If you've read my old blog, you'll know that I do like playing with software, and when I come across a new bit of software that tweaks my interest I like to pit it against a competitor in on a project I'm working on.
So when I heard about a application aimed at creative writers on Macbreak weekly, I couldn't resist giving it a go.
As you may know I like to write fiction, and my tool of choice for this has been Ulysses. I've been a user of this great tool for some time, it was the application that got me through the 50870 words of last years NanoWriMo (you can find it finished story and all the back story here).
Now don't get me wrong Ulysses is really great, it's very...er how can I put this, focused and minimal. It's striped right down to the bone, so you don't have anything to distract you from the important business of getting words from your brain on to your hard drive. It's also not cheap at about £65, but I do like it's simplicity. And yes I do have a license for it.
So why did I have a look at the new contender in this field Scrivener?
Well Ulysses is good, but there are some features which are missing and as a real fiddler I find it's interface a little...well bland.
Scrivener certainty beats Ulysses hands down in terms of features and hence there is lots in the interface to keep my busy eyes and figures occupied. I'm not really sure if this is a good thing from a productivity point of view however.
You've got all the good stuff that Ulysses offers like multiple documents and separate notes fields for each documents. Documents can be tagged with types and statuses, a full screen mode. Yes Scrivener offers everything thing that I've got used to in Ulysses, but it offers some really nice extra stuff, like multiple levels of documents in a project, so you can have a folders in the project for characters, places etc. You can also include PDF's, pictures even video clips as research. All very nice.
One thing major down side that I've found so far is that the full screen mode is...well, I really don't think the developer and I see eye to eye on what a full screen mode should do. In Ulysses full screen mode hides every thing, you have your words and thats it. You don't even get a scroll bar unless your mouse is near the edge of the text. Now Scrivener full screen mode fades the desk top, but you can still see it and I think that makes it more distracting, there may be a preference setting for this but I haven't found it yet. You also get pop up tool bars if your mouse wonders to the bottom of the screen. Mmm...no Ulysses definitely wins that round.
But Scrivener wins in terms of other features, like the default on screen font is very nice, the document multi level document layout I mentioned above. The corkboard feature looks good, but in my limited playing with it, I've not found it useful so far.
I'm still playing with Scrivener, but I can see the writing on the wall (no pun intended!). Scrivener is much cheaper than Ulysses, only about £17, so I can see me getting a license for it as well.
Why? Well Ulysses is great for when I want to really focus and I still see me using it for stories, but I can really see Scrivener being useful for other writing that I do, like my role playing adventures.
It seems I like to collect software!