I've been spending a while trying to figure out how to propely organise my series, and while Scrivener keeps popping up, i cannot afford the $40 price tag that keeps appearing. After a short amount of time googling, i came across Bibisco, its a writing software that has been compared to Scrivener on a few occasions, thinking that i've nothing to lose i download it. Much to my surprise it runs straight off the file i download and fire it up. My first impression is surprise, its a far cleaner program than what i was expecting, sitting flicking through the tabs on it to see what goes into it. and it turns out to be quite a useful piece of software. A few Screenshots. character Development Screen character List Screen Architecture screen there is some more to this (as seen at the tabs on top of the screen, however i don't want to overload this post Site link
Hmmmm... For the Mac version, it says I need to reconfigure the Gatekeeper (that limits software to only run from the App Store or Identified Developers). Otherwise, I would get an error message that "the app is damaged". That's really weird. If an app is from an "Unidentified Developer" (getting the status "Identified Developer" from Apple is rather expensive; I understand if a small, independent developer doesn't want to pay it. I have installed lots of stuff from Unidentified Developers), the error message says it's from an Unidentified Developer. You can then go into the System Preferences and click on "Run Anyway" and supply the admin password to run the app. You can do that even on the most current macOS Sierra, although in the preferences there's no check mark for "Run from Anywhere". I never had to go to the command line and reconfigure the Gatekeeper to run anything, as the bibisco site claims I need to do for them. It doesn't really inspire confidence if the developer cannot even be bothered to follow the most basic guidelines of a system. It may be very fine software (it probably is), but it leaves a bad feeling. Re. Scrivener, just my 2 cents: 1) I think it's seriously underpriced at ~$40 for what it's capable of, compared to other software packages. 2) There are frequent sales when you can get it even cheaper.
I wish i could help good sir, however, i'm by no means a Mac Expert (despite doing a degree in computer science) my only suggestion is to google some help (which is how i hack anything into working) I get why people like Scrivener, and if i werent at the bottom of my student overdraft i'd get it to have on hand, (i'd rather use the money on something else right now) I might wait and find a better time to get it in fairness though, i did start Hacking LibreOffice to pieces when a file of mine corrupted... guess i'm just used to broken programs and having to fix them somehow
Even if it sounds cliché: It's not you, it's me! I get picky about software (maybe because I already have about 2 dozen word processors to text related apps installed). It's probably a fine program. I poked around with the Linux version (I have a Linux virtual machine for test purposes) and it seems to have some nice guidance elements to break the work of writing down into easier tasks.
Can I suggest that if you want to persevere with Bibisco on Mac that you drop a line to Andrea, the program author? I've found him to be responsive in the past. Bibisco has some nice features, but needs a little more development. Its character generator is very good. It has the unfortunate habit on my large screen (2560 x 1980) of trying to take up as much of the screen area as it can, which makes it all but unusable. If I unplug the large monitor and use the 17" native laptop screen, it's okay though.
