You know how time takes on a different character -- it stretches out, or slows down -- as you travel near the speed of light? (It must be true, since NPR reported on it again last week.) It's kind of like that with Software Week. It's just a week, but it's going to go on all year. We're only on Day Two (previously here, here. and here), but with another update to the Day Two posting.
This one concerns the impending new release of the nonpareil Mac writing program Scrivener. Details here; screen shots below showing a few of its traits.
Two reasons for mentioning this, which I intend to be my last plug for the program until .. well, until the next time. First, the new Mac version promises to have a lot of sophisticated burnishings to what is already a system that's a real breakthrough in usefulness. Check the link above for more. And second: a Windows version is on the way! Details here and here.
Why is the program useful? A variety of modest features that cumulatively show real understanding of the way actual writers (or research scholars or novelists etc) think and work, as opposed to the needs of "word processors" in a routine office setting. With the shot below, you don't need to have the atmospheric Irish-bog background if you don't want (I have a plain black background when working in full-screen mode), but it's very handy to have a little notes panel you can refer to while you're working on the main document. Yes, you can find other ways to do this; the point is, the program has a large number of such features built in.
I won't even try to explain the utility of being able to separate an article or book into discrete chunks, and move them around as your organizational scheme changes. Indeed I'm not really here to make a case for the program -- to each his own in software -- but rather, newshound style, to convey information: Updated Mac version on the way, along with first PC version.
