Archive for October, 2009

I’ve tried to spend the day working up my plot and my characters for my NaNoWriMo attempt, but I kept finding things in StoryBox I wanted to change immediately. I really need to not try to write on the same computer where I develop StoryBox. I did manage, however, to come up with an idea, a half a dozen or more scene descriptions to start the novel, and a description of the final scene, as well as short descriptions of the essential characters. There’s still a lot of work to do, but what I’ve got should get me through the first couple of days. I’ll try to make sure I stay a step or two ahead on the scene descriptions as I go, and I may even get more done this evening as I watch Monster House with my kids.

My main worry, now, about NaNo, is that I’ll spend the time I’m supposed to be writing on tweaking StoryBox. For example, todays effort netted a Recent Projects list under the file menu, tweaks to the Black theme for checkboxes, a Dated Entry option (for doing things like keeping a journal inside of the Box of Notes folder), and the moving of relavent document types to the top of the File Drawer context menu (so if you right click on the character folder, “New Character” will be at the top of the context menu).

Enjoy your Halloween and good luck with NaNoWriMo, if you’re participating. I’ve set a goal this year to complete it, and I mean to. No more 5000 word attempts for me. Mark crosses his fingers, shuts his eyes and says this over and over until he thinks he believes it!

I added two things for this build. A global line spacing setting that changes the line spacing across ALL documents. I will be adding other, more localized options at a later date. I’ve already started the work, but there are some weird issues I’m having to deal with. I also added basic bullets and numbering, accessible from the context menu (put the caret where you’d like to put the bullet, and right click on the text). Again, I will be adding more formatting options as time goes on.

I would have waited to put this build out to provide more options, but I thought, with NaNo coming up, I wanted to at least get these out for people to use on Nov. 1. Which reminds me.

I will probably not be working on StoryBox the next two days, as I’m going to try to take tomorrow (as much of it as I can) to prepare for NaNo, and then on Nov. 1, I’m going to try to get a really big head start. But if something comes up that’s really crazy, send the bug report and I’ll do my best to fix it right away.

Remember – back up your projects nightly, just to be on the safe side.

0.0.42 is up, but it’s mostly some minor changes. A couple of bug fixes for some annoying things. Updates probably will start to slow down here soon, with NaNoWriMo starting in three days and the major features completed, if not yet polished. There are still minor things I’m going to add, and I’m going to leave the early adopter pricing up until at least the end of NaNo, even if I hit 1.0 before then. I don’t think StoryBox will be 1.0 before then, but stranger things have happened. In any case, I’m committing to $25 for another month, at least.

Here are some things that I’m going to be working on that I expect to be in v1.0.

• Bullets
• Line spacing
• Export to manuscript format
• Export of specific document trees (so you can export your entire project, notes included)

I cannot remember where I said it, but I said I’d have options for indenting in by the end of this week. Is today good enough? Also added, some alignment options (left, center, right), and I migrated alot of the options that were on the document context menu into the one that you get in full screen mode so you don’t have to get out of fullscreen to add a tag or add notes to a character.

I was feeling frivolous last night and today, so I added some new button styles to StoryBox, as well as cleaned up the themes (especially the Black and Desert themes) a bit. Each theme has a default icon set, plus, you can go into the preferences and choose a different icon set if you don’t like the default ones. I’m partial to Plain buttons on the Black theme, myself, and I’m tempted to change that to the default for the Black theme. I’m interested in hearing which combinations people like the most, and if there are any overwhelming favorites, I could be convinced to change the defaults.

I’m going to try to give you some options for modifying the indentation by the end of the week (meaning before NaNo starts) so that you’re not stuck being uncreative with your formatting. If there’s any other feature that you absolutely need before NaNo starts, let me know and I’ll see if I can squeeze it in.

I’ve basically been updating Storybox every couple of days, and sometimes more often, and I wonder what you think about that. How often is too often? When do you get tired of installing updates?

Of course, I don’t actually force you to install them, and you can turn off the update check in the preferences menu if you want.

Personally, I’m a big fan of frequent updates. It often feels like Christmas when my favorite software receives an update, especially when it fixes a problem I’ve been happening.