The L&L Blog
Gearing up for 1.0
Well, as of today I am putting the finishing touches on Scrivener's Help file (though it needs proof reading; it is very fortunate that the users of Scrivener are writers - a naturally pedantic* bunch, meself included).
What does this mean? Well, hopefully it means that Scrivener should go on sale sometime during the week beginning 22nd January, but most certainly before the end this month. There are a couple of very minor annoyances I need to iron out of Scrivener first (a day's work at most - er, hopefully, at least), and I ought to release a beta 6 in the next day or two so that beta-testers can start proof-reading the Help file, I suppose... But that is really it.
Not that Scrivener is entirely perfect (yet), but it is pretty damn near, in my own rather biased opinion. That is, perfect for me at least - but then that is the whole benefit of writing your own software. At this stage it does everything - in fact more - than it was originally intended to do, so by that definition, 1.0 is complete. There are a few things that would be nice, but which I have managed to say "no" to for version 1.0: for instance, the ability to view scrivenings in an arbitrary (non-binder) order; project notes and references combined into the inspector (the current Project Notepad is really only a pitstop); the ability to search snapshots; a binder HUD in full screen... and so on and so forth. All nice, but not necessary for 1.0. And I have got better at saying "no... for now" to suggestions recently, which is very important if we are to make it to 1.0 at all (it has been a year-and-a-quarter since Scrivener Gold - back then just "Scrivener", before it was down-graded - was first released in beta).
It's been an interesting and gratifying journey to 1.0. I have had very little negative feedback, and a lot of positive and constructive feedback. Even better, I have had some published authors start using Scrivener, so I was able to bend their ears about writing and get some very good writing advice (a very big thank you to Neil Cross and Michael Bywater, both of whom very generously replied to my questions with long e-mails containing excellent advice, and to Michael Marshall Smith who, along with Neil Cross, has given me a great testimonial for Scrivener's web page).
So now it is on with using Scrivener myself. We've booted The Girl (now nearly one) into her brother's bedroom, and I bought a £20 compact writing desk from Argos which now sits exactly where her cot did in our room. So now, really, all I need is talent. D'oh!
*cf. Post on "pedanticism"/"pedantry" below. Wasn't it Churchill who said, "Pedantry is something up with which I shall not put"? (If not, no doubt somebody will take delight in correcting me.)
Beta-a-go-go
Phew. After just over a month of very focused work on Scrivener, I'm ready to release the new beta... I'm looking forward to hearing what the beta-testers make of it. Even more than that, though, I'm looking forward to importing my work into it and using it. I've just finished writing the new tutorial, so it's now just a matter of writing the new readme file and creating the DMG. Not sure whether it will go up tonight or tomorrow, but it will definitely be up before tomorrow night (excepting any major disasters).
Postcard from the West Country
See Cornwall? No, actually you can't - not on the weather map, anyway, as it's covered by cloud. It doesn't matter what time of year I come here, it's always clouds and rain interrupted by sunny spells. Not that I'm complaining. Or maybe I am.
It has been a good and bad week or two so far - mostly good. Good because I'm on my hols. Bad(ish) because my other half wrote an article for the Independent last week that was harldy, er, Apple-friendly. That wasn't the bad part. That bad part was that I couldn't resist the urge to flick through some Mac websites I frequent a couple of days afterwards; I wish I hadn't. To see the name of the mother of your children abused in such puerile ways is hideous. It didn't help that the Independent subs butchered her article so that it started with the words, "When I switch on my MacBook, the first thing I see is the happy Mac icon..." (or some such). She didn't write that, they did. As soon as we picked it up, I said, "You are going to be crucified for that. Every Mac user out there is going to read that first line and say, 'No, it isn't.'" And unsurprisingly, such was the case. Many assumed that the writer of the article didn't use a Mac, was an Apple-bashing liar, and so on. But the article made some very valid points about recent Apple QCA issues and their tendency to treat the press with disdain. She tried hard to give Apple the opportunity to respond to everything in the article, but they weren't interested in getting anyone to speak to her personally, other than to send her previously-published press-releases. So it goes, as old Kurt Vonnegut would say. Ho-hum.
Anyway, that's the defence of my better half done; not that she particularly cares - hell, she got paid decently for the article. It's just that I happen to care when I see her name slandered on websites that I, as rather keen Apple user (and actually, she is a Mac-fan herself, she just happens not to worship at the temple), frequent.
As for Scrivener: it really is going well. I just finished writing the Spotlight importer today. It was a pain, but it only took a day to do, so I'm not complaining. Services support is done and dusted, so is the search function, find and replace, and several features that I said would never make it into 1.0. Another month or two, and there should be a beta release... I'm looking forward to it. It's been over two-thirds of a year since the last beta was released, and I seriously think that this version is a downright good program, and holds its own against some very stiff competition.
Anyway, back to scouring the Cocoa forums for a tidbit I need.
Full Screen: Evolved
As promised, a couple of screenshots of Scrivener's new full screen mode. It's not finished yet - I mainly just have to hook everything up - but these should give you a good idea of how it's going to look. The first screenshot shows how full screen mode when you launch into it, with no extraneous elements visible. And don't worry, although this is the default appearance, all colours are customisable, so you can always get that retro green-text-on-black look if you really want. The second screenshot shows full screen mode with the inspector (which allows you to view and edit document notes and keywords), the keywords HUD (which allows you to edit and assign project keywords) and the tool panel (which acts like the one in iPhoto) visible.
Full Screen Ponderings and the Nature of Shareware
(Note: It's late and I can't be bothered right now to go through and check for spelling errors and missing words, so please excuse any poor grammar.)
During the coding of the new full screen mode for Scrivener (still unfinished, grr), I suddenly realised that I'd made a silly mistake: the new keywords panel in Scrivener is a HUD panel, much (read "just") like the keywords HUD in Aperture. HUD panels look fantastic in full screen, and pretty cool out with normal windows, too. My mistake was that although the HUD panel looked great in the new full screen mode, you couldn't actually do anything useful with it. You use the HUD panel to assign keywords to a document by dragging them from the HUD to either the document in the binder, the document's header view, or the document's keywords list - none of which are visible in full screen mode. Whoops.
Of course, I could just disallow viewing of the keywords HUD in full screen mode, but then there would be absolutely no point to it having the HUD look. Instead, it got me thinking: perhaps there should be a way to assign keywords in full screen mode. But what would be the best way of doing it? Full screen should be a "no distractions" environment, so I didn't want to bring in too many other visual elements. But then I had to question, what does "no distractions" mean in the context of Scrivener? Really, it just means that you don't want to get distracted by other programs, by e-mail, by the internet and so on. It doesn't mean that you don't need access to other parts of Scrivener. This got me thinking more: what are the bare essentials that you would need in full screen, so that you could work on one document at a time without having to leave full screen unless you wanted to start outlining? In other words, if you wanted to concentrate on writing in full screen, what would you need?
Well, you wouldn't need the synopsis (index card) - that is more for outlining purposes. You could add that when you came out of full screen, and full screen should not be about worrying over the wording of a synopsis. And you wouldn't need the references table, because if you want to open up references then you are going to need the main window or another application. But you might want the notes, so that you can refer to your ideas and scribblings. And you might want the keywords list, because as you write, you might think, "I've just added Emily to this scene, I better add her name to the document's keywords."
Thus, full screen now has an optional HUD that allows you to enter notes and keywords. On top of this, of course, you can always fade the background to view other windows (or Scrivener's main window) if you so wish. It looks pretty swish, I think - screenshots tomorrow, if all goes to plan.
My other thought for the day is this: why is it that when users spend big bucks on a piece of software such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop they do not expect regular updates adding killer new features, but when they spend only a few dollar on a piece of shareware, they expect regular updates and regular new features? This is not a dig at my users in anyway, who have helped shape Scrivener into something I truly love from something with which I was not entirely satisfied, I am just genuinely curious. Actually, though, I think the answer is obvious. There is no way you can get near the developers of MS Word or Adobe Photoshop (actually, that's not entirely fair; the MS Word developers do keep an interesting blog on the MS site - but there's no way you are going to influence the direction of Word). Whereas, with a shareware app, you might find something that you find has some potential for you and you can actually contact the developer and try to sway him or her. Either way, I'm not complaining. Much of the swaying I have had has made Scrivener into a better program. But there will come a time when I will have to sway a little less, and write a little more.
MacBook Problems Continue
Argh! I don't believe it! (As Victor Meldrew would say.) I'm on my third top case and trackpad for this ruddy MacBook, and now they are starting to discolour too - after less than a week. This is ridiculous. Will I have to send my MacBook back to Apple every fortnight forever just to make sure that it doesn't look like a dirty pancake? What was the point of them agreeing to repair it (twice) if they didn't have replacement parts that were immune to the same problems? Is it just me? Do I have corrosive, yellow sweat? I think not... My white T-shirts and work shirts don't turn yellow. My white iBook never turned yellow. But this MacBook... It would seem that there is a whole batch of faulty plastic still out there, and the Birmingham repair centre is still using them. Very frustrating. Anyway...
One more interface task to go...
The new Scrivener interface is coming along nicely. All that remains now is building the full-screen window and control panel. After that, I am ready to start bringing in all of the “brain code” from Scrivener Gold and the never-released Scrivener 0.3b. That will take a couple of months, but once it’s done and the bugs have been ironed out through beta-testing, 1.0 is ready for release.
Buggy monitor...
I think this is the funniest post to the Apple support forums I have ever seen:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=562848&tstart=15
I feel sorry for the guy, I really do, but I couldn't help laughing my head off. Here's a direct link to the YouTube vid, in which you can see the guy try, but fail, to swat the insect living inside his monitor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tu_yBEZ-is
I'm going to make no jokes about buggy machines... Oh, wait - I just did. And in the title too. Whoops.
When I was teaching at Harvard, darlings...
In today's Grauniad, Zadie Smith writes about the "genesis" of her recent Booker-prize winning novel, On Beauty. Some quotes: