There's a new type of writing application designed to help you manage
a novel growing and changing in different places as well as allow easy
major restructuring. It is designed for the earlier stages of a book,
and when it is time to finalize the formatting it is expected that the
compiled output is read by an office or formatting application.
There's a popular Mac OS X writing application in this genre called
"Scrivener" <http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html> It's a
commercial application with a lot of polish. It may be a commercial
app, but it leverages open standards when possible. All the data is
stored in XML and RTF. (The Open Document Foundation doesn't currently
have a format that cleanly maps to this sort of document set.)
They're releasing a beta of their upcoming Windows edition for
NaNoWriMo. Prior to this they were exclusively Mac OS X.
I sent them an email asking them to consider supporting Linux by way
of WINE. I'm including that email, plus their immediate response and a
recent follow-up.
I got such a kick out of the response that I felt I should share it. I
have to say that this sort of corporate attitude is one that I'm happy
to support with money.
Cheers,
Steven Black
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Steven Black <yam655@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 7:07 PM
Subject: Have you considered supporting Linux?
To: support@literatureandlatte.com
I know, you're thinking "Linux? We're still getting the Windows
version ready!" but it isn't as bad as all that.
All I'm really asking is that it cooperate with WINE, the Windows
Emulator. <http://www.winehq.org/> That is, it would be using the
exact same Windows binaries.
The problem? While WINE works really well there may be places where
the use of an unsupported (or poorly documented) function (or an
incompletely implemented function) will cause something to break.
Would this really be a viable solution to putting out a Linux version?
Well, it works well enough that WINE is used by Google Chrome, among
others. You wouldn't be the first to say, "We're not putting out a
Linux-native version -- but we'll fully support the use of WINE."
Would this require someone on your team to actually use Linux?
Actually, WINE also runs on Mac OS X.
<http://wiki.winehq.org/MacOSX/Installing> (No supported DMG package
at this time -- but it is included in Mac Ports and Fink.)
I'm not saying this should interrupt your current development cycle.
-- Make the upcoming releases awesome. -- I'm just saying that before
NaNoWriMo 2011 with a minimal amount of work you could go from
supporting just Mac OS X and Windows to supporting all three of the
major operating systems.
Cheers,
Steven Black
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ioa Petra'ka <support@literatureandlatte.com>
Date: Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 11:51 PM
Subject: Re: Have you considered supporting Linux?
To: Steven Black <yam655@gmail.com>
Steven,
Yes, we have! It won't be any time soon, mind you, but myself and the
Windows developer both use Linux, so it's something we have thought
about. Main focus for now is to get the Windows and Mac versions as
solid as possible, gauging the support impact that Windows will have,
and then once everything stabilises, considering a Linux move. The
nice thing about it is that the Windows version is written in QT. So,
as you can imagine, a Linux "port" would actually be extremely easy.
It's mostly a matter of priority focus and support minimalisation that
keeps us from doing a full cross-platform spread at the moment.
Thanks for the interest though. We've been hearing a lot of feedback
on people that would be interesting in a Linux version. I think it
would be great in conjunction with a low-impact netbook distro.
--
Ioa Petra'ka
Scrivener - Outline. Edit. Storyboard. Write.
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ioa Petra'ka <ioa@literatureandlatte.com>
Date: Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 5:55 PM
Subject: Re: Have you considered supporting Linux?
To: Steven Black <yam655@gmail.com>
Good news, Steven, we've decided to release a totally unsupported, but
native Linux binary. It won't be anything fancy. No .deb files or
anything like that. We just can't afford to spend resources on it
right now, but so many people were interested in getting it working
through WINE that we decided we might as well just put out something
there for people to play with and use. Check our Windows forum for
more information later tonight.
--
Ioa Petra'ka
Scrivener - Outline. Edit. Storyboard. Write.
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/
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