So, why such high price? - smolka

DevonThink's full screen does not work half as elegantly as Ulysses's, and the price is not so outlandish once you realise that

1. You start writing a lot more focussed
2. The target audience will always remain relatively small, and
3. a rolls royce requires a bit more handiwork than your average run-of-the-mill software. God is in the details!

Ever tried DEVONthink for writing? Really? It's a great app, I'm a registered fan, but I use if for storage and retrieval, not for composition, not even for organizing.

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Tuesday, December 06 2005 @ 03:32 PM PST

So, why such high price? - sasha_efi_dotmac

"God is in the details... Rolls Royce..." cool language! I'd appreciate actual details though :) You answered none of my questions, throwing some sand into my eyes.

Any full-screen editor allows the famous focus...

Indeed I couldn't compose in Devonthink, now that I've used it more. It's great for databasing and clean version storage. I'm using a combination of Tinderbox and Jer's Novel Writer instead for the actual outlining and writing of long projects.

I honestly laboured to get used to Ulysses. I wanted to like it, as I like the developers attitude and their professional approach. Probably it's only useful for short stories, rather than novels, given its lack of any meaningful nested organisation. But then again: Copywrite offers version tracking, a feature critical for short stories. So I bought it instead of Ulysses for my short stories (even though the full screen there isn't implemented as well as in Ulysses and Jer's: it always jumps to the bottom of the text).

Now my 60-day trial run out, and I didn't buy Ulysses yet. Maybe with the next version — why not, if it's good?

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Tuesday, December 20 2005 @ 01:56 PM PST

So - smolka

I did not intend to throw some sand into your wide-open eyes...

Why Ulysses? As you already indicate, the fullscreen mode of Ulysses, which started the trend, is implemented rather nicely with a scrollbar fading away into the dark background;

There is the "typewriter" mode which, afaik, no other app has: you will never write at the last line of the screen, since the fullscreen editor moves upward. This is incredibly helpful (even though it may seem trivial at first sight, but to me it is not);

Ulysses exports footnotes in the "notes" section to LaTeX (and I am a LaTeX user; the developers say it can also export to RTF but Apple's OS prevents something here, I'm in no position to venture an opinion here).

I do agree that the lack of nested folders, or similar funtionailty, is serious. On the other hand, the developers have been so creative in the past (and have been copied by other apps as a result), that I have confidence in their ability to come up with something good. After all, you want to live in an app. I can live in Ulysses, but none of the other tools (except Tinderbox).

I would like stronger footnote support.

Personally, I do not need or want versioning. I'd get even more confused than I already am.

BTW, I also use Tinderbox, and I love it to bits. But Tinderbox does not support Unicode. And if you complain about the price of Ulysses, well,.....

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Tuesday, March 07 2006 @ 11:43 AM PST

So - sasha_efi_dotmac

Nice little pinch with the last line, Smolka. :) Very funny.

I own Tinder box (which I quite like for its flexibility), as well as a whole host of other writing and brainstorming products: Novamind, DevonThink Pro, Copywrire and even Bee Doc's Timeline. The funny thing is, I keep writing either in Scrivender or Jer's NR for neither of which I had to pay.

Anyway. Will see what version 1.3 brings.

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Wednesday, April 12 2006 @ 11:04 PM PDT