So... funny story. After all my kvetching and mewling about MS Word yesterday, I'm chatting with the hubby about about the 2016 Mac release having come out along with the Windows version (rather than a year later like always) and he tells me, "Oh, yeah, they got it for me at work. Want me to install it on yours?" I have to say, that compared to the 2011 version which - other than the glitchiness I mentioned previously - had a very old-school look to it, and a tool bar that was - like @Sack-a-Doo! mentioned - seemingly designed by IT people for IT people and not for an end consumer (ALL THE BUTTONS POSSIBLE!!! MORE FUCKING BUTTONS!!!!)... they've cleaned the look of it considerably and it looks much, much, much more Mac. Sue me if that sounds petty, but it looks focused, at least as compared to 2011, which I always felt was trying to tell me I slice, dice, and julienne; I baby-sit, take out the dog, and I can do a hepatic enzyme panel (insert index finger into sampler); all this and so much more for well qualified buyers on a 36 month installment plan (tax, tag and title are seperate; application may take 37 min to load each time you use it). It will never be my preferred platform for my personal writing because Scrivener does things for me as regards how I plan and engage my writing that Word is not geared to do, but for my work-work I'm hoping Word 2016 is less of a PITA. Does the Windows 2016 version look like this? (Mac 2011 top, Mac 2016 bottom)
Ok. Not too terribly different. Mine has the Styles function collapsed into an icon. If I click it, I get a bubble with the same full image that's on your toolbar. It seems, at least this time around, they had someone with Mac aesthetic appreciation on hand for the Mac port.
Yes, I recall that when they were working on the changes they were aiming, as much as possible, to make the Mac version look like something you'd expect to see on a Mac.
Am I seeing that correctly on your image that there seems to be a little button at the bottom right of each section of the tool-bar that lets you collapse that section away?
The button on the bottom right of each section actually expands it to provide other options. The caret at the far right, bottom of the toolbar collapses the whole thing.
Oh... I just discovered that my Styles function was collapsed into an icon because of the size of window I was using. If I stretch the window, the Styles function opens up completely. If I shrink the window further, other sections collapse into a single icon with a bubble-expand option. That's MUCH better than how it was on 2011. On the older one, if you sized the window down, whole sections just disappeared and you either had to stretch the window to get them or hunt for them through the drop downs. As you can see, I'm only just now playing around with it. Expect a flood of questions as to where things are now. Appy-poly-loggies in advance.
I love (most) music - I can't play a note, though. But if I could, I'd choose the saxophone, the Bette Midler of instruments - brassy, raunchy, but capable of the most glorious sounds. WordPro stemmed from AmiPro. Apart from the menus, it had a palette with all commands available to you. It also allowed Sections, which were tabbed and renameable; each section allowed for unique settings from page size and orientation down. Wordprocessors today have sections, but (in LO at least) they're not tabbed and a user is required to scroll through the entire document to find what they want and the implementation is fiddly. Long Documents in Word had you create a document into which you compiled existing documents and you were able to edit as if it were just one. But in Word 6, this feature was broken, and I spat the dummy with it. WordPro also handled paragraph/outline styles differently to what seems to me the "dumbed-down" method that Word and LO use today - if I use LO to create a series of numbered or bulleted lists with intervening text, I always struggle with the numbering, because my first instinct is to use hierarchical (outline) styles. Someday I'll learn. VicPol used WordPerfect and I still have nightmares, because the "word-processor operators" we had couldn't comprehend that wordprocessor wasn't equal to a typewriter and they didn't know how to change page size. With the default page in WP being US Letter, and the printer loaded with A4 paper, they used things like carriage returns and spaces to try to overcome issues with formatting, all the while blaming our computer section for the printer not working correctly. They also typed-in page numbers... I think that with Softmaker, there was either an issue with the import filter for .doc, or (more likely) the list-handling - I probably decided that if such an aspect was no better than OpenOffice (forked into LO) I wasn't going to pay for the frustration. I had another look at ThinkFree - it has a 56MB download, so I don't think it's cloud-based. It may have integrated cloud tools - like LO, I just discovered - but I'm pretty sure you can save to local hardware. I've looked at many wordprocessors, but so far, I haven't found anything to persuade me from LO. If only they'd give it a decent UI! LO hides a lot of its power - I found out recently that it has a "Save to Remote Server" facility. Calligra Words is pretty and there's a Windows port which seems to work passably well. AbiWord seems like a waste of time. For about the past 18 months, I've used Dropbox as the location for my current novel (in WriteItNow); because WIN is not Linux-compatible, I use WIN in Windows in a Virtual Box. If anything was to go wrong, I think it would have happened by now.
You know, if MS Word ever took a lesson from Scrivener and made their toolbar customizable, I might actually stop shitting all over their software.
You won't upset me, tatala. I'm the first to say it's not for everyone. Nothing ever is. If you see me proselytize with the glassy-eyed vigor of a zealot it's only because there was a time when mentioning anything other than the state-approved, party-approved software (MS Word, for all good comrades) it would actually get you into trouble 'round these parts. It was imperative that I change that. I come from a family of accountants and shrewd buyers. Pick the thing that serves you best is how I live my life. Buy the one that best suits your needs. Never mind trend. Don't cave to peer pressure. When I first made the move to Apple, there were friends who were like, "Look, Wrey's joined the flock." *insert sheep noise* Never mind that I made the move after much research into reliability, stability, and longevity of the hardware. I made an informed choice and bought the thing that best suited me.
The 'open last project on launch' thing is annoying, yes. Would be much better if it just opened a blank document (not possible due to Scriv's format) or a window that let you choose between latest projects or creating a new one (maybe this is possible, must look for an option later). The fullscreen mode, on the other hand...
There is a way to get the latter option you mention. Close just the project first so that you get this window: Then close the whole Scrivener ap. Next time you open the ap, you'll get the above window instead of an open project. The above window is similar in concept to what MS Word 2016 now gives whenever I open the application. I'm looking for a way for MS Word 2016 to just go directly to a "sheet of paper" as well, rather than what it now does.
I didn't say it was perfect. Scrivener answers to more of a "working environment" paradigm than just a flat word processor. I can see why it would be geared to favor the idea of having your project automatically open.
I don't think the subscription is a must....? The website gives a one-time hit of $109.99 for both the Mac and PC versions (separately). Remember, I'm not pushing the product. I tolerate its presence the way a Type I Diabetic tolerates his insulin pump.
This is one of my other MAJOR issues with Microsoft as a whole. It's like, "Here's your box of pre-punctured condoms. That'll be $299.99."
Are you implying that other companies don't have security holes in their applications? Or that MS doesn't fix them (which they've always done in the past, to my knowledge)?
I'm saying that every five min either MS Word or Adobe Acrobat are asking me to update patches for security reasons. Every - five - minutes. My Mac-native aps don't seem to have this constant need.
Of course it's possible, but Scrivener isn't designed for it. It uses a save format that contains dozens of files, even for a completely empty project. Allowing users to create blank documents without specifying a save location would mean having to keep all those files in RAM or in a temp location, neither of which might be desirable. But it could definitely be done, probably without rewriting all too much code. (Word has done it, after all, .docx is just a .zip with multiple files in it to store all formatting, graphics, etc.)
Might the Mac-native apps have a more regular update schedule, e.g. once a month, with batches of fixes rather than new updates when a fix is available? I doubt that Mac apps apps don't have security holes.
Why can't programs just know when I want a new project, open a recent one, or just resume where I last left off? That would be so handy!
If they do, dealing with them is done in a much more transparent way for the user, not this constant barrage of requests to update the ap like with MS Word and Adobe (especially Adobe).
