Lately, though, I've been jonesing for my good old iMac with its pretty little keyboard and big, glossy screen.

Then I imagine myself sitting hopelessly at my computer desk, getting taunted by my meager word count and wondering how the hell I'm supposed to break 1000. With the simple approach of just keeping a notebook, getting to 1000 can feel much less threatening. Currently, I can get between 175-195 words on a page, so that pretty much just means that I do about 5 1/2 pages per day, which goes a little faster than one might expect. And it's nice to steal a few minutes of writing time at my day job when nobody's looking.

I'm doing all of my worldbuilding and character development stuff on Scrivener and finding that I really miss being able to just tap-tap-tap and have everything organized. Damn, I love Scrivener. I have been able to say goodbye to the weird wall of index cards forever.

Now I'm considering taking a break from the notebook for a bit and moving back to the iMac. It would be nice to start thinking again in terms of scenes, rather than chapters, but I don't know.

I suppose both methods have their own strong merits.

Literature and Latte - Scrivener

Being of a certain age, I do much of my writing on a computer. A two and a half year old 15“ Mac Powerbook, since you ask.

A few months ago while slogging through a redraft, I snapped. Traditional word processors (Word and NeoOffice) were driving me nuts. For longer pieces they were too cumbersome.

That’s when I found Scrivener.

Designed by a similarly frustrated writer, it is a quantum leap forward from traditional word processors. Think of the difference between accessing information via a scroll and bound book for some idea of the advantages.

Scrivener allows for non-linear writing and editing. Subdivide projects into chapters, pages, even paragraphs should that be your thing, and jump straight to the relevant section. Each section can then be moved around and saved independently.

Further features that writers will appreciate include index cards (complete with digital cork board), automatic outlines, full screen green on black editing, dual windows for working from research (notes, pictures, web sites, videos or music)... the list goes on. It really is a well-crafted piece of software, essential for Mac owning writers working on longer projects.

. . .

If there's anything Delicious Monster (of Delicious Library) does well, its advertising. I bought this MBP back in October and initially discovered Delicious Library through some of the folks on the MacHeist site. I liked the idea, a way of cataloging one's media on the computer. It was novel. It was another great use for a great machine and infinitely useful for someone like me who's been moving around (between houses, states, and countries, even) every year for the last 6 years of my life. My things are scattered in boxes, strewn throughout multiple houses and ultimately divided by some 5000 or so miles, as far as my current situation in Japan is concerned.

While my last entry covered Delicious Library 2, I feel compelled now to talk about far better product(s) that just don't get the hype they deserve, Bruji's Pedias.

Now, I don't know why Bruji's Pedias don't get any coverage on The Unofficial Apple Weblog or Daring Fireball, but my gut feeling is that Bruji can't hype its own releases the way developers like Wil Shipley can. From what I understand, the delay between DL 1.6 and 2.0 was massive, which gave him (Shipley) a lot of time to build his product up and hype the beta releases and whatnot. Bruji, on the other hand, seems to release updated builds fairly frequently-- and for free, giving them no time to hype up the latest paid point release that took a year to add in minor functionality. It makes sense, really. Bloggers like to focus on vaporware and betas because, ultimately, we like to complain. See my post about Apple's font panel, for instance.

In any case, I'm getting off topic. Impressions.

As you can see, Bookpedia (in this example), is awesome. There are a ton of places that Bookpedia is willing to search for information on your books including all the Amazon sites, the Library of Congress, AngusRobertson, (an Australian bookseller) and even the Royal Library of Sweden. You can add books one at a time, or many at a time. You can even scan in barcodes with any iSight camera. When I intially played around with this feature and compared it to DL2, I came to the mistaken conclusion that the scanning in Bruji's Pedias was subpar, but today, when I went back to it and went through every book that I could find in my apartment with a barcode on it, I found that it was uncannily accurate. It handled all my obtuse Japanese reference books without breaking a sweat and there wasn't a single dictionary or novel that I couldn't easily import. The only book I couldn't find the right cover for was my older edition of Remembering the Kanji I by James W. Heisig. (I think I'm going crazy. The correct edition popped up instantly when I searched for it just now.)

Bruji's Pedias (Should I be referring to these some other way? Hmmm... From here on out, I'll be talking simply about Bookpedia, but from my own tests, it seems that the rest of the Pedias have very similar functionality.) have a really clean user interface that I prefer over DL2's UI. Whereas DL2's Shelf view is sort of ugly and fake looking, Bookpedia displays book covers on a completely adjustable monochrome background. I prefer white, which is the default option. There's also a list view and a coverflow view. After that, there are multiple Details templates you can apply to the "Info" panel that allow you to customize the display of detailed information and summaries. In the default cover view, covers can be resized at will with a slider (as opposed to DL2's total lack of control in this respect). The whole interface, despite having way more options than I have time to play in time for this post, feels clean and simple, as opposed to, what-- I want to borrow a term of contention from the games industry and say, DL2's "console-ified" (dumbed-down and/or smoothed over for a younger audience) interface. DL2 looks great, but it also looks juvenile. As mac-like as it is to have stylized, fluffy, colorful icons (gadgets, etc.) I think I prefer the simple utilitarian approach of Bookpedia rather than the juicy, delicious approach.

One thing that's really nice about Bookpedia is that, unlike DL2, I don't get the feeling that Bruji is trying to sell me items, rather than helping me catalog what I already have. Whereas DL2 gives you recommendations and reviews whether you like it or not, Bookpedia has a very elegant Advanced menu where you can find that information if you need it without a single "Buy (from Amazon)" button in sight. I'll add here too that since downloading both Bookpedia and Gamepedia, I've not seen a single nag window or money pit yet. According to the "Register Bookpedia" link in the main menu, Bookpedia has a "10 book limit," but unless my eyes deceive me, I have 11 books in my library currently. Bookpedia is up there with Scrivener as having an incredibly smooth trial period without sacrificing any core functionality.

Really, my choice is clear. Bookpedia (and its brethren, DVDpedia, CDpedia, and Gamepedia) are just plain better than Delicious Library 2. Why DM bothered to add a "Tools" section to DL2 (and not, for example, a CCG module or Comics, or anything really) baffles me. I'm getting off-topic again, aren't I? All this, and I've only scratched the surface. Bookpedia has some really amazing ways to export your library, along with lending library functionality, wishlist support, detailed statistics, and custom fields for all those other details.

Really, the one and only problem I could find with Bookpedia is that there were only two default templates for the Info pane that I liked (Collection and Grey), both of which are somewhat difficult to read when it comes to star ratings (grey stars on dull blue and grey stars on dull grey respectively) and other assorted info.

As if you needed any other reason to go for Bookpedia or its siblings over DL2, I'd like to mention the incredibly positive reviews forum (hint: the latest post is: "I must be dreaming...") as well as its 4.6 of 5 stars ratings over at VersionTracker compared to DL2's 2.5 of 5 stars rating. I'm not entirely sure how Conor found my backwater blog in the first place, (Technorati, maybe?) but I'm glad he did. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have given Bookpedia and its siblings the time of day I should have. Otherwise, I wouldn't have put my money where my mouth is.

I'm buying it.

If you have a Mac and you have any kind of writing projects at all, you should download the demo and play with it.

I'm buying it on the strength of its pretty research corkboard but am sure I'll be loving other features, too. I just haven't gotten deep enough into my new project to use the other features.

Here is a pretty (small) image of a portion of my research corkboard right now. I don't want it to be large enough for you to actually see much detail because these are images that I saved for my own inspiration and use but don't have permissions to post and such, so I'm hoping you can get the idea but I won't be abusing any artist's rights or anything:

In addition to the images -- four of characters, two of locations, one of period customs -- you can see what looks like two 3x5s with typing on them. That's the way they show up on the corkboard, but what they actually are are webpages that I've imported. Now when I find research on the web, instead of bookmarking and returning to it when I have web access, the actual webpages are saved as part of my research in Scrivener.

Here is an example of one of the above cards when I open it:

Unlike the first image, you can actually click on that one and see what shows up in my Scrivener program.

I can also save video and audio files there, so that any time I need to refer to them, they're at my fingertips.

This is just so cool.

So if you have a Mac, check it out. Unlike a lot of similar programs out there, this demo is fully functional. You can create and save stuff. Unlike a lot of similar programs out there, this one is only $39.95 if you decide to buy it.

And it has a good forum with helpful people to provide answers if you don't bother to read the documentation or do the tutorial need extra assistance.

And to top it off, there are also links to software programs for writers who use Windows. (Scroll down to the bottom.) That is because the gentleman who developed Scrivener is English which means he is by nature helpful and polite.

Colour me sold.

I still haven't reconciled with not using Word but I succumbed to the siren song of "free software demo" and am currently exploring the pleasures of Scrivener.

Right now I'm loving the gimmick aspect--I love this corkboard on my screen that displays all the character images I've gathered for my new project. I thought I might print them out and make some sort of a collage like Jenny Crusie (scroll to bottom to see what I mean/link courtesy of Toni, again), but right now this is so much easier and I like it a lot.

About the corkboard. I know other screenwriting programs offer similar stuff, and if you use one that does what Scrivener does, please let me know because I have friends with PCs who are jealous, ya know. But I know I've seen lots of programs that allow you to do things similar to this:

That didn't impress me much, seen it before, more or less. But for the first time ever, I've been collecting visual images to inspire/intrigue me while I'm writing, and I regret not being able to show you a pic of it*, but you can also import images, videos, audio, etc. to a Research corkboard. My corkboard is now covered with lovely images of locations and characters. When my new widescreen monitor shows up (one that actually works, this time) I'll be abe to have the corkboard open while I'm working. And did I mention, my images are really lovely and wonderful and inspire me to write?

Or, here's an image from the Scrivener site that shows somebody with a single image open with their work, rather than an entire corkboard.

Okay, yes, bells and whistles. Gimmicks, maybe. But this stuff, I love.

So, sorry if you don't have a Mac and can't get a lovely demo of your own to play with, and pay for (only $39.95) should you decide to keep it.

This won't replace my 3x5s because I don't want it to. I love my real 3x5s. But I'll also dupicate them into this program, because yet another way of using it is to have the scene card open in the right panel while you're writing, along with any notes you've made.

Scrivener. Check it out. If you have a Mac. Let me know what you think. Do you really use it, or did the fun/new wear off after awhile?

*There is also the issue that even if I could do a screenshot of my corkboard with images to show you how pretty it is, the fact is that these are all images I've saved off the internet and are the creative property of other people. And while I don't feel guilty at saving them for my own use (it's not like I could buy them anywhere) I don't think I'm allowed to actually post them to my blog, either. Which is a crying shame, because I've got some gorgeous original art here. But, just imagine something gorgeous and lovely and pretend you can see it, okay?

I am just here thinking what a truly amazing world we live in where technology allows us to communicate across thousands of miles with just the click of a button. More amazingly it is completely free provided both sides have internet access, a computer and Skype ( or any of a number of other programmes). Not so many years ago such things would have involved booking a satellite and spending untold thousands of dollars for a few minutes. I am a complete technology junkie but when I had to speak to my friend Karissa and her husband in Dubai a short while ago the reality of what I was doing struck me in the middle of our short conversation. It is rather amazing that as a species we become so used to technology that we just tend to take it for granted . It would do us all a world of good to sit back sometimes and think of the ingenuity and scientific interaction that had to take place to make any of these things possible. That little icon click on my part was the end result of countless years of work by networking minds, a brainwave on the part of Tim Berners Lee, sneaky attempts by a couple of people trying to make pirating software ( which led to them developing Skype) and  decades of work developing chips, software and even the UNIX underpinnings of my operating system. All of this allowing me to take for granted the fact I can help a friend in Dubai get some information in a real time video conference.

The modern world and computers allow us to multitask like never before though I am pretty sure we are pushing the limits of our brains already. As someone who can frequently be seen driving while smoking and texting I know that our ability to pursue multiple tasks is already pushing us into a zone where we are frequently endangering life and limb. The art of concentration which has given us pretty well all of our great works of art and literature is heading for extinction as we wrestle with so many things trying to grab our attention. Like many writers I often find myself trying to concentrate on getting a sentence down while simultaneously monitoring my RSS feeds, MSN, YAHOO, AIM, my email inbox and that half-finished game of X-Words icon I see lurking on my desktop.

 It is a very human urge to stay on top of things and communicate but with modern operating systems and unlimited RAM allowing dozens of programmes to be open at the same time it becomes a major problem when something urgent requires our undivided attention. Sure you can just open one programme and do the work needed but that desktop with all its goodies is still visible as are the clickable dock items ( or the start menu I guess for the Windows inclined) that are all screaming for our mouse to drift their way. Faced with this problem , and given my alarming lack of self-discipline, my only choice in dealing with this perplexing dilemma was to consider looking on ebay for a c. 1984 MacIntosh Classic. I remember those wonderful days of facing that 8” monochrome screen, wondering if opening the calculator application would crash my writing programme with my university essay on it, and erring on the side of caution. What to do? Happily, technology and human ingenuity have stepped in to save the day. 

In one of my aimless internet jaunts I came across a blog my Kayembi and a  lovely programme he developed called Scrivener that was created by a writer for writers. It has many great features all in one place such as an outliner, a virtual corkboard to post your random thoughts while writing and even templates for everything from screenplays to comics. This is all delightful and one never knows when the urge to delve into the world of comics will suddenly happen. These many and varied benefits were not the selling point for me though. Tucked away in the list of features was something called “full screen view” . I downloaded the programme demo, made a few tweaks to my preferences, hit the “Full Screen” button and suddenly I was back in the 1980’s typing in green sans serif letters on a totally black computer screen. There was no desktop visible, no icons, no Dock nothing but the words I was typing. I must admit I fought back a few tears as I realized I could now replicate the distraction-free days of my semi-youth and even fantasize that I was back on my beloved Apple IIc with its green monochrome screen. Sure, if I want to do complicated things I can just press the escape key and go back to the main programme and all of the other things lurking on the Mac but for as long as I want I can just bask in green words on a black screen. I don’t know who this Kayembi character is but his blog is interesting (http://www.literatureandlatte.com )and his programme is a gift from heaven. I happily sent him my $39.95 and I hope he gets a couple of lattes with it.

As a mixed blessing for blog readers now that I am using Scrivener to type this entry I notice the lack of distraction has led me to write more than I normally would. Sadly, I must now exit full screen and  cut and paste the entry into iWeb and Wordpress. Still, I am fascinated  that technology can help free us from itself.

There's another bundle up at MacHeist which has a few worthwhile applications in it and from the sound of the email, might have another handful of surprises coming towards the end of the sale. (That is a referral link, by the way. Purchases through it benefit me... somehow. Feel free to use or ignore it.)

As an already registered member, we know you may own a lot of these apps, so in an effort to keep you interested, and involved in the world of Mac software, we've been hard at work putting together a truly awesome referral program. It's time to call up those old friends... because this time around, we will be unveiling multiple tiers of software prizes, each crammed with several options. Take your pick, and have fun as always.

I'd definitely recommend Awaken if you're in the market for alarm software. I wake up to it everyday and the only time it has ever failed me was actually my fault. There's no slicker, more reliable alarm clock out there, as far as I'm concerned.

Coversutra is a neat little application that I've started using somewhat frequently since I picked it up in the last MacHeist bundle. It works best if you have a well organized iTunes library and it integrates with last.fm, if you're into that. (I don't really get last.fm, but that's for another entry, really.)

I got a bit of use out of Wallet when I got it free from the Mac Giving Tree, (a December extension of MacHeist) but I've since replaced it with 1Password, which quickly became one of the most useful applications on my Mac.

Devonthink Personal looks interesting and I'm actually going to download a demo today and see what there is to see. It's one of those "organize everything here" database applications which appeal to the side of me that hates dealing with Firefox's bookmarks menu. The trial apparently has "150 hours of non-continuous runtime" which sounds like plenty of time to evaluate it. (6.25 Days? Hmm...) Really though, the important thing to remember is that if Devonthink ends up being worthwhile, the bundle is nearly worth that application alone, given that the bundle is $49.95 and Devonthink Personal is $39.95.

Then there's XSlimmer. I've considered purchasing this several times in the past because the idea of smaller applications that launch more quickly appeals to me, even if I can't slim WoW's binaries.

And finally, while Writeroom is probably a fine full-screen text editor, I'd personally recommend Scrivener. Scrivener has even more robust full-screen text editing capabilities than Writeroom, along with an indispensable creative-works centric organizational GUI that makes doing any creative writing a joy, rather than a chore.

Most of these apps are old hat and/or already in my applications folder, but anybody who missed out on the MH bundles in the past might find this bundle worth the cash.

Update (2008-05): The beta version was updated to 1.1, bringing support for PDF documents and some other minor goodies.  I've updated this post accordingly.  It also reflects the updated scores of Together 2.1.

-

In March, I was able to snag myself a TechCrunch invitation to try the upcoming Mac version of Evernote.  When I first discovered it in 2004 (for Windows), I soon became an advocate of Evernote for its organizational capabilities.  Evernote wasn't perfect, but it was already a leader in the market and since then, it's kept progressing at a steady pace.  Now that it's starting to breathe on OS X, it's time for a new testing round.

Today, I took a few hours to run Evernote against my web information collection test benchmark.  I'm now ready to share with you how Evernote, in its actual pre-release form, competes with the pack.

As this is pre-release software, please understand that Evernote will probably fare even better than now when it'll reach Release Day.  Until then, here's what I found.

Before jumping in the results, I feel the need to remind you two things:

Now, to the results:

All in all, Evernote for Mac brings incredible competition into the domain of web information collection applications.  I see myself using Evernote over anything else for this purpose soon, although I will probably continue using some of its competitors for other specific needs.  Writing in Scrivener is something Evernote won't compete with, for example.  Moreover, since the application itself will be free, Evernote will bring quite a new challenge to some of its general-purpose competitors.  Evernote will change the face of the market as we know it today.  I hope it will be both for the best interest of itself and its competitors; if it is, then we'll also benefit greatly from that as a result.

While the simplicity of the featureless Write/DarkRoom can be appealing, I found that I soon missed basic text editing features. Scrivener, though, looks promising, as does StoryMill, another Mac-only writing tool. They both seem to offer more of a project oriented approach, making it possible to associate notes and research material to blocks of text and to work in outline and timeline modes. Unfortunately, as I don't own a Mac, I haven't been able to test any of these tools, but lately I've been so fed up with Word that they alone are starting to look like reason enough to buy one.

... need more coffee; still feels like Monday; argh.

Multi-part beast of a story has had another growth spurt -- quintet is now a sextet; story's gone from originally being a single volume to six volumes, and that's WITH using an outline to wrangle and paddock this critter.

Prologue -- which spanned four decades -- caused too many headaches and too many hangovers, so had to cleave the little bugger out of my cranium and the story's timeline, and it's now a Prelude Novel,... it was the only way to deal with world building and forty years of back story, the only path to clarity, the only thing I could think of to avoid pace-destroying expositions.

Again, clearly, it's my Muse who's in control and I'm just being dragged along for the ride because I'm the one with the fingers.

Still getting used to thinking and writing in British spellings as opposed to US spellings. Don't know why I've taken to it, but it feels the right thing to do. [shrug] Maybe I'm channelling, again.

That Courier is the standard in accepted manuscript format makes me think of the sourdough bakery on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. They take a generous pinch from each batch to preserve the yeast culture that they've been using -- for how many decades, now? -- and pass it along to each and every batch that's yet to be kneaded, raised, baked, and eaten. That's legacy. You don't mess with legacy, especially when it has a proven track record.

Maintaining Courier as de rigeur is like passing on the torch, appropriate considering its name. And the first thing I did after installing Scrivener was to set my font and pitch defaults at Courier 12.

Knowing from the beginning this font is the one editors expect, it's what I've accustomed myself to seeing, whether it was on a sheet of eight and a half by eleven shoved into a typewriter, or shining up at me from my laptop. Then again, maybe I'm just being superstitious in the same way baseball players are,....

... why mess with the magic if it works the way you need it to?

At long last, I have a search-able hierarchy wherein I'm able to find what I need when I need it. Monk would be proud of me -- it's so tidy it almost hurts.

Everything's so much easier that it feels, well, downright decadent. Who knew that writing fiction could be so hedonistic? I'm actually getting afterglows, here.

I've been playing -- yes, playing -- with the outliner feature, and, I gotta say, well, WOW. Now, if only I could teach Scrivener to peel grapes,....

However [there's always a however, isn't there?], it's for Mac OS X only, while I had only PC's available to me. So I continued struggling [and spewing profanity in the process] with Word and Windows XP Professional on the Thinkpad T40.

My lovely S.O. ultimately wearied of my rantings and whinings about the perfidies of hardware and software that were proving counter-productive to my writerly efforts, and presented me with a new MacBook Leopard [thank you! thank you! thank you!]. Being the IT guru that he is, he then downloaded Scrivener onto my new toy tool for me.

* swoon *

Scrivener is, is, damn, it's just WOW. Scrivener was created by writers for writers. I've had it only for a few days, now, so I'm still discovering all the cool stuff it can do. There's also a very active forum for chatting, bug hunting and reporting, and tech support galore for Scrivener.

There is only one possible downside to all of this wonderfulness,...

... No More Excuses.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

p.s. anyone else notice that XP resembles a rather bad-tempered, contemptuous emoticon? maybe that should've been my first clue,....

Einen Vorteil hat es allerdings. Nicht nur dass Spotlight, seit Tiger das hauseigene Vollindizierungstool von Apple, mit Leopard deutlich fixer geworden ist, nein, da nun unser Datenzeugs auf zwei per AFP freigegebenen USB-Drives haust, wird es dort auch mitindiziert. Ganz ehrlich, so oft ich über MacOS fluche und darüber nachdenke zu Linux zurückzukehren, Spotlight ist eine der Anwendungen für die ich Apple knutschen könnte. Ich habe einen Text aus einem Jahre zurückliegenden Projekt gesucht, der sich ungefähr überall auf einer Platte von 4 (zwei Notebooks, zwei USB-Platten) befinden könnte. Das richtige Stichwort eingegeben von dem ich wusste dass es im Text steht, zwei Sekunden später war das gesuchte File gefunden und offen. Ich liebe es.

Es gibt durchaus noch andere Software auf dem Mac, für die ich bei Linux nichts adäquates gefunden habe und die ich nicht missen möchte. Was mich zu den Schreibtools bringt.

Schreibtools, so ein Schnickschnack, ist meine übliche Reaktion. Wer braucht schon komplexe Programme mit akuter Featuritis, wenn es auch ein simpler Texteditor tut? 90 Prozent meiner Texte entstehen im Texteditor, das ist alles was ich brauche. Dachte ich. (Und für einen Großteil der Brot-und-Butter-Texte reicht der Editor völlig, nach wie vor).

Ein Freund machte mich vor geraumer Zeit mit Scrivener bekannt. Und wie Die Kritiker schaute ich mir das Teil an und fand die altbackene Kork-Pinnwand-Optik etwas zu gezwungen, und ich konnte mit dem Tool nicht wirklich warm werden. Also schrieb ich weiter im Editor. Die Idee, ein Schreibprojekt an einem Ort zusammenzuführen, hat mir allerdings gefallen und blieb im Hinterkopf, auch der Gedanke sich Begleitnotizen zu einem Projekt zu sammeln.

Eine Weile habe ich Notizen und Ideen in Journler geworfen, wohl wissend dass dort alles wiederzufinden ist, und ich mache das immer noch so, allerdings ist Journler für mich nie mehr als eine Krücke und Notizkladde gewesen, die ganze GTD-Funktionalität (die ich durchaus interessant finde) ist für mich nicht wirklich intuitiv bedienbar (genauer, GTD ist mir zu verkopft, aber dazu mal in einem anderen Post) und insofern setzt Journler eher Staub auf der Festplatte an. Da das Tool demnächst kostenpflichtig sein wird, und ich wenig Sinn darin sehe eine Software zu kaufen die ich nicht wirklich nutze, habe ich mir also vorgenommen, mir diverse Schreibtools - davon gibts ein paar für MacOS - anzusehen.

Warum eigentlich will ich ein Schreibtool?

Zum einen ist es wohl meine angeborene Geekneugier, neue Software zu entdecken, das habe ich zu allen Zeiten, ob DOS, Windows oder Linux, gern getan. Im wesentlichen sind allerdings die Erkenntnisse aus dem Nanowrimo dran schuld. Um ein komplexes Dokument wie einen Roman organisatorisch in den Griff zu bekommen, bedarf es bei mir etwas Unterstützung.

Ulysses gefiel mir auf Anhieb, was sicher an der aufgeräumten Oberfläche und den klar durchdachten, sofort benutzbaren Interfaces liegt. Ulysses ist ein fast reiner Texteditor mit etwas Organizer-Fähigkeiten, und ganz klar an Autoren mit komplexen umfangreichen Texten orientiert. Beim (automatischen) Backup kann man auch die Backuptiefe einstellen, ein nettes Feature.

Und dann machte ich, um im Chat jemandem zu erklären was ich mit "Schreibtools" meine, die Scrivener-Page auf und sah mir die Screenshots an und dachte: das ist doch genau das was Du suchst. Die Outliner-Funktion springt mich geradezu an, die Möglichkeit Bilder, Schnipsel zu irgendwas zu sammeln, ist super, ein Kärtchen mit Synopsis zum zu schreibenden Text ist perfekt... Irgendwo in meinen Bookmarks liegen noch Links zum Forum bei Literature and Latte wo Features und die Anwendung hands-on von Autoren diskutiert werden, diverse Leute schwärmen von dem Ding, es sieht verdammt gut aus - wahrscheinlich muss ich ihm einfach eine zweite Chance geben und mich richtig einarbeiten.

Weitere Kandidaten wie Writers Café (auch für Win und Linux) oder CopyWrite bleiben vorerst ungetestet, Writer's Cafe sieht sehr gut aus, Copywrite kann auf den ersten Blick nichts was ich nicht auch viel lieber mit Ulysses machen würde...

Ich gehe dann mal Scrivener installieren. Bericht in 30 Tagen oder so :-)

My lovely S.O. -- oh my gods -- has just presented me with a brand new MacBook. Criminy. What can I say, besides the obvious stumbling and stammering 'THANK YOU!!' -- ?

He says he did it so I could download Scrivener for my writing. I'm giddy, and feel like crying with surprise and confusion and happiness, because the gesture goes way beyond just a new laptop -- he believes in my writing.

But I'm kinda scared. I've never used anything but a PC before, and am feeling somewhat daunted at the moment.

Much love to XKCD.com

Update 2 (2008-03): Evernote is the new wolf that's coming in the pack, and it already redefines most of what's best.  Read this review to know how.

Update 1 (2008-03): EagleFiler's new version 1.3 makes it fare much better.  Read this review to know what changes regarding the following comparative review, as I haven't updated this post in any other way than this mention.
-

Although computers are great to work with information, in the last 10 years using a Windows PC, I never found any software solution that would work well for my information collecting and management needs, although OneNote and EverNote came close to it.  But now that I use a Mac, I wanted to see if I'd be able to find something really great.

Our Problem

I believe what makes it hard to find the good application for our needs is that we all have our own very personal ways of dealing with the information that comes before our eyes every day; but most importantly, I believe we still haven’t seen our software in general become mature. Software still behaves like a baby who won’t share his toys. Software will grow someday, but Software just isn’t there yet. Say, Software, what will you do when you’ll have grown up?

Our Need

Until Software becomes an adult, there’s many applications available, and some of them might solve most of our information collecting needs. How would we define the best proposition?

I believe what we need in any application is that it:

• supports the features needed,
• interacts comfortably with us, and
• keeps doing the previous two criteria in a consistent manner.

This definition is most probably critical in the case of information collection software. When I speak of consistency for information collection purposes, I mean, for example, that whatever the web browser I use and the method I use to collect something, it will always produce the same kind of rich text entry, accompanied by its link.

The Contenders

Now, since this is all about reviewing different applications to see which one of them is closing the most towards maturity, here’s what I tested:

• DEVONthink Personal 1.9.12
• EagleFiler 1.2.7
• Journler 2.5.4b15
• Circus Ponies NoteBook 2.1.262
• Scrivener 1.11
• SOHO Notes 6.5.3
• Together 2.0.4.967
• Yojimbo 1.5.62

I also tried VoodooPad, but I felt it wasn’t really designed for information collection purposes.

The Tests

I wanted to do a thorough test to see how much each one of these applications has to offer on what I believe are the most important features and interactions, so I reviewed the features each one proposes and put most of them in a spreadsheet.

Then, I went through each one of these features, trying them in each application, to see how they compared to the crowd and even sometimes to what I believe might be better still.

Finally, I gave them scores based on a 5-star scale.

The Results

Here’s the summary of my tests.

The first thing you need to know is that I’m not going to draw all the conclusions that can easily be drawn when you look at this big table. We would loose time writing and reading what can be so easily be seen in the table. I’ve highlighted some results to show who leads the pack, who follows the leaders, and finally, who miserably crawls behind everyone else. Also, I would have liked the table to be better designed, but what you see is what I could do in the amount of time I had.

As you might remark:

• I didn’t test some features you might find exceedingly important, like, say, printing support, file importing support, and exporting to different file formats. I almost never print; I no more dream of the ideal application to manage all my files; and I could feel some guilt for not evaluating the rest, but I’m confident you’ll be able to find your answers by your own means while still deriving some value out of my tests.
• I tested more thoroughly the collection features than the rest. Their results are broken down under the three criteria I defined previously.
• Conversely, I evaluated the rest of the features without breaking down their scores, because I believe they didn’t need that much digging.
• Some features, which I found exceedingly useful, like, say, wiki or split editor, tend to improve the score of only one application. I hope you’re as okay with that as I am.
• You might be surprised that your favorite application performs better than you thought on some criteria. It’s probably because I dug deeper than you in its preference settings or in its interface. I wanted to evaluate it to its full potential.
• On the opposite, you might find that I overlooked some possibilities. I proof-tested almost everything, but errors happen all the time. Feel free to tell me about it.

The Details

Now, you might sometimes wonder why I rated something the way I did it. If you really want to find the answer and you don’t find it in the sections I wrote to detail each application, you will need to have a look at the following table that contains my notes along the ratings. I suggest you open it in a new window and keep switching between this page and the table to understand it, using the following key, ordered left to right then down:

• (i): Inconsistent in its behavior; will be rated down in the Consistency section, not in the current section
• WA: Web Archive
• Ways: The number of different ways you can do something
• FP: Full Page
• Running: Only while the application is already running
• (N)R: For (not) running, means that it works even when the application isn’t running
• Windw Area: A little dedicated window
• Predefined: There’s no preference setting to change it
• Indirect: You need to click somewhere before doing it
• Not 100%: Almost 100%!
• Until annotated: Works until you annotate the collected element
• Tabs as bookmarks: You create bookmarks so you can see tabs
• Suggests: Suggests completions of what you started to type
• DragFmHUD: Drag from the HUD window
• List: An alphabetically-sorted list
• Intersection: The ability to see what is tagged with all the selected tabs. If intersections aren’t supported, selecting some tags will yield you all collected elements that are tagged with at least anyone of the selected tags, which is almost useless
• Converted WA: Before you can do it, it needs to be converted to another format (usually RTF)
• WA extractions: You can’t anotate the WA or anything inside it, but you can copy/paste something out of it and into the enclosing entry, that you will then be able to annotate
• Use underline: Because there’s no standard yellow highlighter
• C WA: Converted WA
• Obtrusively: A dialog pops up and you’ll need to dismiss it soon or late
• Virtual Folders: You may file something in multiple different folders
• Folders: You may file something in one and only one folder
• Where are copies?: When something is filed in more than one virtual folder, you don’t know about it
• Tag:name1 tag:nam2: You need to type this kind of query to see tag intersections
• Create your SC: Smart Collection
• Inheritance: Well, let’s say it’s an advanced feature that you might want to read the help file about if you’re no programmer
• 2%: Constant CPU usage observed
• Database fragile?: I read that some people have lost their entire database just after a system crash, which would be really bad
• Really bad reports: I saw many people on different web sites telling how the company wasn’t taking seriously their clients by releasing broken software and taking months to fix it

My Reviews

DEVONthink Personal

DEVONthink is very capable in some areas where all the other applications would bite the dust. It features an automatic Wiki system, assists you in classifying the information you collect, and probably best of all, it allows you to browse your entire database in incredible ways by giving you an index that sums up all your collected entries and by providing you with a very potent see also feature. If you need that kind of stuff, look no further.

Otherwise, you might get put off by its dinosaur-looking interface and lack of a great system to organize your information so you can quickly dig and filter through it your own way.

Oh, and don’t forget to install its bookmarklet in all the browsers you use so you can collect those full-page web archives quickly and easily.

These remarks having been said, I believe DEVONthink might have a very bright future… starting at version 2.0. Competitors, watch and learn from DEVON now, or get buried later!

EagleFiler

EagleFiler was a bit of a good surprise to me.

Probably because of its name and its marketing, I was very reluctant to even consider testing it. But as I disciplined myself to at least read its whole web page describing it, my interest was sparked, and not for nothing.

EagleFiler is simply, out of the box with no customization, the best package if you’re constantly in need of collecting full-page web archives out of many different browsers. You can do so in much quicker ways than all the other applications (except DEVONthink, if you install its bookmarklet in all your browsers). And it features one of the best tags support.

At the same time, it’s not so great if you consider how crippled it is from sharing features and small, but useful, navigational features like, say, browser-like back and forward buttons.

Let me tell you I seriously considered making it my tool of choice.

Journler

Although targeting journaling or blogging needs, Journler is a really serious and capable contender regarding our discussed needs.

Its overal value is really great and it really outperforms most of the competition when it’s time to integrate with iLife, to search through your library, to make sure you won’t search too much in the future when you’ll need to find the same kind of information, and to share something with a friend or the community.

Some of the things that keep it from being near perfect is that it’s really not so great at the tags game and at keeping links to what you grabbed on the web. Don’t forget to experiment a lot with its preference settings, as it might dramatically change the quality of your experience with Journler.

All in all, I believe this application is the most serious contender for your hard drive space and daily use, although it’s much more of a jack-of-all-trades that lacks some essential skills that feel too important for some people to live without them. In the future, I believe Journler will learn from its errors and become incredibly hard to ignore.

NoteBook

I often wondered if I should remove NoteBook from this evaluation. I thought I would go to the end with its testing, because it’s presented as a contender to this category on its web site. Well, I now believe I shouldn’t have bothered too much with it, although I must tell you it’s not without having any value or not being interesting at all.

Let’s just say that I believe it’s not good to use for that kind of information collecting needs. I like to think it’s targeted towards some other kind of collecting needs that I haven’t evaluated at all here and that it might just be a really superior contender on that front.

Scrivener

Scrivener was a hell of a surprise.

Since there’s a writer somewhere within me, I’ve been watching this application from afar for some time now, but the thought of evaluating it here with the other applications never crossed my mind until I had narrowed my own decision to three applications and browsed their respective web sites one more time. One of them mentioned Scrivener as a competitor, so I religiously went on to read its web page again, just to eliminate it right off. And then, what happened for Scrivener is the same that happened for EagleFiler. I was impressed and decided to give it a whirl. Like EagleFiler, it seemed good at this, on top of being good at that. And man, oh man, what a whirl it was! You’ll find out why later.

For now, let me praise its ability to play well with tags, its split editor, its full screen mode and, more precisely, its feature that allows you to see and/or edit many entries at the same time, as if they were only one file (with visual indicators that let you know what you’re doing).

It’s not that great at collecting information, but if you’re willing to forgive its little lack of flexibility on that regard, it will do as great as most other contenders. Oh, and forget about 1-click access to sharing something, too.

All of this having been said, let me tell you Scrivener is definitely underpriced, if you consider how much innovation and quality it incorporates.

SOHO Notes

I really didn’t want to loose time testing SOHO Notes, but I did it for the sake of exhaustivity. I wanted to know if it innovates in some way that would benefit to the other applications.

Why am I so hard on SOHO Notes? Because I’ve read too much bad comments about it. How this company’s products in general would be released with plenty of serious bugs and wouldn’t work well until several months after that. How email enquiries wouldn’t at all trigger replies or would trigger them after unusually long delays and with unsatisfactory answers. How people decided to migrate to this or that. How people were telling everyone that this application isn’t even worth considering. So yes, I confess I’ve been influenced by all these comments. I think I have never seen that much bad comments about something I would have considered trying for my own use.

If you still want to know, it’s really flexible when time comes to collecting information, and it’s great at sharing it later on.

But, it’s not that great at organizing the information you collected.

In any case, the version I tested worked well, despite one crash. To be fair, I wouldn’t discriminate anyone who chooses it over the others.

Together

I fell in love with Together as soon as I saw it. It sports the most polished interface. Although Journler kept scoring higher for my needs than Together, I kept planning on journeying together with this lovely application.

Notwithstanding its wonderful interface, Together offers some really strong propositions. On top of all of them is its ability to collect selections of web pages as web archives, while all the other applications can only collect full-page web archives. It’s also the closest to offer consistency in the collection process, regarding the links every application should keep when it collects something out of the web. And don’t forget that it’s better than most competitors at dealing with tags.

Now, while some aspects of Together are really polished, it doesn’t mean it’s perfect. For example, it lacks some browser-like back and forward buttons. Also, like most of the contenders, easy sharing isn’t part of the program.

I really wonder how much quality the developer is going to continue putting in this application. It’s gonna rock!

Yojimbo

Yojimbo looks like another jack-of-all-trades.

It’s great at collecting information in general, although it doesn’t stand out on any particular side.

Other than that, don’t forget to consider its interface’s lacks of navigational features and the fact it’s not so great at organizing, searching and sharing your information.

And that’s it. Yojimbo simply doesn’t stand out of the pack, and although it’s a great product with just a few missing features, that won’t hinder some people’s love for it because they don’t need what it lacks.

My Choice(s)

You might wonder which application I chose over all the others. I wrote all of this using Scrivener, and that’s my answer. Although my choice is made, I plan on using Scrivener’s trial period instead of rushing with my credit card as I would do in the past. I made some errors I still regret today when I think about them.

Scrivener has so much for itself and it’s a great feeling to use an application that excels at writing while it’s also really great as an information collector.

Again, I believe it’s better to use an application that excels at something useful while being great at the rest, than using another one that is great overall but doesn’t bring anything new to the crowd. And on that regard, I would also really have liked to have DEVONthink as a serious alternative because of its advanced text analysis features, but it wasn’t there for me.

Next, my choice would have been Together or Journler, although EagleFiler wasn’t far behind.

Your Mileage May Vary

In fact, your mileage will vary. I’m telling you that because even mine does!

The results I showed you are what I would call generic, although I’m far from believing they are completely exhaustive or 100% objective. So they are generic to the extent of what I wanted to test and how I evaluated it. Now, if I wanted to tailor them precisely to what’s really important to me, here’s what I’d obtain:

• Journler: 3
• Scrivener: 2.9
• Together: 2.6
• SOHO Notes: 2.6 but lacks two things essential to me
• EagleFiler: 2.4 but lacks one…
• DEVONthink: 2.4 but lacks three…
• Yojimbo: 2.2 but lacks one…
• NoteBook: 2.0 but lacks four…

The order almost doesn’t change, but Scrivener closes nearer to Journler, and Together goes ahead of SOHO Notes.

So it may mean, on one hand, that I did a really good generic evaluation or, on the other hand, that what I thought of as a generic evaluation is already so much targeted towards my own needs that it’s not worth calling generic at all. I believe the second hand is the one that’s right, since I didn’t include some features like printing support and such and such…

So if you want your own results, you will need to ponderate my evaluations according to your own needs and add your evaluation of the things that are missing. That’s a first way how your mileage will vary.

One important thing to note is that only the top three applications are viable options for me, and that’s a second way how your mileage will vary.

What Developers Need to Do

To improve the primary value of their offers, I believe developers should concentrate on:

• Making sure that under all circumstances (consistency), anything grabbed from the web comes in only one rich format and carries its link (support). If it’s not possible due to OS integration problems, try making a good set of bookmarklets or some other potent tool, and encourage your users to only use this solution because it will work the same great way for them in every possible context.
• Providing quality support of organization features like tags and annotations. I believe these features should feel in your applications like they’re first class citizens of their ecosystem. Concerning tags, my experience tells me they’re much more important than if they’d only be some temporary hype.
• Developing an exceedingly rich experience towards some precise verticals, like Scrivener does for writers.

On a more general note, keep up the good work!

What I Learned

Through doing all this testing and measuring, I grasped a better understanding of a few things:

• It’s hard to integrate software into an operating system. None of the applications managed to do it on some specific aspects.
• It’s exceedingly hard to properly ponderate the value of each thing that we test so that it yields the correct impact on the global results. Consequently, anyone writing or reading a review should give much more importance to the details than to a global score. It’s so easy to mess up a global score and so easy to overlook something important. (That’s why I gave you so much details and I didn’t even try to ponderate anything for you.)
• Software is much more personal than I thought. It’s another reason why global scores can’t mean much to somebody unless they’re precisely tailored to his needs.

a) the .iso ist too big! The very first version was 1.1 gigs so I started removing...now it's a lot smaller but still too big to fit on a 700MB disk: 860MB. The way I see it the problem is the mixture of E17 and gnome, which makes geubuntu quite confortable but quite large as well so you can't add too much software.

I found a solution though (at least I hope I did): starting all over again with either LFS (linux from scratch), puppy or DL. My personal favorite right now is dremlinux for it comes with a huge repository - it is based on Debian, Knoppix, Morphix and Elive. Of course I could use Morphix all by itself...well...

Furthermore it comes with Xcfe and Engage-dock, which is again fast and beautifull

b) hosting of large files tends to be either complicated or expensive. Since I'm a student - meaning that I do not have a lot of money - it is complicated. Very complicated. Homepage and that stuff is much easier. I'll have this blog here, a wiki and forum at wikidot and that was it. Actually I allready have the wiki but didn't have the time to do anything with it. Not yet.

So guys...wish me the best!

thanks

Martin

I can feel myself getting impatient with the project, though.  I'm not even close to done, I'm really still at the beginning of the story, which is frustrating.  Not the beginning, I guess, but I'm definitely still in the set up.  The problem is I can see where the story is going, it's just a question of having another (approximately) 200-250 hours to go before the first draft is finished, when I can only devote 1-2 hours at a time, maybe 3 on a relatively uncommitted weekend day or holiday.  At best, I'm going to have the first draft finished by summer, and that's only if I can maintain this pace without significant interruption by work (HA!) or personal obligations.

I'm hoping that my impatience doesn't get in the way of the writing.  The first time I sit down and can't hammer out 750-900 words an hour on this novel is going to be a real test for me, and a sure sign that the honeymoon is over.  So far, I can't complain that the words aren't coming, only that I can't type them any faster.

Also, I'd like the novel not to suck.

And, while I'm at it, a pony.