This is a very interesting piece of software. It looks like the developer has rewritten it completely, dealing with the weaknesses of the previous version. It has a whole bunch of interesting features, including mindmapping (this has been substantially expanded, it appears), the ability to edit multiple sections/subsections simultaneously (like Ulysses), and a plethora of output formats. Apparently the search function has also been enhanced (formerly something of a weakness),.

I’m certainly going to take a closer look!

Cheers,
Bill

https://writemapper.com/whats-new/

Looks interesting. Like all new writing apps, an AI 'assistant' is integrated into it too.

A couple of years ago you said you'd written the developer to point out missing writing features that were surprisingly absent in a writing app:

https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/9440/5

Do you know if these issues have since been addressed?

Good one – I haven’t had a chance to give it a really good kicking yet, but I’ve immediately noticed that it still doesn’t have “smart” punctuation (i.e. curly quotes/apostrophes etc.). That’s a shame.

Thanks for drawing my attention back to that post – I’ll use it as a benchmark!

One of the relatively few writing apps I hadn't tried.
Won't give it a good kicking, but might nudge it a bit.

Looks to be a PWA prog, primarily a markdown notes editor with outline and mindmap attached. Instant dark mode was good.
But not usable for me - the mindmap is so much less intuitive and easy than Mindomo (the far fewer features could even be an advantage). Might be better on the Mac. And I use Mindomo for all sorts of playing around with ideas, not just outlining a doc.
I also don't see any advantages - and a number of disadvantages - over other markdown editors. The mindmap integration really is the USP.
I also looked at the producthunt page.

Roughly speaking, it looks okay, maybe usable. I wouldn't reject it out of hand.
But I'd expect to find multiple niggles - expected features absent, accessing them unintuitive, and some things not working.
And that's an issue for a writing app, which needs to be slick and predictable and not get in the way of the writing.

And then there's the issue of pricing and sustainability.
V1 users get free upgrade to V4. V2 and 3 users get a 50% discount. $65 is more expensive than Scrivener, though less than subscription progs like Dabble. From the ProductHunt discussion, I'm not convinced that the developer has a business strategy that is producing sufficient income.
And is it really better than Obsidian + one of its mindmap plugins? I suppose yes, given that you'd also have to add Longform to reorder docs.

I've looked at it a bit more and think I've underestimated it. For anyone who has straightforward/simple mindmap/outline/editor needs, Writemapper is a pretty neat was of switching from one mode to another. And the import/export options are good enough to support a to-and-fro workflow for times when something extra is needed. I can see a value in that.

But then I looked at the pricing in detail, and it started to feel like extortion. I appreciate that it won't have the volume of Scrivener, and that the developer needs an income, but I just can't see the possibility of growing customer volume with this setup:

Writemapper free trial - 7 days. Can be extended on request by a further 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 days for 28 days in total. Money back promise lasts 14 days.
Scrivener free trial lasts 30 days, only days of use counting. Money back promise covers next 30 days.

Writemapper launched 2017. Versions 2, 3, 4 have launched since then.
Scrivener 3 launched 2017. Still the current version so no upgrade fees since then.

It’s an easy app to underestimate – the improved mindmapping options alone are interesting, and the full Document View (which is also editable) is extremely useful.

There are niggles: you can’t select multiple nodes, for instance, which means you have to move/copy/delete mindmap nodes individually. The same applies in Document View – you can only select the contents of one node at a time, you can’t select text across multiple nodes.

I’ve suggested the following to the developer (Guan):

1) Smart punctuation! (By which I mean, curly apostrophes, quotation marks etc.)

2) A search and replace function would be very nice! (Not least to resolve the smart punctuation issue noted above)

3) It would be great if one could emulate Ulysses, Scrivener etc. by viewing a selected node plus subnodes in the mindmap as a contiguous document, rather than having to view the entire document in one go. To explain further: the “Document View” is great, but if you could select a node (e.g. “Tune your setup” in your help file) and then view that node plus all its subnodes in, as it were, a “sub-Document View”, that would be extremely helpful, especially when dealing with very large documents.

4) Similarly, it would be great if one could select multiple nodes in the mindmap using e.g. Cmd (or Ctrl in Windows)/Shift + click. And then move, delete, copy them all together, rather than one by one.

5) A small extra suggestion: why not put a magnifying glass icon in the toolbar for Quick Search (eventually maybe for Quick Search & Replace)? Just for the sake of completeness ;-)

The price is fairly robust, but not bad compared to many other writing apps. I’d agree that Scrivener is a better bargain (and also much more powerful), but I like the WriteMapper model, I must say. I also like the broad range of export options, although the results aren’t always exactly elegant.

Hm, talking about writing apps, this is an intriguing announcement by Scrivener:

"Before the end of 2024, we’ll be launching a new writing app on macOS, Windows and iOS that will join Scrivener and Scapple in our family of writing apps. We’re now looking for beta testers."

https://www.literatureandlatte.com/latest/help-us-test-our-new-writing-app

They have enough beta testers for the time being, but it all looks rather exciting. And cross-platform too (come on, Jesse, this is essentially what Bike is about, too, and you’ve already developed a sensational app. Now iOS beckons!)

MadaboutDana wrote:

The price is fairly robust, but not bad compared to many other writing
apps.

Which writing apps do you think its pricing compares well to?
I think it's far more expensive than all the most popular competitors:
Word365 (as part of Office) comes with all the other apps and 1TB cloud on 5 devices. About the same price (albeit for a year) but for 5 devices.
Ulysses is $40 a year for unlimited devices
For free are Docs, LibreOffice, SmartEdit Writer, Obsidian, yWriter etc etc.
Dabble is more expensive - but very well designed for its particular niche. And the popular screenwriting programs are more expensive.

And for most niches I can think of WriteMapper fails on some required features, never mind nice to have.
A large % of fiction writers expect first line indent. Academics, and many journalists, require management of sources.

And it is totally confused about lines and paragraphs.
It interprets markdown lines as paragraphs. But new lines are simply added to the end of the paragraph - it doesn't understand that it's new line inside a paragraph.
Does better with docx
But it doesn't understand new lines internally either. They become separate paragraphs when exported to docx.
Markdown's assumption, taken from text editors, that Enter=new line has caused so many problems. WriteMapper taking Enter=New Paragraph is good; not displaying blank lines between paragraphs is good; but only if there's a first line indent to clearly define paragraphs.

It looks like a markdown editor, which brings its own limitations. And no colour.
Very simple local plaintext file type; suprised they don't make more of that in their publicity.

MadaboutDana wrote:

Hm, talking about writing apps, this is an intriguing announcement by
Scrivener:

For years the dev Keith Blount - who admitted a decade ago he's not a programmer - has essentially been riding a successful tiger he can't control, based off a hobby project he wrote after a few months learning Xcode. He offloaded development of a Windows app to a programmer who has a profit-share deal with him because he didn't have the expertise himself, but Scrivener Windows users typically get features long after Mac users, and Windows users have dealt with a lot of bugs over the years.

The iOS Scrivener app is an oddly-designed subset of the main app. Blount made the same type of business deal with an iOS developer but the result was subpar and now he has a single iOS dev person on staff for the iOS/iPadOS platform.

Development is a bit of a mess overall.

If suddenly we're talking about a new cross-platform app I'd bet it's an(other bloated, relatively slow) Electron app with that framework's attendant security issues (especially if it's not regularly and quickly patched when compromises are announced and addressed). Blount can use it to maintain a single codebase, eliminate the costs with outside developers, and be able to push out updates simultaneously. But I don't have much hope that it will be a fast app or a pleasurable one to write in, or one that takes advantage of each platform's UI and included functionality. (A major problem with Electron apps.)

Literature & Latte has eight employees, I think, and most aren't full-time. Hopefully this new app ends up being useful and successful, but I don't think I want to go anywhere near it for the first couple of years after release, until it proves itself.

satis wrote:

If suddenly we're talking about a new cross-platform app I'd bet it's
an(other bloated, relatively slow) Electron app

I'm not sure we are. The Mac version will, as usual, be coming out before the Windows one.
I'm also not sure that Electron apps need to be bloated or slow. Some are pretty fast.
I'm sure it will be reasonably priced too.
My big question about it is 'what's it for?', followed by 'what new feature will it have that will make people want to buy it?' I can appreciate that there's no appetite for a Scrivener 4.

satis wrote:

> Scrivener Windows users typically get features long after
Mac users, and Windows users have dealt with a lot of bugs over the
years.

I think part of the issue is that it's a Mac app and there's an insistence on trying to make the Windows version copy the Mac version exactly, which means features and optimisations are lost and none are gained because the Windows version is only a shadow.

Which is quite different to the approach taken by iAWriter where its Mac and Windows versions have somewhat different feature sets, with the Windows version even being ahead for a (brief) period.

We'll see. I'd certainly prefer a native Mac app that takes advantage of UI practices (menu bar, file management, full screen, Dock menus, widgets) over a least-common-denominator Electron app. Generally, if you're deploying Mac/Windows cross-platform apps and you're not a big company like Adobe it seems increasingly cost-prohibitive not to make your apps web-based services with common front-ends, or have them be Electron apps.

Spotify, Discord, Slack, Notion, Figma, Telegram, 1Password 8 and Zoom are all Electron apps, and I cannot stand them. They are bloated, their UIs are often a mess, and they are often slow, or at least slower than native apps. The best Electron writing app I've ever seen has been Typora, but it took them over five years of tweaking to get in shape and out of beta. It's not easy to make a good Electron app.

Someone in the L&L forum listed what he says are what we know about the app from devs and beta testers, and it seems that the Mac app at least is using Apple APIs like TextKit:

- A rich text editor - not markdown

- A 'binder' on the left that lets you view and organise your documents, chapters and research files

- items in the binder can be moved around manually

- Create new sheets & chapters using the plus button in the binder (not clear that you can create new folders too but would seem to indicate you can)

- Different icons for your project manuscript folder, chapters, sheets and research folders to make it easy to distinguish between them

- The binder doubles as the outline structure - there is not separate outlining tool

- Chapters, folders, Bin can be expanded and collapsed in the binder

- Each document can have a title that is separate from the text within the document

- The title has a character limit of at least 68 characters. This allows the title to also be used as a synopsis for the document

- There is not separate place for a synopsis

- Each section (document?) can be as large or small as needed.

- Features targets, writing streaks and milestones

- Can view research files from within the app - not clear what formats supported

- You can output to Word, PDF, ePub, Markdown and other formats not yet announced.

- There is a 'Bin' or 'Trash' folder where you can put documents (and chapters and folders?) that you no longer need.

- The app appears to be project based - on book, one project. No one whole database to keep all your writing in.

- Word count at the bottom of the editor

- A formatting menu (Aa in the screenshot).

- A quick and easy way to switch formatting - details of how this is done are not shared

- Text can be formatted as a heading, bold, italic and can be in different colours. Indented quotes. First line paragraph indent, with the first line of the first paragraph not indented.

- Different styles can be applied to the text in the editor

- An inspector (i in the screenshot) that at least can keep a place for notes related to the document in the editor.

- The ability to navigate to previous documents used (< > in the screenshots.

- Desktop versions of the new app can export to Scrivener format

- iCloud sync

- Using TextKit under the hood, using a different text system from a user perspective in terms of how it works

- iOS, iPadOS, MacOS and Windows versions

Well, Satis, this new application you speak of could almost be called Ulysses bis!

Don't you think that it is basically an experiment in the search to replace Scrivener in the medium term?

I think Keith’s been pretty clear on its place in the Scrivener constellation – it won’t replace Scrivener, but it’s another tool for people who don’t want/need Scrivener’s “kitchen sink” approach (as Keith puts it, a “scalpel to Scrivener’s Swiss Army knife”).

I’m absolutely sure it’s a response to Ulysses and similar apps. Apart from the interesting list provided by @satis (thanks for that!), there are two other things worth mentioning:

a) it’s been in development for three years (so even if it is Electron, it’s being taken seriously!)
b) it would appear – at least, there’s a hint – that it will support customised (presumably CSS?) stylesheets (again, very like Ulysses/other writing apps)

He also emphasises that it will have iCloud synchronisation, and this suggests to me that he’s very aware of Scrivener’s less-than-satisfactory cross-platform performance, and is making this a tool capable of operating efficiently across multiple devices, including smartphones.

All these things make good sense to me. I’d love to know if he’s contemplating an Android version, too? Or even a Linux version (I’ve just scrobbled my 2013 MacBook Air and turned it into a Linux Mint machine!)?

There's no longer a need for all the old Scrivener features; I'm not sure what % of Scrivener users ever use the compiler.
And, L&L certainly seem keen to update their codebase..
But there's nothing on the list that many other apps don't have now. I'd hope it's not just a Ulysses clone. Scrivener and Scapple both had innovative features for their day, and I'd hope there's something more than this list to the new app.