Category Archives: Software

Scrivener 2.0 Is Coming Soon

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Scrivener is the formerly Mac-only application I use to do most of my writing. It’s a self-contained, multi-functional marvel that lets me get down to writing and have all my research, notes, snippets, and whathaveyou to hand without having to switch between windows, or fiddle around with combining lots of different services and bits of software. Back in 2009 I wrote a paean to Scrivener which has turned out to be one of the most read posts on this blog.

Scrivener has always worked well for me, despite being intended primarily for writing fiction, but there were rough edges. Now many of those edges are going to be smoothed. Scrivener 2.0, introduced on the developer’s website before its release in October [Update: November 1st], looks like a significant revision. Among other things there are improvements to the corkboard, and outliner, new ways of comparing text, and managing notes, and even ePub export. There is also Simplenote syncing, which is extremely exciting. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it.

Scrivener 2.0 is described, with screenshots, right here.

My review of Scrivener, and a description of my workflow, is here.

Simplenote: Notetaking Everywhere

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In my ongoing and probably fruitless quest to find software that will do its job across platforms and devices I have been looking at notetaking applications. In the course of my week I work on three different ‘full-size’ computers using three radically different operating systems and I use an iPod Touch for keeping on top of things while I’m on the move. Synchronised data is a serious problem.

About a month ago I discovered Simplenote, a notetaking app for the iPhone/iPod Touch which has one simple aim: to replace the built-in notes app on those devices. Like a lot of iPhone apps Simplenote syncs with a web-based service. But the clever thing about it is that it allows other applications to sync too. There are currently four desktop apps (Mac only I’m afraid) that sync with the Simplenote web app. Windows and Linux users should take heart from the Simplenote plugin for Google Chrome, a great replacement for the now more or less defunct Google Notebook (Update: Windows users might now also like to try Resoph Notes, or Notes, and there are continuing developments elsewhere too–thanks to David in the comments for the update). A full list of apps, plugins and extensions is here.

For me the best of the desktop apps on the Mac is Notational Velocity, a simple, lightning-fast open source notetaking tool that syncs with Simplenote almost instantly. Notational Velocity is focused on keyboard work rather than the mouse, it works in plain text or Rich Text Format, and it can encrypt notes. Unlike other similar applications it can be configured to save the notes as separate text files rather than locking them inside a database. This means your work stays yours and is easy to manage. It also opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities. If you change one of those files in another application–a wordprocessor for instance, or Writeroom–it appears in Notational Velocity and from there on your iPhone. You can even create new files outside of Notational Velocity and they will appear there when you next open it up; or put the Notational Velocity file folder in Dropbox to sync with other machines. That’s pretty slick, though it is unwise to have two instances of Notational running and pointing at the same folder at the same time.

Notational Velocity meets a lot of the needs I have in this kind of application: it is simple, fast, stores my data in an open, portable format and allows me to move it around to different devices seamlessly and straightforwardly. Add to that the ecosystem of apps growing up around Simplenote, and the interaction possible between them, and suddenly ‘cloud computing’ looks like much more than just keeping your documents on Google’s servers. In this version of the cloud, data is everywhere. We need more software like this.

Todo Lists Anywhere

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Tasque todo list

It's not pretty, but it works.

I’ve been on the lookout for good todo list software for a while now. My primary machine is a Mac, but I also use Linux and Windows and these days an iPod Touch has taken over most of the duties of a laptop when I’m out and about. Since it’s my main machine I looked first for Mac software and tried Omnifocus (powerful, complicated, expensive) and the Things (simple, brilliant, pretty, great support) but quickly realised that none of the standard solutions were really cross platform. Certainly none of them had the ability to sync from Mac to Linux. I could sync from desktop to iPod/iPhone, and Mac to Mac (sorta, using Dropbox), but Windows and Linux might as well not exist.

Then I discovered Tasque, which is an underdeveloped free application from the Linux-centric Gnome desktop. Tasque is simple and straightforward and runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. It isn’t pretty and isn’t especially Mac-like, but its killer feature is that it syncs with the web-based todo list Remember The Milk. So Tasque, plus a $25 per year Remember The Milk Pro account and free iPhone app (there are apps for other handhelds, including Android and Blackberry) means I can sync my todos across platforms and across computers; there’s always Remember The Milk on the web too. Despite its lack of shiny shiny I find Tasque works very well on my Mac with very little fuss.

Go-OO: the most compatible office suite

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Many people have heard of OpenOffice.org, the free open source office suite which in one form or another is the most powerful competitor against Microsoft Office, the default option for most Windows users. There are things I don’t like about OpenOffice.org. For instance it’s a little slow at first start up and the interface looks a little dated alongside the likes of Apple’s iWork and even IBM’s Lotus Symphony, which is itself built on the OpenOffice.org codebase. In use OpenOffice.org is a highly capable office suite and through its support for the Open Document Format boasts compatibility with a wide range of other similar programs. It also supports an extremely wide range of languages and has a growing collection of extensions, including my favourite, which allows upload and import to and from Google Docs and Zoho Office. The big advantage for me though is that unlike MS Office I can run it on all my computers, giving me cross-platform access to my files at no cost. It will even run off a thumb drive, in case the computer in front of me doesn’t have it installed.

Unfortunately, despite these huge advantages, the ubiquity of MS Office means the biggest problem for any office suite contender is file compatibility with MS Office. In this respect OpenOffice.org is good, but a variant known as Go-OO is better. Go-OO is essentially the same as OpenOffice.org, but with added features, including support for Microsoft’s Excel VBA Macros, import of MS Works documents–a notorious dead zone for non-Microsoft software–and for Lotus Word Pro. It is also faster on my Mac than the ‘official’ OpenOffice.org release. A more complete list is available at the Go-OO website. I would be very surprised if this wasn’t the most flexible and compatible office suite available. In terms of document portability it leaves MS Office in the dust.

Many OpenOffice.org users are already using the Go-OO variant without realising it. It is the default office suite on many of the major desktop Linux distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu and openSUSE, and is the basis for NeoOffice on the Mac. If you downloaded OpenOffice.org from the main http://openoffice.org website though, you won’t be able to take advantage of these enhancements. I recommend going over to the Go-OO site and getting the enhanced version from there. It will cost you nothing at all, looks very similar to the original version, but makes the whole experience a lot better.

Free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Snow Leopard: Why Ship a Physical Disk?

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The ‘I upgraded to Snow Leopard’ stories are coming thick and fast and for the record this is mine. Here are the facts: It took about 55 minutes and there were two reboots, one half way through and one at the end. That’s it. This was a very easy upgrade with no human intervention beyond a couple of clicks to get it started. Since I have a Time Machine backup and keep my work in progress in on a synced Dropbox volume I didn’t worry about a clean install. It just wasn’t necessary.

Snow Leopard seems fine, but what I don’t understand is why I had to wait for the postman to deliver a CD. Why doesn’t Apple deliver OS upgrades like this using iTunes or even the regular Software Update tool? Most Linux systems deliver major upgrades that way using package management tools such as Synaptic and it works very well. The Ubuntu desktop I’m using to type this has had two Snow Leopard-equivalent upgrades now, both delivered in the same way as regular bugfixes and security updates, through Synaptic. If Apple has now caught up with Linux and Mac users no longer need to do clean installs it seems crazy for Apple to keep shipping actual physical media. We don’t buy iPhone OS upgrades on a disk after all.

Incidentally since I was installing Snow Leopard on my Mac I took the opportunity to upgrade my wife’s iBook G4 to Leopard. I kept the old Tiger install disk handy in case performance was poor, but actually this six year-old machine runs very well. Of course it will never be able to run Snow Leopard, but it will at least continue to receive updates until Mac OS X 10.7 “Hepcat” renders 10.5 obsolete. By then it will be around nine years old. She’ll have to manage with only 12GB of free disk space though.