Hi All

I recently bought Scrivener, and am beginning to use it. Yesterday I looked at Docxmanager, and found it looks a lot more like Scrivener than I remember it being. I am curious to know if anyone here has worked with both programs, and whether there's a significant enough difference between them to justify buying both. I think for more academic writing I am inclined to stay with Scrivener, so my question is whether there's a good enough use case for having Docxmanager as well. Thanks

Daly.

It probably depends on whether you want to write in Word or not. I find using Devonthink for what I'd do in Scrivener's research folder works reasonably well. A tree of folders on my disk would pretty much work, too. I'd miss replicants and per-project tagging.

If I wrote in Word, I'm sure I would use DocxManager. The developer is a friendly, top-notch sort of guy, too.

The previous incarnation of docxmanager, before the developer changed its name, was SO buggy and caused me so much misery that it still gives me nightmares and anyone who publishes trash like that should not still be developing anything. Stick with Scrivener.

Yes, the first release of whatever it was called back then was not recommendable. I believe the developer offered every license holder a refund. He regrouped, continued his efforts, and I think he's got a much more credible product now.

I'm inclined to balance his initial problems against integrity and improvement.

I'm also a big fan of Scrivener, even though I don't use it. It does a lot of good for a lot of writers.

One big problem with nice writing environments like Scrivener, is the rest of the world thinks Word is cool. DocxManager at least has you in step with the world.

But I agree. The first release wasn't something I would use. The current release - I'm pretty sure that's a different story. The web page generation, for example, looks pretty slick.

Thanks Amontillado - I am inclined to give Docxmanager a try.

Amontillado wrote:

Yes, the first release of whatever it was called back then was not
recommendable. I believe the developer offered every license holder a
refund. He regrouped, continued his efforts, and I think he's got a much
more credible product now.

I'm inclined to balance his initial problems against integrity and
improvement.

I'm also a big fan of Scrivener, even though I don't use it. It does a
lot of good for a lot of writers.

One big problem with nice writing environments like Scrivener, is the
rest of the world thinks Word is cool. DocxManager at least has you in
step with the world.

But I agree. The first release wasn't something I would use. The current
release - I'm pretty sure that's a different story. The web page
generation, for example, looks pretty slick.

A "refund" didn't bring back my document(s) -- months and months of work -- which disappeared because of this developer's incompetence.

I have an iron-clad rule: Your program hurts me -- and that one did -- I will (A) never trust you with anything ever again and (B) I will tell everyone about how incompetent you are, forever more.

Do NOT trust this developer. Ever.

Listerene

I find it interesting that other members here are able to step back a little and acknowledge that this developer did offer that refund, and that he recognized and corrected the problems with his software, managing to gain their respect in the process. I read what you wrote about this matter in, I believe, 2020, and earlier in this thread. I am sorry that you lost your work (though I wonder why you hadn't back it up), but now may be the time for more a nuanced understanding and singing a new song.

Daly

Listerene wrote:

A "refund" didn't bring back my document(s) -- months and months of work
-- which disappeared because of this developer's incompetence.

I have an iron-clad rule: Your program hurts me -- and that one did -- I
will (A) never trust you with anything ever again and (B) I will tell
everyone about how incompetent you are, forever more.

Do NOT trust this developer. Ever.

Indeed.

I can hardly think of a single software package or operating system from which I haven't lost data in some way at some time. That includes software from highly regarded developers and software that others swear can't lose data because it hasn't happened to them. If I dropped them all I'd be back to slate and chalk. I know how painful it can be when data loss occurs, and I feel your pain Listerene - I have a very stringent backup system in place to try to ameliorate the effects, but that can't resolve everything. But, for balance, as I've said here before, I've used DocxManager and its predecessors almost daily since their inception, and I've never lost a byte of data from them - I guess I've been lucky.

I haven't used Scrivener, but DocxManager is indispensable for me. Edwin can be very haphazard in the direction of development, but he is very open to feedback and open to admitting his failures - a rare commodity these days.

Graham

Daly de Gagne wrote:

Listerene

I find it interesting that other members here are able to step back a
little and acknowledge that this developer did offer that refund, and
that he recognized and corrected the problems with his software,
managing to gain their respect in the process. I read what you wrote
about this matter in, I believe, 2020, and earlier in this thread. I am
sorry that you lost your work (though I wonder why you hadn't back it
up), but now may be the time for more a nuanced understanding and
singing a new song.

Daly

Listerene wrote:
A "refund" didn't bring back my document(s) -- months and months of work
>-- which disappeared because of this developer's incompetence.
>
>I have an iron-clad rule: Your program hurts me -- and that one did --
I
>will (A) never trust you with anything ever again and (B) I will tell
>everyone about how incompetent you are, forever more.
>
>Do NOT trust this developer. Ever.
>

DO trust this developer. Everyone ought to get a second chance. (And you ought to back up your work - who doesn't do that nowadays?) Of course, given the developer's history, it's wise to treat his software with suspicion, at least initially, and not use it for important projects, again initially, but he shouldn't be made a pariah because of past mistakes that he has acknowledged and that he has labored to fix.

Listerene wrote:

A "refund" didn't bring back my document(s) -- months and months of work
-- which disappeared because of this developer's incompetence.

I have an iron-clad rule: Your program hurts me -- and that one did -- I
will (A) never trust you with anything ever again and (B) I will tell
everyone about how incompetent you are, forever more.

Do NOT trust this developer. Ever.

I also have a good opinion of the developer. And for three reasons:
1. The idea of turning Word into a sort of Scrivener is great.
2. Despite Word (and Windows) has considerably changed since v.2003 (with XP), he did not give up.
3. He admitted the problems with "Writing Outliner" that occurred to some customers and pay (with the refund) for it.

An improvement of the new version seems the following. With WO the doc files were enclosed into a proprietary archive. So if the archive went corrupted the work would be gone. With docxmanager - AFAIK - docx files are not enclosed into a proprietary archive, but they are accessible. This is undoubtedly a safer approach.

@Listerene:
I can understand the pain of loosing months of work. I used WO, without any loss. My settings in using it were (and still are):
- Word: v. 2003 32bit;
- OS: WinXP SP3 32bit.
Projects: less than 50 pages overall.
It would be interesting to know your settings too, and if your project was very complex: I know people that are still using WO in their old machines.

I don't know what the issues were, but I don't think they could be down just to complexity, because the project I had in WordOutliner and have in DocxManager is hundreds of thousands of words spread over hundreds of files/topics.

Anthony wrote:

Projects: less than 50 pages overall.
It would be interesting to know your settings too, and if your project
was very complex: I know people that are still using WO in their old
machines.

Listerene wrote:

I have an iron-clad rule: Your program hurts me -- and that one did -- I
will (A) never trust you with anything ever again and (B) I will tell
everyone about how incompetent you are, forever more.

Do NOT trust this developer. Ever.

Curiously, this is why I don't use Microsoft products.

Word used to support, using the term loosely, something called Master Documents. The idea was to use Word sort of like Scrivener. The presentation would make mud fences look pretty, even when freshly painted with leftover pig lipstick. I don't want to be harsh, but it was jarringly ugly.

You could reorder the sections of your document, but only if your mouse positioning was pixel-perfect. Otherwise, it was like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters.

There was no un-do function.

I think for the first ten years of Word Master Documents, they would spontaneously incinerate any file. I was never able to use the reorder function more than about twice before the document was irrecoverably scrambled.

The first Writing Outliner came in that era. It was great. Then there were some updates to Word that were at least part of Writing Outliner's downfall.

Microsoft let Master Documents operate as a food processor for documents for a decade, even though they had enormous resources. Edwin Yip just had Edwin Yip, and he got his problems fixed faster than Microsoft.

I fully appreciate fool-me-once wisdom. As best I can tell, Mr. Yip applied that thinking to his efforts. His customers benefitted.

If I were a Word user, I would use docxmanager.