Calling the Mac experts

**Lemur** · 07-20-2009, 16:06

Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

I stayed up past 1AM going through the tutorial and playing with features as they were introduced. I started it around 9PM; I couldn't tear myself away from my new box of toys.

Okay, fine, I give in. After hearing you and Banquo rave on and on about Scrivener, I downloaded the free trial and started working the tutorials.

Goodness.

I think this may replace no fewer than four applications I've been using. This really is good stuff. If I weren't so stodgy and stuck in my ways I would have tried it before.

Sure, it's not gonna work for the customized templates used by some of my corporate clients, but that's fine, I can still crank OpenOffice when I need to. But this is a mighty fine box of tools. I think I'm in love.

Somebody needs to port this app to Windows. Quickly. It's too fine to be restricted to Mac users.

**Banquo's Ghost** · 07-20-2009, 16:22

Originally Posted by Lemur

Somebody needs to port this app to Windows. Quickly. It's too fine to be restricted to Mac users.

Unlikely, as they are tiny team based in Cornwall, UK.

Originally Posted by L&L website

Will There Be a Windows Version of Scrivener?
This is one of the most frequent questions we receive. The answer, I am sorry to say, is, "No - certainly not in the foreseeable future." The reason for this is not that we are Mac snobs, but simply that Literature & Latte - as explained above - is a very small company, and we happen to prefer and use (and program for) the Mac platform. The Mac operating system (OS X) is, internally, very different from Windows, to such an extent that porting Scrivener to Windows would pretty much require programming it from scratch (not to mention me having to learn how to program for Windows). Programs that do run on both Windows and OS X tend to fall into two camps: those that have whole teams working on them who are thus able to create two entirely separate versions optimised for each platform (examples are Word, PhotoShop and suchlike); and those that are created using intermediary software such as REALBasic (the latter tend to stick out as not really looking or feeling "native" to either platform). Scrivener was created using the standard Mac OS X programming frameworks (known as "Cocoa"), so it is native to the Mac. Because of this and the fact that I do not have whole teams of programmers to port it to a different platform, a Windows version of Scrivener is very unlikely. Sorry. That said, if you happen to be a talented Windows programmer as well as a writer and you like Scrivener, feel free to drop me a line - I can't offer anyone a job, though!

Glad to see you are being seduced too!

**Lemur** · 11-08-2010, 16:33

Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost

Unlikely, as they are tiny team based in Cornwall, UK.

Unlikely, but not impossible. Behold, Scrivener for Windows beta 3. I'll be locking my bedroom and holding all calls while I cuddle up with this sexy piece of software.

**frogbeastegg** · 07-20-2009, 17:16

Originally Posted by pevergreen

Do I sense an Eleanor: Apprentice and an Eleanor: Master? (Sorry, I have the Riftwar on my mind)

The story arc splits neatly into three segments, and I've had joking names for each for years. Part 1 is 'Nell and Fulk's Spytastic Adventures'. Part 2 is 'Uh oh ...' and part 3 is 'Wherein there is killing and stuff, also cleaning up'. Imagine walking into a bookshop and asking for a copy of one of those!

Originally Posted by Lemur

Okay, fine, I give in. After hearing you and Banquo rave on and on about Scrivener, I downloaded the free trial and started working the tutorials.

Glad that you've got some return for helping me

Somebody needs to port this app to Windows. Quickly. It's too fine to be restricted to Mac users.

If it had been possible on Windows then I'd have been thinking of the option Caravel mentions here: a normal laptop with vista nuked off of it and a decent OS installed. Whether I'd have taken that route or not is a different question; spending time cleaning junk off and setting the machine up in a usable fashion would have been more effort than I'm currently willing to spend. Getting this desktop back up and running took me a lot of time, for which I had other, more uses.

Have you seen page four? It's nice but it lacks some of the things I liked in scrivener's product blurb, and those tools were more useful to me than the ones page four has but scrivener does not.