep up the good work and make sure you take care of yourself. I know I get buggy myself when I’ve been working the codes too long

Look mate, someone needs to say it. I know the others are too polite and too proper, so it’s left to me. So… see that computer screen? Turn it off, then call some of your friends, and then head to a bar and have a royally good time. Don’t dare log in here for two days, and don’t dare think about Scrivener. It will be here when you get back, and we’ll be waiting.

• okay, some of us might be tapping our feet in impatience, but you’re all doing such an amazing job, and have been for these few months since ScrivWin dropped on us. You deserve a break. And if Keith objects, we’ll shout at him.

p.s.

Scrivener becomes inactive on 25 March !!!

This will be why it’s so quiet – they’re busy.

Patience is a virtue, Confucius say

C.

Lee,
Taking up narrsd’s well made point @ Sat Mar 19, 2011, The “short-fire cut-off dates for releases” presumably had an original justification in building trust and a sense of reliability amongst users, showing that Scrivener is not one of these “big companies that over promise”. However I think the negatives of cut-offs are beginning to outweigh the positives.

Firstly, I get a picture that Scrivener for Windows releases are highly dependent on one person - you. While this is admirable, it leaves you with little redundancy - no extra sources of labour or resources when things slip - and makes events like this week an instance of what Perrow called a “normal accident”. (Yes, I’m using Scrivener for my thesis). If more people were involved in developing Scrivener for Windows, you could afford the brinksmanship of rendering Beta versions inactive on a regular basis. However you have to deal with facilitating the way things are, when it is just you which in my view makes removing cut-offs an option.

It might have a second justification in setting a deadline you feel you just have to meet. Psychologically I can see the sense in that (my thesis again - who doesn’t panic at a deadline?) but you have a psychological advantage over us. You can do something about it. We users on the other hand are just rendered impotent and anxious.

The third possible justification I can guess at is that maybe you don’t want free buggy versions floating around when the finished paid version is available. That is admirably responsible, but my suggestion is to leave beta’s with no cut off. Just stop making them available for download as you do now when they are superseded. Then you have shifted the responsibility to the user to move from the dodgy buggy version to the new version, rather than taking it on yourself. At about $45, who in their right mind would continue to use that dodgy buggy version after the completed ‘alpha’ comes out? (And presumably with no support other than advice to upgrade.)

We users can all breath more freely and will have our own agency back if you remove the cut-off, and you get to do things such as have weeks as you just did. You can still set a time-frame for intended updates. But it gives you an off-ramp on the speeding freeway of software development. From our point of view, keeping us informed on progress is much more important than keeping us up to date with software.

Just FYI–and I say this as one who’s defended a doctorate in recent memory–putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea. Scrivener is great, but you should be exporting to different formats you can import into a word processor, need be. Those files–and other copious backups–should be kept in safe places, both on your computer, off your computer, and somewhere geographically different to you. (With a friend, a family member, even mailed to yourself on gmail.)

You can never have too many backups, copies of the file, or ways to work on said file, because without some sort of redundancy, you’re well and truly screwed in a catastrophic computer failure.