Since I spoke of David Hewson, I remember his landmark Dec, 2012 musing http://davidhewson.com/2012/12/04/building-an-office-for-writing-software/#more-10102 which has become another 404 today, I cite,

"Most of that time I’ve used a Mac, with a couple of excursions into Windows in the late Nineties, when the Mac was too flaky to be relied upon, and a couple of years ago with the release of Office 2010 for Windows, with a much-improved version of Word. - I then backtracked and returned to the Mac for one reason only: the release of Scrivener 2, a fantastic piece of software that remains the benchmark for creative story development on a computer. I’m now returning to Windows for good because it’s clear that, for my kind of writing at least, the Mac is a distinctly inferior platform." - And since it's so beautiful, I repeat,

"I’m now returning to Windows for good because it’s clear that, for my kind of writing at least, the Mac is a distinctly inferior platform."

Well, that was Dec, 2012 indeed...

In the meanwhile, Hewson used all sorts of devices, but, admittedly, to very good result, but, as I said here, some days ago, a real creator likes to work (or rather automatically finds themselves) in relative chaos, Hewson certainly does.

His current main writing tool seems to be Ulysses indeed, and in 2017, he coined the immortal phrase, https://davidhewson.com/2017/08/11/the-new-ulysses-subscription-plan-is-a-wonderful-idea/ , minus the hyphens of course, and he cited the Ulysses over there, with, "Our users expect a continuously evolving high quality product — and subscription is the only way we can truly deliver on that expectation." (As for different expectations, by different voyagers, see below.)

Since, he doesn't seem to be not THAT sure about that anymore, since asked, https://davidhewson.com/2021/03/05/dabble-the-future-of-novel-writing/ ;

as said, he coined that as a question, the mark just not replicated in the url, and he also says (there) that according to him, the future is author access to any (current) writing of theirs from everywhere: "smart web storage", and, "Ulysses does that without a second thought and, unlike Scrivener, doesn’t mind if your story is open on another machine elsewhere." - I admit that sounds swell!

Now, I don't know Ulysses, the app, but from the best screenshot I got, https://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/12/ulysses-expands-to-the-ipad/ (and multiple minor ones), so correct me if I'm wrong.

It's obviously not a 2-pane, but a 3-pane outliner, which is very, very good indeed, its intermediate not only listing the sub-items of some item in the general tree, but even the respective text starts, so if you start every item with some resume and/or ToDo notes, you'll be able to see them without browsing: perfect! (I hope though that this is by toggle only, since sometimes, you would want to view (e.g. for selection i.e. "go-to" purposes) the whole sub-list without scrolling, not just the first 9, 10 items.)

Then, and even better, I find that presumably, the app doesn't just have you preview the direct items of the selected parent item, but its whole subtree in case (with, in the screenshot example, "Flatland", and its direct child item "One", both seemingly not having any content on their own, the screenshot thus indicating that below "One"'s child items, with some scrolling, then also "Two"'s and "Three"'s child items will appear. - I absolutely understand now why writers might love this app, knowing how helpful such "shortcuts into the vicinity" are, while the general tree remains uncluttered AND available for more general browsing.

Also, Ulysses comes with "dark mode", and whilst that option should be standard nowadays, very unfortunately, it is not: another big plus point then.

.

Now for a less wonderful idea though: I haven't seen the Dashboard, but many such tools have got some, so I know what it's presumably about, and it should only be good as an additional element, it is not as your general idea stack, but not at all.

On the other hand, "Ulysses" seems to be one of those apps which, very erroneously, think that the (strict, or simili-) tree pane doesn't need tree entry formats, assignable by the user, factory-attributed formatting shades (as in all the screenshots I've seen: white vs. grey) are no substitute, nor are user-assignable tree entry icons (all in grey here, furthermore).

I hope you can filter (overall and/or within the selected subtree's items) for specific icons at least (be that, ideally, within the tree itself - which then would also have to display all relevant sub-items which in the current screenshot are hidden there - or in a search results table), and that such filters can be (combined, of course, and) stored (for quick "show all items with icon x, y or z")? If not even that was possible, well... but if it is, it becomes "usable", at least.

Now a little excursion into UltraRecall (Windows), to prove my points (which are, let's recapitulate:
- the tool needs user-sided tree-formatting
- filtering by such formatting must be available
- then only, you might have a dashboard as additional organization element, but not as replacement of the above requirements):

In UR, you have 7 additional such formats (beyond the basic format) available (regular, bold, italics, color, background color and the like), but these 7 formats, very unfortunately, cannot be combined, i.e. if you have some color format, but want it, beyond regular, also in bold and in italics, you will have already made 3 format assignments, out of just 7 available in all, and that's terribly bad: I have to work with just 7 "formats", no way out of this limitation (you can't format tree entries BUT by assigning "formats", not by an additional ^b or ^i e.g., neither can you concurrently assign two formats to the same tree entry, e.g. one for formatting, the other one for coloring), and the developer doesn't enlarge the number of possible formats.

Also, I cannot filter by these formats within the tree, BUT I have plenty of the above-mentioned presets, for displaying, as "search results", just items formatted one way or in one way or another, etc., and the results are displayed instantly and as I wish, e.g. sorted in tree order or alphabetically.

Then you must understand that "smart", i.e. appropriate tree formatting-coloring of "special" items of different kinds will not disturb your work, i.e. will not interfere with your visual browsing your regular and your important (bold) items, while "at the same time", more precisely in other work situations, emphasizing special items, as soon as you look out for that particular format. Thus:

Yes, you will need all additional ideas, remarks, reservations, whatever meta- or additional scribbles where they apply, or then within the vicinity of where they could possibly apply to, and should only remain in some - several - look-up lists those elements you don't see some "applied use" yet.

And yes, you should reformat them (so that they will appear in other "search results" lists than before; and, needless to say, any such format changes should be available by a key combination, not by wading thru menu hierarchies), whenever they aren't "floating" more, but will have been applied to some other element; special items - the titles of which should be as meaningful as possible, so that you will not need to look into their respective contents but for more details in case - of general interest for your work in general or your particular project should be transcluded in case, and put into some top, "Basics" container item.

I see that "Ulysses" has got a, presumably, standard "Trash" item, and yes, UR, too, doesn't really delete "deleted" items but puts them into its "Recycle Bin", until further notice (i.e. the user's decision, individual for each item in case, to really do away with it); just don't mistake those bins for the appropriate location for discarded things: you might want to use them later on, be it in your current, or in some other context, and be it in part, or just for some remote ideas.

It goes without saying that you'll need just some other special format for these you-never-knows - hopefully not out of just 7 in total - and btw, when I said above that UR doesn't allow for filtering by, i.e. for, special formats but by "search" (and in the search pane), it allows for filtering OUT special formats in the tree itself (one-by-one, of course, no "all-or-nothing"), and thus you can, at any time, also have a look at the (intermediate) "result" of your work, in case even all special formats being hidden, and with a little scripting, you'll get similar results upon export.

I suppose Ulysses have got a forum, and their numerous subscribers in this forum here might be interested to make some pleas over there.

Btw, I would be interested to know if they use a database as backend, and in case, which one, SQLite, once more (my search "ulysses app database" didn't inform me)? Hewson again, on their (sic!) homepage, "Ulysses is the only app I know that combines a very minimalist writing interface with the backend power to manage and shuffle around the many different parts and scenes that go into a book." - very well, but we should ask for a little bit more than that, and as this forum's contributor Paul J. Miller has found out, some of the contenders already go into crawl mode even on this side of 10,000 items, so some more reliable info would be welcome.

Since, whilst UR currently might be far superior to Ulysses App for the reasons I give above (and under reserve I'm not mistaken), even I may switch to Mac software (which implies Mac hardware too) and go subscription... for really superior software that is: software that preserved its current, real charms, while culling its present deal breakers though.

I had overlooked a partial screenshot on their home page which shows that the item icons can get colored, not only grey. I hope these colors are attributable by the user, not fixed; anyway, I have seen - and tried - colored icons in other applications, and I am positive that different icon colors, without being totally useless, are very, very far away from the very high usefulness of colored and formatted title entries, there really is "no comparison", as they say. The reason for this enormous difference in practice - which you wouldn't suspect, without really trialing both - being that when visually "gathering" specific entries, with title colors, i.e. browsing the entries of that colors, and only those, i.e. while ignoring all other entries, you will, at the same time, read those titles (partly, but sufficiently in order to decide it the item is the "right" one, or if you have to look further), whilst, with just colored icons, you will have to constantly move your vision to the left, for the color, then to the right to, now consciously, partly read the item title (this takes time, and unnecessarily asks for your attention, i.e. "breaks your flow"), then again to the left in order to identify the next item of that kind, and so on and on and on, so believe me, colored titles vs. colored icons, that's a completely different ball game.

Then, it seems that this app does not even allow to bolden titles, to make important, "core" titles "stand out" from the "crowd", but we all know - there is scientific research available on that matter - that one of the beauties of (strict or pseudo-) hierarchies is the fact that you will have some, more or less preconscious, spatial representation of the location of what you're aiming at, looking for, at least for your important items, but then zooming in, from "vicinity search" down to correct identification (for clicking, selecting), is helped enormously by bolding your target, and every time, your "search time" will be cut to a fraction.

Ditto for your mental representation of "what is important here": if you were able to "highlight" it, by bolding it, or then, to "highlight" even more important items by making them bold-blue, you will, upon further "visits" of those vicinities, have an immediate feeling of familiarity, instead of needing to try to "familiarize anew" with those matters, every time.

With colored icons at least, this conscious effort on each and every "visit" - which would have been totally dispensable, had the developer cared about the "laws" of user-screen interaction, amply known for at least two decennials now - will be significantly shortened indeed, but - see above for colored items vs. just colored icons in front of them - it will be a conscious effort, instead of the developer allowing you to do just a preconscious, brief glance over the items present on screen (about 40, 50, according to your font size and screen resolution), and "getting it", with no effort; of course, for such a "shortcut to the relevant" to function, you might not bolden too many items.

As it is, many Apple software developers try to make their applications sleek, elegant, minimalist, undervaluing rational user interface requirements, and if the app in question does not allow to format titles (I might miss this functionality though, having no access to a trial), this should be for such a reason, since both the colored icons and the factory title "coloring", white vs. grey, prove that the components currently used allow for user-assignable coloring (and probably formatting, too).

Btw, I suppose that, in contrast to some other such Mac and iPad apps, at least the Mac app in question allows for storage and working within the device, i.e. with no web connection needed, except for repeated license verifications; if that is a misconception of mine, and this is just another web app, I'd never ever touch this app indeed.

My dear chap, you've just written rather a lot of judgemental stuff based entirely on your assumptions of how Ulysses works.

If I may say so, that's quite simply poor practice. Unless you've actually used Ulysses (and, for example, customised one of its themes for yourself), there's no way you are entitled to make judgements on broad swathes of Apple developer psychology, cultural mores, expectations, preferences, etc.

I respect UltraRecall, but I haven't used it since switching to Mac back in 2016 – and despite the fact I used to use it a lot, I wouldn't dream of writing a philosophical piece based on what I used to know about UltraRecall plus, maybe, a couple of visits to the Kinook website.

Do you actually own/use a Mac (by which I mean, a relatively modern Mac) at all? If you don't, I think it's time to stop writing about Apple's philosophy. If you do, well, okay, fair enough.

I second the motion.

MadaboutDana wrote:

My dear chap, you've just written rather a lot of judgemental stuff
based entirely on your assumptions of how Ulysses works.

If I may say so, that's quite simply poor practice. Unless you've
actually used Ulysses (and, for example, customised one of its themes
for yourself), there's no way you are entitled to make judgements on
broad swathes of Apple developer psychology, cultural mores,
expectations, preferences, etc.

I respect UltraRecall, but I haven't used it since switching to Mac back
in 2016 – and despite the fact I used to use it a lot, I
wouldn't dream of writing a philosophical piece based on what I used to
know about UltraRecall plus, maybe, a couple of visits to the Kinook
website.

Do you actually own/use a Mac (by which I mean, a relatively modern Mac)
at all? If you don't, I think it's time to stop writing about Apple's
philosophy. If you do, well, okay, fair enough.

I should clarify that above, I meant that (as said, some, not too many) bold entries, in a list of regularly formatted entries, will be useful as navigation markers, not only for themselves but also for many regularly formatted entries in their vicinity, above or below, after some work and/or browsing in that vicinity; this considerably and so much fastens your "jumping" from one item to another that in list parts where there are no really important items, you should even bolden some items which are just a little bit more important than their sibling items, just in order to create such navigation markers; its' similar to finding again houses in long streets, without or with sideroads: In the former situation, you will have to look again much longer, scrutinizing for the numbers, in the latter, you will roughly remember the location, and start your search from there. In practice, in the former situation, you will have to read perhaps 25, 30 or more titles, in the latter, not even 10.

Btw, when I say I can't trial some software, but infer some assumptions - declared as such - from screenshots, explaining why my requirements are highly import for everyone, on any OS, for any software displaying lists and/or trees, and then get told I should not speak about specific software I can't trial, I infer from such wholesale "contributions" that my assumptions are probably right, since just saying that, sure, the app in question allows for formatting and/or coloring tree entries, would have been so much easier, and so much more convincing.

And, by the way, there's another phenomenon, very similar to the one described above re icons, to the left, not replacing titel coloring / formatting to the right: there where you're ready to column-read (can't speak for Windows OS here, might be different for Apple apps):

More and more menus are built so that if you click on the main menu to open the menu, there's just blank space below the menu entry, the text of the submenu entries starting considerably shifted to the right. Then, it's really difficult - read: your "flow" is broken, you have to "stop" and take conscious decisions where you should not have to "think" at all - to not move the mouse diagonally to the right, into the text, but just lower it to click into the blank space. It's such "little things" that are harmful to your "workflow", unnecessarily... and the deliberate non-provision of item formatting when the component used by the developer would have made that possible though, isn't a "little thing" but a quite big fault: a deal breaker for anyone who rejects being actively hampered by their software in their work.

In appliances design, (Braun devices, Apple devices, or those British hoovers...), "less is more"; in applications design, it's not (and in car controls neither: cf. BMW and their emulates).

Oh, and hadn't that been their going-subscription argument, financing optimization? And remember that my considerate suggestions would not oblige anyone to do otherwise than erenow, nobody would force you to press that ^b to bolden some tree entry, that other users - who wouldn't sign Apple's mantra "any lack's a feature" - would consider standard though, and for good reason.

If I'm not well informed yet, link to some screenshot or other proof now? Please?

@22111

I wonder what is it you want to tell us? That MacOS and MacOS software such as Ulysses are inferior to Windows and/or Linux software?

To resume the first two third-party posts here:

- Whilst Mac users can trial Windows software on their Macs, prospects for Mac-only software are to first buy a Mac, then they may trial - by provision by the Apple management who by all legal means available close their system

- For Mac software, the general laws of man-machine interaction don't apply, and everything's inherently good by definition - it must be a religion

- Thence, their functional design must not be challenged, just as little as the physical devices one's - that would be blasphemy

- Highly probable and specified assumptions are rejected by a sweeping You're not allowed to comment on software you haven't used, instead of confirming, negating or commenting the assumptions in respect of content - if you don't see the necessity to do so, that's fine, but trying to ape politicians' way of discussing then, instead of just shrugging, might be considered pathetic

- No thanks for (excellent) advice, be it re tree / list navigation, be it re adequate inclusion of meta notes into the tree - additional invective instead (#1); it's true that both advice fields presuppose tree formatting to some degree at least (necessarily), as well as filtering-by-formatting (ideally), and these conditions might irritate when not available

And no, I don't try to prove that Windows software, especially for writers

(or the graphical professions; btw I heard that many members of the latter have switched back to Windows, advancing that Apple prices for extreme power, necessary for them, they say, has got over the top, whilst for Windows, it remains expensive but affordable for them - hearsay from web fora in fact) was inherently superior to Mac software, I just analyze both, and give details, as far as I can (proof above), ready to see my writings supplemented and/or rectified where applicable.

Wherever Apple does it right, or almost right, I say so, proof on file, https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=43812.msg409013#msg409013 - it seems now that in their newest Macbooks though, they had abandoned their re-invention, the so-called "market" (i.e. user base) had not adopted it (as far as Apple had probably hoped for); some remarks for possible reasons:

- the same / similar functionality must be available by the same (here: virtual) key, in other software (several file managers, several word processors, etc.), so as you soon will be able to use them "blind", i.e. instinctively; of course, re-attribution of keys by overall macro software helps enormously with that, and of course, their touch-bar should have been accessible to such key-re-attributions; I don't know if that was/is the case though (and then, it's not fatal anymore that many developers didn't "participate" by re-allocating their shortcuts to those virtual keys; but as I just said in another thread, I've got the impression that Apple users, with exceptions of course, are not that much inclined to "case improvement", "tuning", but seem to want it "ready-made"; on the other hand, Apple owns hundreds of billions, so they could - and should - have hired some 20 persons to do the necessary adaption work for the most notable apps, and then they could have delivered their bar Macs together with the additional trans-app software to normalize the user-interaction, by establishing a nice overall plan for the users, and for intercepting the respective, proprietary app commands (all this with allowing further user individualizing by the user if so desired).

- for the same reason of quick "blind" communication, and all the more so in their actual situation, i.e. with NO normalization of those virtual keys between apps, they should never had displayed the "current" command attribution to the key just below (!) your finger, so that you had and have to first look, then move your finger there, but, by option (i.e. for the learning phase, when you had to have a (confirmation) look first indeed), also on-screen; this would have helped enormously with the user acceptance

- You have to distinguish between context-sensitive keys and virtual keys, their bar concept mixed it up, ok, but why did they remove the physical F-keys? ("Any lack's a feature", for them, I said.) It would have been nice to have both, 24 F-keys (physical, virtual, half-half, whatever) coming so much handier than just 12... and thus, at the end of the day, replacing (!) physical keys by virtual ones (instead of just supplementing the latter) did perhaps not please so many users, also considering pricing?

As for "proof on file" for my goodwill for anything useful and constructive, from whatever source (even Apple ;-) ), see (the rest is a replication of the link text):

Apple does it again - this time, they re-invent the context-sensitive F-key
« on: May 08, 2017, 01:43 PM »
Currently, I had the occasion to admire the new Apple touch-bar; new Mac Pro's had it and started with about 2,000€, the 2016 models came without it (but with F-keys instead) and startet around 300€ less.

Apple certainly has had it patented, but they are re-inventing the wheel again (they did it with the iPad - there had been a mobile touch-screen device before by Microsoft but which was too bad, too heavy and so on), and somewhere I read "this software is touch-bar ready" indeed, while in fact there had been DOS programs with context-sensitive F-key assignments, or in short, context-sensitive F-keys.

It's very difficult to find such context-sensitive F-keys in today's Windows software, I cannot think of a single one at this moment, and I think I've read somewhere some discussion of it coming in the way of the user, being unspecific, being error-prone and all that; I doubt this, but cannot speak from experience; it's very interesting that Apple now does exactly that thing, and I suppose that now that it comes from Apple, the old criticism will be very subdued since openly hating it would be "Apple-hating" this time; as said, I'm in favor of it, I'm just hoping that it makes its way into Windows programs, too!

I say it's not different from the old thing, you will answer that's not true. So to start, here's a good introduction: http://appleinsider....h-id-for-macbook-pro

First, it replaces the F-keys, it doesn't come on top of it, but even if it did, it wouldn't make any difference. The current assignment of the (virtual) "key" (tap on the touch-bar) is indicated by changing lettering there, but this means - within the frame of the criticism that it's not unambiguous and error-prone - that you first must read what's available, or at least check that there it's the function you expect to be there, and then only you can move your finger there in order to activate the function, since before, your finger would cover the lettering; this takes a moment of time.

The touch-bar isn't only for traditional functions, but also for text expansion, which is probably a very good thing; since the suggestions are of different length though, I suppose that this means you cannot count on suggestion 1 being on a certain place of the touch-bar, suggestion 2 being on a certain other, defined place there, and so on, but that you first must read what is where, and then tap there, so the moment of time, referred-to above and needed for reading before tapping probably cannot be shortened or avoided.

How did those DOS programs convey the info? By using the bottom "line" of the screen in order to display 3x4 F-key symbols there, together with their current meaning, here's an example from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia...le:GW-BASIC_3.23.png - note that the symbols are of different length and thus could have contained text expansion suggestions, had that concept been already invented at the time. Here's another example, even more basic where they do without even the symbols but just do a list: http://ece.wpi.edu/~...es/EE2801/Labs/tasm/ (both screenshots, by scrolling down).

Note that those screen symbols/texts are readable from the moment on the function is available (as is touch-bar lettering), but then even up to the moment you will have pressed the respective F-key, so there is available (but not forced-upon-you) a possible and wanted overlapping of checking time ("yes, it's well the function I expect") and time for moving your finger to the F-key in question, so at least for functions where you just check and don't need to really inform yourself anymore (learning phase), it's bound to be speedier than the touch-bar variant.

It's evident that in order to be speedy, the F-keys must be grouped on the screen (3x4) which in my 2 DOS examples above they were not, but that was 35 years ago (they were not for 3x4 but for 10 F-keys in 2x5 rows to the left of the keyboard); also, it's understood that the touch-bar has quite high resolution, and that your screen also should have quite high resolution in order to brilliantly display 12 different texts in 3 groups and in one single line, but whenever that condition is given, the F-key-plus-screen-display should be speedier than Apple's touch-bar, at the very least for often-used functions, since F-keys always are at the same position, while the relevant function on the touch-bar is not, necessarily, or at least the boundaries of the functions are not that distinct as with physical F-keys, so at least some visual check, before moving your finger, is needed for the touch-bar command, while for F-keys it is not.

So it seems that the touch-bar is just another eye-catcher - yes, it's cute when you look at it in the store -, but its full functionality should be replicated, both in the Mac and the Windows system, by physical F-keys plus visual indicators on the screen; 3x4-groups give immediate indication which F-key to press, even without looking out for their respective number, "counting" them or otherwise. Also, I doubt very much that the touch-bar of a tiny-and-cute MacBook Pro will present more than 12 different functions at the same time; if it really does, this will sharply rise the time for reading/identifying the correct function, so that could not be regarded as an advantage at all - the same is true for big screens where the readability then is much better, but the "findability" will not rise accordingly.

As for the old criticism that it's not explicit: First, now it's Apple which re-introduces the system, so it's above "hating" but has to be accepted as anything else that Apple pushes into the market. Second, bear in mind that it'll spare you, to the extend of the application of this system, both to have to remember weird key combinations, and to then press them (hoping you'll press the right one). Third, bear in mind that you always have the "help file" before your eyes, and that even if you lose time by needing to read the lettering, you'll quickly find the correct command, while in the alternative of dozens of multi-key combinations (Shift-Alt-Something and all that) you do not have the help on-screen but you will have to look up the right key combination elsewhere, in some file or some brochure.

Fourth, bear in mind that it's perfectly possible to allocate standard functions (F3=search again) to their standard keys (F3 here), and that there will not necessarily be a mix-up of it all; this will depend on the courtesy of the developers, and in order to have users accept their software, they will have big interest in observing standards, like they now have in observing menu standards or ribbon standards; we all tend to discard software wherever possible when they don't observe standards. Also, it's possible for example to assign some 4 keys, F1-F4, for functions which are available from everywhere, while only F5-F12 may be context-sensitive.

Whatever you think of my endorsement of that Apple re-invention, it's obvious that its functionally better variant, F-keys plus 3x4-groups in bottom screen "line", should be made available in general, for Mac*, Windows, Linux.

*: The irony is, Mac developers who sell their software as "touch-bar-ready" will probably not adopt it to F-keys since that would ask for some hours' work, and "modern" Macs, as said, don't have F-keys anymore (like, they told me, Macs do without any mouse keys except one) - but that's no reason for not making the context-sensitivity paradigm available again for pc and elsewhere where Apple cannot discard the F-keys. Since it has always been there, even dormant, I doubt Apple got the whole concept patented (perhaps for text expansion? but even that should be available on F-keys, Apple re-inventions notwithstanding).


EDIT:

And bear in mind the traditional key combinations (Alt-F4 for example) would remain available, and, depending on the agenda of the developer in question, even ALL possible key combinations could remain available, even re-assignable by the user, as we know it from many a software today, as alternatives, so a given function would be some key combination OR some context-sensitive F-key, at your choice.

You would, in theory only, "lose", in my concept above, 8 F-keys out of 12, BUT what are those functions currently which you really need to be available from anywhere in a given application? In reality, those F-keys are dormant most of the time, while you effectively need other commands of which you will have to remember their weird key combinations, so in practice, do you really need F11 for "maximize" all the time, or could it be Control-F11 instead, from now on, and F11 (as F5 and following ones) being readily available according to context?

Also, what is "context"? This concept of context could be quite broad, for some keys (F5...F8), and quite narrow for the rest (F9-F12), which means that some keys would be available, for the SAME function, in EVERY situation where their function would be needed, so you would not need to muse, is it the right context here or not, or check visually, but you just press the key, you're certain that it'll work the intended way. While the "upper" F-keys are very specific, and thus have their specific meaning in very specific contexts, so for them, you may check indeed quite often if you don't use them, in that specific context, all the time. Now compare with rarely-used commands with some control-alt-something (which you won't remember from now for the next occasion 6 weeks later), and you see that the context-sensitivity paradigm is superior both for often-used functions and for rarely-used ones.

I forgot the additions over there:

Yes, I could have added the "touch, not key" problem,
« Reply #2 on: May 08, 2017, 03:15 PM »
but left it out for 2 reasons: It may be taken for even more Apple hating, and I must say I have been quite impressed by screen reactivity of the iPads, while I regularly have problems with screen reactivity of other touchscreens (photocopiers and so on). I do not like touchscreens at all, but nowadays, for tiny devices, they have become unavoidable - I said it here, I'd so much prefer that HP mini pc of some years ago which now can only be had for outrageous prices, used - but, if touchscreen, then the variety of modern iPads (and I suppose, IPhones) is very, very good (real typing is possible without frequent typos / need to type a character twice).

When I played around with those Macs and the touch-bar, my main problem I immediately felt was my finger hiding the symbol/lettering, and thus the felt need to "first read, then move the finger" while my impulse was to not do it at the same time (it all was new for me), but nevertheless to do it with some overlap: begin the finger movement shortly after begin of reading, and that clearly wasn't possible.

And I remember a very strong point now against the touch-board which I had missed above:

In order to read the symbols/lettering, I had to bow my head; that's probably not an additional problem for people who type with 2 fingers; I type with 10 and stare at the screen. So a symbol/lettering list on the bottom of the screen, for me, would come without or just very light bowing of my head, while here, with the info at the height of the keys, I had to bow my head very sensibly each time, and that was very inconvenient, and time-consuming, too.

Also, the touch-board wasn't tilted in my direction (45, 30 or just 20 degrees), but it was totally flat, and that was very unpleasant for reading; for typing, I would have preferred a tilt, too (shorter reaching out for the fingers, over the number keys in-between).

Technically, it's possible to read from the screen and to read from the touch-board, but to roll my eyes down so far had been just more unpleasant, thus the bowing of my head.

Btw, it's of interest that Apple didn't implement the touch-board, additionally, for more rarely-used commands, above a line of traditional F-keys, since it's for more rarely-used (context-or-not) commands that symbols/lettering are so much more needed. Of course, that would have put the touch-board out of immediate finger reach for (frequent) text-expand use, which obviously was the reason why they did away with the F-keys.

I'd prefer TWO ranges of F-keys, but that's because my F-keys aren't context-sensitive in any application, and thus I'd so much need more of them. And it's probably also true that if applications had smartly-devised context-sensitive F-keys, most of the time, 12 of them were amply enough.

Whatever, it's Apple again where the "research" in context-sensitivity is now made, by trial-and-error of all the application developers trying to make their software "touch-board ready", and again, the Windows world is left behind, and that's annoying, all the more so since it's a multiple-occasion déjà vu.

It's them again who take now the most out of, develop fully and optimize a 30-or-more-year-old DOS invention, while, as described above, every Windows computer could do it as well as, and better than, MacBooks (since they come without F-keys now).

The touch-board being flat, they can and probably will change that; also, it's in color - but modern screens are in color too, and both the Apple touch-board and the general/Windows screen symbols/lettering for current F-key assignment could make big use of this: Smart coloring of it all (which is different from coloring optimized for "prettiness" or something) could enormously help with scope/context and kind of function, and thus with immediate, intuitive recognition and thus speeding up F-key pressing without the need to read / consciously check.
.
Re: Apple does it again - this time, they re-invent the context-sensitive F-key
« Reply #5 on: May 10, 2017, 01:42 PM »
Being a cat lover myself, I didn't know about the NyanCat yet, thank you, f0dder!

You are right, the Escape key is now incorporated into the Touch-Bar, I hadn't paid attention.

I feel with Apple users; Apple has a tendency to not ask their (high-paying) customers, but to decide for them, treating them for children, and that's certainly very upsetting (the mouse comes to mind, which I had mentioned above, then the little things around the iPhone/iPad (wasn't it them who replaced the battery with an internal one? then the absence of possible external memory (memory card, usb stick), then the earphones connector; did I leave out any?).

As I explained above, I welcome the idea of the re-introduction of the context-sensitive F-key - by taking away the physical F-keys, they now enforce the development of this concept.

I understand that many users aren't happy with it but this could bring real progress.

I very much hope, for Mac users, that the developers will be smart enough to adapt the concept to "older" Macs (incl. the 2016 generation), with physical F-keys (I showed above that the Touch-Bar is not necessary for it, so "Touch-Bar readiness" could perfectly work on the F-key Macs, too), and I also hope that they do it 2-ways:

Leave it all as it is now, and just display, among other things, 12 F-keys in the Touch-Bar which function exactly as do the traditional, physical ones up to now, AND do some real research into context-sensitivity and offer that, by application-wide option/toggle, also both for F-key Macs and for the Touch-Bar variety.

Thus, for both hardware variants, there would be both function-trigger paradigms, and user could chose the concept they prefer - this time, what Apple has done is NOT enforcing context-sensitivity, they just took away the physical keys, but they cannot prevent developers from also offering the traditional F-key operation.

My guess would be though that very soon, developers will excel in smart "contexting", and users will be quite happy about it, thus my complain above that, again, Windows users will be left behind.


Not necessarily, Tuxman, as far as the hardware side is concerned; as for software updates, yes, but more and more software is available upon subscription only anyway, isn't it?

(Tuxman had said,
"You broke it!"
"No, we, uh, re-invented it!"
"TAKE MY MONEY!"
Apple customers... :huh:)

I'm afraid that my predominant impression is that this is an extremely bizarre thread, but it's about writing programs, so here goes. And bear in mind that I too am on Windows and have no Mac.

First, to get an impression of Ulysses it's possible to try the program Inspire Writer. Okay, it's not Ulysses, but it seems to have been written as a partial clone, and should give an impression of how Ulysses works in practice.

Most of the points mentioned above simply don't touch on the features that support Ulysses' popularity. It's much easier to use than Scrivener; it's much easier to see the big picture rather than the fragments of David Hewson's mosaic; and it's nice to work with. Scrivener may be able to do many things, but it's not as nice and full of complexity, visual and actual. They will attract different users.

Dabble Writer can be accessed by anoyone on any OS. I don't know why he wrote about it, but presume it followed the lines of 'I'm a writer', 'I need to feed my blog' and 'this is a coming area that I ought to look at'. I doubt he will write a book with it any time soon.

If Ulysses were on Windows, I would be very interested in examining it in detail. There are many arguments that can be presented as criticisms - its particularly idiosyncratic impression of markdown is one - but both Scrivener and Ulysses are fundamentally Mac programs anyway. And, for me, the look matters a lot; has a significant influence on my productivity - that's a clear issue with Scrivener for me, and might be a plus for Ulysses if I had been able to try it. They hybrid design - database plus external files - has many advantages.

Also worth mentioning another of David Hewson's points - Word is much, much better as a program to write in than it used to be - and, effectively, it's a Windows only program given the limitations of the Mac version.

Nice one, Dormouse – I'm grateful for the reference to Inspire Writer, which I'd never heard of but is clearly inspired by Ulysses. Great for Windows users!

22111: I'm still working my way through your summary of your first couple of posts, but am immediately struck by a rather extraordinary assertion: "Whilst Mac users can trial Windows software on their Macs, prospects for Mac-only software are to first buy a Mac, then they may trial - by provision by the Apple management who by all legal means available close their system".

How can I trial Windows software on my Mac? Unless I happen to have invested in (a) some kind of virtualisation environment (e.g. Parallels Desktop, VirtualBox) and (b) Windows itself.

Without this (rather expensive) software, I can't possibly run Windows trials.

But perhaps you mean that Windows users can't emulate Macs in the same way? That's a fair point, but I'm not quite sure why you're so annoyed by this. These are commercial operations, applying large-scale/long-term business strategies. As has been pointed out many times before, Microsoft took one route, Apple took another (apart from Michael Spindler's rather disastrous attempt to license the Mac operating system to third parties back in the early 1990s). While Apple aren't perfect, Microsoft certainly isn't an angel either (just check out their latest attempts to introduce advertising to the Windows platform – remember, fully licensed by users, we're not talking about an unpaid platform).

Apple has been compared to a cult/religion many times, but any cultish aspects have been largely negated over the last few years by their stubborn refusal to listen to user feedback on their hardware in particular. Believe me, this didn't go down well in the Apple-using community. More recently, they've started listening again, but even so, you'll still find plenty of critical voices out there (check out this article in MacObserver, for example: https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/tests-show-m1-mac-thunderbolt-ports-dont-live-up-to-full-potential/

I've just had to replace my ageing MacBook Pro 15" with one of the new M1 MacBook Pros (14"). And all I can say to you is, it's the best notebook I've ever used, with an astonishingly solid build, high-quality screen, battery life (12-15 hours, depending), keyboard and, of course, macOS. Even so, it's not perfect, and there are plenty of irreverent Mac users out there who are happy to say so.

More exciting, I think, are Linux-based movements to produce totally independent software/hardware environments that liberate the "average user" (whoever that is) from the dominance of the giant tech companies, whether that's Microsoft, Apple, Google or Amazon (interesting how IBM has pretty much vanished from the scene, no?). There's already an alternative Android phone available (fully modular design, so you can replace faulty components yourself; uses a non-Google-reliant version of Android: https://www.fairphone.com/en/ Some manufacturers (Dell, Lenovo) sell notebooks with Linux distributions installed, and despite the Intel-Microsoft duopoly's efforts, some notebooks are still sold without the licensing locks in firmware that have deliberately blocked users' attempts to install Linux. Now that, I suggest, is a tactic worthy of your anger! As is HP/Canon/Epson's "hire-a-printer" tactic that more or less forces users to subscribe to monthly ink deliveries in exchange for being able to actually use their printers.

Your analysis of software, while interesting, is – I think – too wide-ranging and doesn't explore the UX systematically enough to be really useful, although I appreciate your efforts. Software, like websites, is beginning to show signs of building up to a new UX revolution. I for one can't wait, because too many of the currently popular application interfaces are still based on very outdated models (starting with the whole file system thing). But that's not confined to Apple – that's true across the board.

Just my thoughts!

Sorry, I misreported the Fairphone operating system – while they do use a "clean" version of Android, it's still a Google-approved one.

To go totally Google-free, you can opt for a phone from the /e/ Foundation (details: https://e.foundation also as described here: https://liliputing.com/2021/02/now-you-can-buy-smartphone-with-e-os-in-the-us-and-canada-android-phones-stripped-of-google-services.html They produce a Google-free version of Android, and I believe it's easy to install on Fairphones (that's what I mixed up earlier). You can just download the OS and install it on your own smartphone if it's a compatible model and/or you're prepared to take the risk.

There's also some useful info on independent mobile OSes on the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) website here: https://fsfe.org/activities/android/liberate.en.html#OS

Cheers!
Bill

The Ulysses/Inspire Writer comparison is instructive in illuminating the differences between the Apple and Windows environments.

I just checked out Inspire Writer and it seems like a very capable markdown editor, one of the best I've seen for Windows. It lacks the design polish of Ulysses. And it is missing two crucial (in my view) features that Ulysses sports:

- You can't concatenate sheets in IW as you can in Ulysses. This alone makes Ulysses superior.
- Ulysses has a fully functional mobile version that works wonderfully on an iPad.

On the other hand, you have to pay an annual fee for Ulysses, whereas one fee (currently lower than the annual subscription rate for Ulysses) will get you lifetime access to Inspire Writer.

In my experience, Apple environment apps are generally more polished in their design and UI. And they usually have have apps for both MacOS and iOS, making them more universally available. But you pay a premium for this, both for the hardware involved, but also for the software licensing.

What is key here is that each operating environment provides an alternative to the other. I would hate to be forced to use Windows only. And it appears others feel the same about Apple. That's why it is also nice that Linux is available.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

- You can't concatenate sheets in IW as you can in Ulysses.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. afaics IW enables a lot of what I'd call concatenating.
What exactly is it that Ulysses can do that IW can't in this regard?

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

The Ulysses/Inspire Writer comparison is instructive in illuminating the
differences between the Apple and Windows environments.

I'm not sure about that. IW is not a typical Windows program, it's not well known and can't have anything like the sales of Ulysses. It's also afaics a direct imitation of Ulysses even to the idiosyncratic and somewhat dysfunctional syntax. I think it first emerged in 2017, and I doubt it has taken on many of Ulysses developments since then. It has had upgrades, and has some features that Ulysses doesn't. But I'm sure Ulysses is fuller featured and more capable. otoh, I think it's a remarkable achievement because attempting to port a Mac program to Windows is very hard, even when you have and understand the details of the Mac code - as Scrivener keeps discovering. Mac programs tend to rely on inbuilt services that don't exist in Windows and solutions need to be found to each one. And the Mac works differently both in design and expectations. A typical Windows program is built on Windows expectations and features.

But I think IW is a good enough imitation to allow Windows users to catch the flavour of Ulysses. And it is actually a nice looking and functional program.

By concatenating I mean that you can select multiple sheets in Ulysses and view them as if they are one document in the editor. I don't think you can do this in Inspire Writer.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

By concatenating I mean that you can select multiple sheets in Ulysses
and view them as if they are one document in the editor. I don't think
you can do this in Inspire Writer.

You can: Select, Export, Preview. No need to export, it's just a reading view.

Well, that is better than nothing, but in Ulysses, you can edit any of the sheets in the editor. This is very helpful when you are putting the final touches on your work and you need to smooth the transitions between sheets.

Dormouse wrote:

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
By concatenating I mean that you can select multiple sheets in Ulysses
>and view them as if they are one document in the editor. I don't think
>you can do this in Inspire Writer.
>

You can: Select, Export, Preview. No need to export, it's just a reading
view.

You just select the sheets you want.
They have to be from the same document, but any sheets you want. So, if you have a series, you could have all th books within it, and choose any scenes you want to view together from anywhere in the series. And, if you want sheets from another doc, you'd just move them in.

I don't think it's quite as flexible as Scrivener in this regard (stretching my memory to remember) but good enough for nearly all purposes. Which was more or less the philosophy Ulysses followed.

I have fond memories of Ulysses. Scrivener was my first foray into a writing studio application. It was great, but it lacked styles back in Version 2.

When Version 3 came out, I found I didn't like some details of Scrivener's styles. For instance, the no-style style. The three different editors (main window, copyholder, and quick reference editors) each have somewhat different capabilities. I recognize I'm being nit-picky.

Compiling is a great thing in Scrivener. However, most of what I need from the compile process I can do by swapping style libraries in Nisus, the more so in Mellel, since it supports page styles, and that's a lot simpler than compiling in Scrivener.

Markdown was already on my radar. Ulysses seemed to be just what I was looking for - and then I got nit-picky again. At that time you couldn't create separate Ulysses files. Everything went in one data store. I'm not keen on the cloud, either.

That led me back to where I'd started. Conventional word processors plus more Markdown than I used to do.

Macs, by the way, are excellent tools. If they ceased to exist I'd return to a Linux-centric life. Windows, only under duress. :-)

For those seeking a nice, cheap replacement for Ulysses (on macOS) that does the same concatenation thing that Steve's just been trying to describe, Novellus is a good option (and has very good grammar/style checking features as well). It's nowhere near as sophisticated as Ulysses, but is pleasant to work with. Unfortunately the developer has, I fear, become rather discouraged, so it hasn't been updated for a few months. But I use it fairly regularly to write stuff. There isn't an iOS version, unfortunately.

The Ulysses concatenation is difficult to appreciate unless you've actually worked with it. Ulysses allows you to view multiple sheets (= notes, documents) together – but not just view them, actually edit them, too, just as if they were a single sheet (note, document, whatever). So it's not to be confused with a preview function (Ulysses does that too, of course). It's probably the single most powerful feature in Ulysses, because you can shift the documents (notes, sheets, etc.) around however you like, and then view or edit them as a new "group" (i.e. with surrounding documents) in their new context.

I was wondering if Inspire Writer did that – there's no mention of it on their website, so I suspected (and Steve has just confirmed) that it doesn't.

Scrivener is amazing, but the learning curve is steep and some of the features are definitely somewhat confusing. Even Charles Stross (a highly intelligent sci-fi author who features on the Literature & Latte blog) admits that he doesn't use more than the basic features in Scrivener (which rather amused me, I must admit).

Cheers!
Bill

MadaboutDana wrote:

you can shift the documents (notes, sheets,
etc.) around however you like, and then view or edit them as a new
"group" (i.e. with surrounding documents) in their new context.

IW does do that.


MadaboutDana wrote:

Ulysses allows you to view multiple sheets (=
notes, documents) together – but not just view them, actually edit
them, too, just as if they were a single sheet (note, document,
whatever)

I take it that this is akin to editable transclusioons. If so, IW doesn't have that. You can move, split, join, copy as much as you want, but it's not the same as editable transclusions. I know many people structure workflows around these, but they're something I use only occasionally even when they are available.

It's not a must have feature in writing for me. Two main reasons:
1. I prefer to writie in a single document with headings and folding. I would like better outline features to be more widespread, but can work with things as they are now. IW's outline isn't great (only has go to a heading, not move headings around; I assume that both it and Ulysses follow the same credo as Scrivener in making a mosaic out of small chunks - which means that none of these programs suit me ideally.
2. By the time I reach the stage, I'm into first review/edit mode. That I prefer to do in docx with colour.

Amontillado wrote:

That led me back to where I'd started. Conventional word processors plus
more Markdown than I used to do.

Largely true for me too. I find markdown programs hard to work with because they either don't work the way I want, or the way I need, or small incompatibilities and differences create friction when moving between programs. For general work, I find txt and docx more useful.

I also far prefer to work with files than databases, especially for any content that will be kept for more than a short time. Docx, while big and clumsy, is like a database in a single file. And one thiing I agree with David Hewson about is that Word has improved massively over the years in terms of usability for my purposes. I can even see how I'd manage to write a book with it, the way Brandon Sanderson does. Though being able to see it is way short of thinking it's the best option right now.

A couple of other apps to add to this: WriteMapper (https://writemapper.com and TreeSheets (a brilliant, longstanding open-source app based on embedding: https://strlen.com/treesheets/

WriteMapper is basically a rather nice outliner/mindmapper, but has a live preview feature that updates as you edit individual segments.

Both of these apps are macOS/Windows compatible. TreeSheets also runs on Linux.

The latest version of WriteMapper (3) doesn't have an updated iOS/iPadOS app, unfortunately, but you can still download WriteMapper 2 if you want to work with the iOS versions.

Nice that it gets a little bit productive, here, thanks! (The "=" are just for separating purposes.)

Dormouse

to get an impression of Ulysses it’s possible to try the program Inspire Writer ... clone
= not significant, doesn't tell if Ul has the features I mentioned, and which, as I explained, might be conditions sine qua non by many for professional work (I explained why)

Most of the points mentioned above simply don’t touch on the features that support Ulysses’ popularity.
= I mentioned Ul because of its popularity; declaring that the requirements I mentioned are not important for its users, doesn't answer the question if those functions are there or not, just might indicate they are not there

Dabble Writer can be accessed by anoyone on any OS. I don’t know why he wrote about it, but presume it followed the lines of ‘I’m a writer’, ‘I need to feed my blog’ and ‘this is a coming area that I ought to look at’. I doubt he will write a book with it any time soon.
= That's my impression, too, but let's allow him the right to crimp, too; I mentioned his post for his general remarks over there, not for the app in particular

If Ulysses were on Windows, I would be very interested in examining it in detail.
= indeed, and that's why I asked for answers for my questions, not being able to trial, and not being happy with the marketing speak alone I got by "research"

idiosyncratic impression of markdown is one
= ?
https://www.oberlo.com/blog/markdown-editors
"with uniquely streamlined features that cover the whole writing process"
= the typical worthless rhabarber-rhabarber we find all over the place = web;
Typora (a mere 15$) seems best = YSWYG (but had been set, in pre-paid times, to not be too robust with long documents in that mode; of course it's not an outliner, while Ul is); I would not be happy that its markdown (always Typora, not Ul) to rtf (etc.) export is only by a third-party tool, so, in order to have "dark mode" (which I don't get in UR), I use (paid) Atlantis instead (works fine with Dragon, too), for which then export to UR or elsewhere is without problems (and yes, the lacks in UR are a shame, but what can I do, needing its strong points, see above)

for me, the look matters a lot
= for all of us (see my double Sony crap file vs. perfect Olympus robustness), and that's why I would be eager to switch to a nice, pretty Mac app (like Ul), just for my writing purposes, IF my "macro-organizational" requirements (i.e. organisation of "bits" and of "meta-bits" of all sorts within one project (and to a much lesser degree, beyond the "current" project), explanation above) are met by it

if I had been able to try it
= WITH extensive information re your requirements, you could even dare buy the hardware, then trial (and, if it's really "impossible", send back the hardware within some 14 days or so, which is possible in many legislations), but that does'nt make any sense when it's predictable that will the issue, instead of happily using the software on your new hardware then, hence the need for REAL info before buying hardware, and hadn't the web been invented to be an information instrument? well, that was at its academic origins indeed, that was then...

They hybrid design - database plus external files - has many advantages.
= would be happy to have detailed info on that, could be of high (general!) interest to know in detail

(MS Word) effectively, it’s a Windows only program given the limitations of the Macversion
= so we all agree here

Bill

Whilst Mac users can trial Windows software on their Macs (...) But perhaps you mean that Windows users can’t emulate Macs in the same way?
= correct, and after posting, I was certain somebody would jump on that one, my sloppy wording being an invitation; fact is, Windows software can be run on Macs by special software which is about 100$/€ if I remember correctly, and once they will have got that, Mac users can then trial, and buy and permanently use in case, Windows applications on their Mac; Windows users, thanks to Apple's fortress policy, can do neither of that, i.e. for trialling Mac software, they have to buy a Mac (and a Mac mini - even that one 5 or 6 times the price of Win-OS for Mac - would not be what they then would want to use permanently if they adopted some Mac software), and if their trial(s) is/are not convincing, they then find themselves with expensive, unusable Mac hardware... but IF they "adopt" some of those Mac tools they trialed, then again they will have to switch forth and back between two system, Windows for their general work, and their Mac for just some tool(s) - Mac users would NOT be forced to buy a Win pc, neither for trialling, nor for then just using some tool(s) of the other OS, while continuing to do their general work within the OS they prefer - and not even speaking of data transfer between the two devices, whilst such data transfer between Mac and Windows tools within the Mac-Windows subsystem should be work quite smoothly in most cases I suppose.
Parallels Desktop is 80 plus VAT = about 100 https://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/buy/ and virtual box is free https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox so again I was right, my "can" meaning "it's possible for free or little money, and on the same hardware, not just by buying, and then having to endlessly switch, between your core device and another one which costs in the low 4-digit range at least"

= and you're right about Windows 11, etc ("account", etc.) - they envy Apple's success by doing such things, and try to follow that route; that's why I'll try to stay with W10 as long as possible, but I swear I have never encountered any Windows advertising they all speak about, so erenow, I obviously have been lucky to circomvent their crap

but any cultish aspects have been largely negated over the last few years by their stubborn refusal to listen to user feedback on their hardware in particular
= well, the Pope will not listen to the believers either, not speaking of the religious leaders in the true-and-only-one Religion (you know which one, since there is no other), so you just proved my point, instead of backing yours :-)

Believe me, this didn’t go down well in the Apple-using community.
= Well, in catholicism, believers even turned their back in numbers when they read in the papers that the Cologne (Germany) episcope paid more than 1 million for the gambling debts of one of their priests, out of a fund intended to pay (now adult) child abuse victims of theirs, but then, those believers, now suddenly outraged, should have know better anyway, since their Church paid out much higher sums to their lawyers, trying to keep down the indemnities, than to the victims themselves (which proves, if need there was, how successfully their Church invested theirs, and general taxpayers (sic!) money!) - which, the flight from Church that is, is - contrary to abnegation from the one-and-only Religion there is - also allowed Apple faithful, but those defections are quite rare, admittedly not only for fortress wall reasons;
on the other hand, as true believers, Apple users accept a lot, really a lot, from their totem, just see, here again, that instead of following my advice above to ask for the allegedly missing features the usefulness of which I have explained above, they rather seem to be inclined to dismiss such missing features as more or less irrelevant (whilst, once they would have (discovered!) them, they would never want to do without them for serious work);
but you're right, their Macbook MCA was catastrophical indeed (in German pleb's language: "Super-GAU")... especially since they tried by all means to reject justified claims (there again)... ;-)
and re their "connectors", well, they (i.e. the management, not necessarily the user base, too, but see about "totem" and all) will be oh so happy when their devices will have with ANY possible connector (except for the direct one into your brain, and that that's coming's for sure), see your:

Software, like websites, is beginning to show signs of building up to a new UX revolution.
= functionality-wise, it seems that we currently have some sort of pauperization instead, and by user bases which rather express they don't want more elaborate functionality (while misunderstanding that if they were dormant within the depths of the menus e.g., they wouldn't be bothered by their - hidden - "presence"), this regression in software functionality overall (except for the "access from everywhere" aspect that is) will go on for some time I fear, not even speaking of notable crippling examples within particular software (Evernote, InfoSelect - both in spite of their respective pricing! - and some others I don't remember currently... and Adobe, partly at least?)

Linux ... Intel-Microsoft duopoly
= it's true that with more and more (in-browser or other web) apps replacing software installed on the users' devices, there will be more Linux software, just not as the users' device OS, as long as those users will also need "traditional" software, too, and yes, also the other way round: When more and more such "native" software will be replaced by web apps, Chrome can overtake; in the field of translation software e.g., you currently have very powerful tools both for Windows and Mac, but with more and more web-sided translation services appearing, more and more of the aforementioned native tools will disappear, and have to be replaced by equally sophisticated web applications, the problem being that those will, just as the current desktop tools in that field, be very "select" (i.e. tiny user base by today's standards), and anything web-based being by subscription, those subscription prices will rise extraordinarily, and it's quite a different thing between buying special software for 1,800$/€, then perhaps updating it, 2 or 3 years later, for some 900$/€, and so on if you wish to do so, or if they charge you 295$/€ per month, or then it'll be all gone

... starting with the whole file system thing ...
and Dormouse above, "They hybrid design - database plus external files - has many advantages."
= Yes, and indeed, storage of the data within the file system would resolve the problem SQLite has when you also store the data within the db, in big numbers, or even in not so big numbers, once many (just a 3-digit number is sufficient to get into problems) of them contain pics (jpg in the range 300x500 or 500x700 pixels each, not speaking of photo storage here; in UR e.g., just 500 items, with 300 containing such pics within text, will be sufficient to cause problems, most contenders assumingly being even worse), and yes, server-client db take in without problems, with proper programming that is, almost any number of items, instead of starting to crawl at a 3-, 4- or 5-digit item number, but a Postgres server at home is not realistic for most users, and web storage might be as good as such a Postgres server, if you set aside possible secondary problems (data security, failing web access in not-so-developed countries, and the like) set aside;
bear in mind your (Mac or Windows) notebook file system could store 7-, 8-, perhaps 9-digit numbers of items, within its hdd or ssd, beyond meta data, both SQLite and Postgres then make available full-text indexing and full-text search, natively just for data within the db (which for SQLite causes these capacity problems in real life);
UR stores both the original data (rtf as blob) and the replicated plain-text data (for the full-text search index) within the db, whilst the original data could be stored within the file system indeed, and the plain-text data possibly, too, once the respective item plain text has just been temporarily "imported", for fetching the respective index data from that item; I currently don't see a real reason for storing anything beyond index plus other meta data within SQLite (or Postgres, but where internal storage of everything would not be a problem whatsoever) itself, but may be mistaken;
you could use dedicated full text search, in parallel to the db, but that woul complicate things considerably (e.g. a renowned search tool, costing about 200$ for individuals, would cost about 15,000$/€, but then calls for you to store the file systems files (instead of txt, rtf, etc.) in a format which would be unreadable to anything than the application you buy that search component for - which is inacceptable;
in web storage, they probably use ElasticSearch (their subscription income bearing their ES subscription costs then);
in other words, IF there was a single, really good, "local" (i.e. "desktop" which would include notebooks) information manager, you could use that one almost everywhere (in the car or the shower, you can't your smartphone either, for information purposes), but as soon as you are into high item numbers (5- and 6-digits), it becomes very problematic indeed, so, yes, I see the interest, for the user, in web storage, if nothing else is available, thus my interest in the citation above, and what it might describe in this particular case

Fairphone operating system
= iPhone and Android problem, you can't get those standard apps (you would be interested in, not speaking of outliers, available from third-party sources indeed), without then, I suppose (and will never believe any optimistic euphemism this wasn't so) Apple or google attributing to you(r telephone number, here in Europe) any action you do within those apps, neither of those corporations considered by me trustworthy to any degree;
example, I look up a word from English to Dutch when I'm in the Netherlands, and that's none of google's goddam business, according to me, but I'm sure they store every word I look up, in my "account", next time I "go online" (wlan in some public space for example, e.g. in a store to compare prices);
ironically I can look up prices or translations by just web browsing - and ironically in their Chrome crap I'd never use otherweise - from the same device, without them spying me out, IF I don't ever use their "app store" or whatever they call it, AND if I never put a "SIM" into that smartphone, making and receiving calls by "key phones" (for which there seems to be quite some market nowadays, judging by the numbers of key phones on offer);
btw, those google people even, and now systematically, use unresolvable captchas (they obviously could be resolved as any other, but they just switch off the "ok" functionality for you, instead of saying upfront you will never get access) when I try to do a direct google search thru VPN (instead of using e.g. startpage instead), i.e. I can try 30, 40, 50 times, with no success, whilst sites which just want to protect themselves, present me seemingly identical captchas but which I can resolte in 2, 3, 4 tries at most; I have observed this for years now, and it's evident that google sadists use these unresolvable - but seemingly resolvable - captchas in order for the user to give up at last, and to give in to their spying (this is independant from my pretended "country of origin" by VPN, btw)

Stephen Zeoli

You can’t concatenate sheets in IW as you can in Ulysses.
= I suppose sheets are items; I fully understand that for many users, this is very important; my macros do whatever I want, re such things, I even would need to look up to what degree UR would "help" here with native functions; whenever I can write a macro which does something exactly as I want it to be, I do it exactly that way, and thus, I have replicated many functions, realized not that well by UR, in UR, by my means, to highly better results (especially "go to" and "move/copy/link to" which natively are quite cumbersome in UR); my requirements for software functionality are for functionality then I can NOT realize with my external macro means, e.g. and of the highest importance to me, the ones I had listed, user-side tree formatting (deal-breaker) and then filtering by those formats (very important, but if UR hadn't that, I would insert special code chars into the item titles instead, then filter by those, and to say it all, I even do just that, for more "coding", since just 7 formats beyond the regular one simple isn't enough for my means;
if that filtering by special chars within titles wouldn't be possible in my case, I would do with the 7 formats, but without tree formats to begin with, I would not touch the software; in fact, once, I had left UR, in order to go back to AO, just for that reason, accepting, at the time, the absence of then filtering for those formats (except by scripting upon export), not knowing that UR had those tree formats, and I came back to UR once I had news of that (very well hidden indeed) function - big thanks, here again, to Paul J. Miller for the hint!

you have to pay an annual fee for Ulysses
= 50 bucks p.a. is "nothing" for some ace software you use all day long, and thus, I would be / have been happy (and have said so over there) if the UR developer did both, switched to subscription (with reasonable prices) AND switched back to active development (instead of just maintenance development as is the current situation now, and as it has been for the last 10, 12, more years); this eagerness of mine to rent software ONLY applies to optimized, workhorse software though, which really - and brilliantly - "secures" your work, NOT to all those innumerable secondary if not fourth-rate tools you'd use here and there, or once a year; the applications list on my main pc currently lists about 450 such applications, whilst I regularly delete those which are really worthless, and even then: now, if I was to pay rent for hundreds of tools, my total income wouldn't be sufficient anymore to do my pc work (or hobby or whatever);
it's undeniable that the continuous willingness of Apple (!) users to pay rents for any crap, has considerable fastened this run to software rental, even for minor and even worthless applications and tools (e.g. renamers which don't do anything beyond some good file managers which you would want to install anyway; I could give dozens of examples lately; I'm NOT speaking of Ul and similar "core appliations" here; for these, the problem is just that your subscription paying will NOT guarantee it'll be really optimized, not even in the long run)

Apple environment apps are generally more polished in their design and UI
= visually, that's indeniable; functionally, less so if you look further into the specifics (which often are not that easily available); as I just have said, I even left my workhorse application, in the erroneous conception it missed functionality I had to rely on; when it comes to the "other" OS then, the risk of overlooking features grows stark ("exponentially" would be an exaggeration though); that iPhone / iPad apps are much superior to their Android counterparts, is general knowledge by now, everybody can see that from a short glance, and yes, pricing ("premium") is a crucial factor in this, and then group dynamics is another one: iSomething developers would be ashamed to present something too ugly, whilst Android developers don't give a heck because their users don't do either, obviously

Dormouse

concatenating
= Ol's special (sic!) 3-pane screen represention I had lauded (and described) obviously facilitates combining items, or cutting them in two, independently of the technical functionality, so the former is a very good start for the latter; if developers "stole" much more - not code, but UX role models - from each other, we would all benefit, not least the developers; as it is, there is much less real choice, since your "choice" follows your absolute needs, and then you have to live with quite some, and in case very annoying, constraints on many other plans, perhaps with the only application of some sort becoming your only "choice", independently of all its restrictions and misses otherwise; ironically, sticking up also for third-parties' requirements, instead of disposing of them, declaring them irrelevant, could highten your chances to see your own important requirements realized, "you" always being used in its most general meaning

(Ul:) And it is actually a nice looking and functional program.
= which, as said, will not help (again, generally speaking), when absolutely needed functionality is not there; my detailed descriptions above re Ol having in mind to make you think about what you miss if you deliberately pass very important functionality (since it's currently not there in case), even if you have been doing without it so far

Zeoli / Dormouse / Zeoli

(Ul:) view them as if they are one document
= brilliant, so even with edit, indeed, I often miss that functionality, the Ul screenshot doesn't show this but partly (Even without edit in a roll, it's rare and would be so useful); I also misunderstood concatenation by technically joing two or more items into one though, of course nor UR, nor a macro of mine can, do what Ul does here; since Ul has such powers, it's understandable that has got so much success; the more annoying then if it missed very important functionality; btw, the Firefox bookmarks tree (thousands of bookmarks, but no way to at least format / color the group titles (parent items): that (free) software obviously hasn't got the technical preconditions to realize item (or then, "folder") formattings, etc, whilst, a repeat this a second time here, Ol obviously uses components which could do that, since it distinguishes, non-user-attributable, between white and grey in black background

Dormouse

don’t think it’s quite as flexible as Scrivener in this regard
= Win Scrivener may be better than I think, Mac Scrivener even much better, so both, or the latter, may have features I'd like; I'm too much put off by the Mac-Windows contrast here, I haven't it (Win) trialled anymore for years; from the (Mac) developer's answers to (Mac) users' requests, I also inferred that he's not "responsive" (according to the rule, "no is no answer")

Amontillado

I recognize I’m being nit-picky.
= no, you're not, many (Mac) users complain about incoherence in Scrivener; as implied above, the developer does not seem to be too inclined to fine-tune his (extremely successful) program, obviously doesn't need the "need" for that from his subjective pov

At that time you couldn’t create separate Ulysses files. Everything went in one data store.
= What about transclusion in Ul? It goes without saying that for transclusion purposes, one big db is so much better than to have, for speed or (in)stability reasons, to cut one big data repository in multiple "files" (?) / databases (Ul?), internal (virtual) replicating being so much smoother than links to external sources, both technically, and, especially, for the user('s workflow); hence my question, a very important one: local data storage, which db, robust up to how many items range (e.g. low 5-digit? (much) better than that?);
and since the intermediate pane is a little bit "special" (I said I enjoy this, and why, but it remains special, non-standard): what about hoisting? since otherwise, I would need - don't laugh! - a fourth pane, intermediate between panes 1 and 2, for big data repositories (pane 1 otherwise offering "too high" a view, and current pane 2 "too low" a view then)

Bill

that he doesn’t use more than the basic features in Scrivener
= easy: he doesn't want to break his "flow", by fiddling around with the app's intricacies which could very probably be realized much, much better, had the developer not been so stubborn as I infer from some of the details mentioned above; ironically, for originally useful functions - which are there - but which get into your way, by their awkwardness, user macros are more often than not the ideal solution

Dormouse

I take it that this is akin to editable transclusions
= that should be no problem, elsewhere-included items or sub-hierarchies, technically, are just links, so if software has transclusion, you always edit the original content, and in such a roll view, the program also handles a physical replication of the original data, not a replication of a replication, but an editable "roll view" is much more ambitious than a mere roll view in its strict sense to begin with, and that's why it's that rare (the "just view" variety also is rare, probably because, whilst being also very useful in direct comparison to the lack of it, it constantly reminds the user of how much better then the editable variety would be, and no developer would like to actively (i.e. by his own but insufficient coding efforts) frustrate their user base)

Dormouse

(document with headings/folding vs. combined-chunks)
= that's a totally different universe then, cf. KEdit, or then all the rich-text editors (MS Word, Atlantis and some more) which got suddenly aware that at least an additional outline would come so much more handy, and which then build (optionally, of course) that additional outline, by header levels, you apply the format by shortcuts, e.g. ^1, ^2, and so on);
I think we convene about this paradigm just working for "writing", not (also) as (textual) data repository, or then it'll get very unwieldy;
my problem with this concept is that, also for meta information, and especially for notes and meta-notes (see above), it does not seem to be very helpful to me, you would have to rely on codes within those extra lines, then filter those lines out, or filter for those lines (which is possible in KEdit (which just offers plain text though), not also in Word or Atlantis e.g., if I'm not mistaken), you would end up with scrolling thru the whole text, or thru whole chapters, a lot;
as far as I know, and I own both (which doesn't mean much), both Word and Atlantis, while facilitating navigation, by their tree, then will not allow for just viewing / editing that selected part, e.g. sub chapter 3.7, but above and below, they always display the sourround (sub-) chapters, and that's why I, personally, can't work at all with them, except for stupid text entry (for the dark mode), but without any editing beyond, i.e. I do NOT use their navigational functionaly in any way, since that's navigation only, not also de-selection (i.e. hiding) of the text parts I will not have navigated too; any 2-pane outliner hasn't got any problem with them, and it's myself who decides upon the (current) extent of that "chunk" (some tools allow for just seeing the current paragraph, which is quite different, since I want to see the paragraphs within the vicinity indeed, but just those - some of those even calls "1 paragraph only" "the Hemingway mode" if I'm not mistaken - oh, my!;
this being said, I admit that the (above-described) filter-out functionality for the UR tree might be vary rare, and that UR's filter-for functionality only just within a search results table, so I describe a paradigm that currently might not even exist, but it's obvious that even what I get in UR in this respect, can't possibly be replicated or nearly arrived at by a headings-folding system;
I should clarify and specify that the above-described "filter specific format(s, i.e. combinable) out of the tree includes any sub-items / sub-trees of such-formatted items, whilst in KEdit for example, you could just filter out (I suppose) those special meta-note lines themselves, but not also their "content", i.e. the paragraphs below and up to the next independent heading; in UR for example, you could display, or then hide from view, all (currently) "shelved" variants, versions and such, without having to really cut them out of your current work (and file them into some "archives" somewhere else, where they then would be out-of-context, whilst your hidden variants within your UR db remain in-context, becoming visible again by a single key combination, you then could hide another variant instead, and unhide the de-shelved one, all with just a key combination, i.e. by re-assigning another title format to the parent item;
(just 7 such formats, filtering for (instead of filtering out) not in the tree, and many more such things: of course I would be willing to rent, if these and other potentially brilliant (and even very helpful-as-such) functions would then be amended to meet really high UX standards

I also far prefer to work with files than databases
= For your paradigm, files are the natural format indeed - 1 (book or other) project 1 file -, and obviously, that paradigm suits you perfectly;
on the other hand, you will very probably not (at all, or only exceptionally) rely upon transclusion with elements outside of your current project (them using here, elements from here using there), since if you did, your "file system" would become unmanageable for you;
many non-fiction writers prefer your system (and abhor 2-pane outliners, for "writing" purposes at least), but imagine, let's say, a comedy writer who, I might suppose, will maintain a "gag" repository (perfect here: (multiple) tagging instead of hierarchy, admittedly): either, they would work like you do, and then with an accompanying gag db, or they might have it all within the same db body, certainly not within a file, ditto for technical authors who would even be more inclined to have it all within the same db, for heavy transclusion purposes (and which then would want transclusion to be better, i.e. much faster, organized, UX-wise, than it is in UR - technically, it's without fault, it just takes much too long, on every occasion);
this being said, I absolutely understand your preferred way of doing these things, it's just that for other things, your concept would possibly fail, since what you would want to do THEN, would take too much effort or would even not be possible to begin with;
I'm speaking of tools which should do-it-all, as good as possible, but the moment you accept, or even want, several tools for several purposes, everything's fine, no pun whatsoever intended;
that being said, there currently does not seem to be any mass-market "overall" tool, then meeting special requirements or not, which continues to work without fault for "high" item numbers, which is why I had to spread my 300,000 items over some 30 db, and transclusion between those db just isn't possible, just meager links are, all the same
.

And yes, if you held your lists short, you wouldn't need that many markers (as I do), but I abhor artificial sub-hierarchies, just taking away "siblings" which should remain, as siblings, not cousins, etc., together, and yes, to some degree, separator lines (which are native in Firefox, and which are just a little macro away in any writing or db tool or in the file system (where sorting is mostly alphabetical, so they are less needed there)) help indeed, but once you use tree formatting (and, as said, sparingly indeed), you would not want to give it up, not even for other important features.

Writing being about flow, it would be nuts indeed to give up the features which currently really help you in fiction writing, and I see that even without tree formatting (?), Ul can be very attractive in there:

Because in that special field, navigational issues are minor, navigation actions being quite rare in that context, you mostly write, just here and then look up, or juggle bits around - well, the easier that is, the more you'll do it! -, and "finishing", in Ul, will be done in the content pane mostly, and the accompanying navigation within the middle pane - whilst I had and have long sibling lists in mind, with constant navigation.

Ul for fiction writing might be somewhat near "ideal" indeed after all, but then, for more general uses: db? robust? does it choke beyond 10,000 text items, beyond 100,000? and with minor graphics, not-too-big jpg pix then? and what about its db-plus-file-system paradigm, in detail? Answers from real experiences, just as my real-life information re UR (i.e. with real data), could be of general interest I think; it may even be that Ul was quite robust, since it's two-screen, optionally, and that would especially make sense if you could put your "material" into it, too, perhaps though into a second file or db within Ul. (Now try to do such extensive trialling, with significant, real data, within some days, while trying to preserve your "bought" hardware in mint condition, in order to send it back for refund: only under duress, as Amontillado said above!)

Oh, and yes, in this age of pdf-on-screen instead of print-outs, I perfectly see that reading on an iPad (max size then) other's people's works is so much more pleasant an experience, than sitting in front of a desktop screen... but with a good, big screen and a good, incredibly spiced-up keyboard (just like in the old XyWrite days), editing your own stuff is so much more comfortable in the end, no?

And yes, entering lengthy text into a 1-scrolling-page Atlantis window (then putting the bits into UR wherever they belong), just because the UR developer, getting old himself though over the years, doesn't see the necessity to code "dark mode" - which we had with XyWrite then, since that was the monochrome standard screen in those days -, such patchwork isn't fun.

And not to be mixed up with the above mentioned, absolutely convenient in case, two-tools setup, one for optimized writing purposes, the other one for stocking your "material".

And yes, if there was a 100-, 200-$/€ tool which let me trial Mac software, I would probably have had switched to Mac even 10 years ago (and before buying some expensive software tools (i.e. in the higher 3-digit range) for Windows (licenses not transferrable to Mac, I would have to pay again); the way it is, I will very probably never do that; over-clever (i.e. to the point of overt cynicism) Apple management insisting on selling their hardware, so that many people do the software trial switch with a Mac mini, then find their Mac software doesn't run but very badly with almost no memory and no power, then shelf the mini, but Apple got your mini, your mouse and some other little money, whilst they ain't so strong in (inhouse-made) software anymore and anyway, so missing software sales don't bother them, and Adobe and others get your money anyway since both-platform.

Then, you hear their CEO gets 100 million (even in Corona time?), so you know why they "need" to be that greedy.

Whilst for Windows, it's just some of your money going to MS, and for all the rest you're free to by from those makers you're not yet at odds with, from your individual experience (don't buy Sony!): Apple's very special business model is a public nuisance, psychologically, indeed! ;-)

Oh dear.

Windows on Mac

I hadn't thought of the necessary Win license; whilst you can buy such licenses, out of corporate packages, for 10$/€, they are not always recognized as valid by MS, so it's not as simple as I had presented it above, and perhaps it's more realistic to say, 80 plus VAT for the tool, plus 80 plus VAT for the Win license, which would make it 200$/€ in all (the free tool which would then just need to buy the Win license, reputedly coming with limitations).

Plot holes

\CR\ (romantic comedy): Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Hitchcock 1941, Lombard, Montgomery)
\CC\ (criminal comedy): Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Liman 2005, Pitt, Jolie, Brody, b110 bo487)

The second produced a box-office of about 500 million (numbers from wikipedia which gets them from Mojo = amazon, who else...), which is enormous, and that in spite of - SPOILER AHEAD as they say - an equally enourmous plot hole. As such, they call logical story fails, and here, two "professional killers for hire" (which is a cinema myth to begin with, secret services and terrorist organizations having their own killers, and they certainly don't get 6- or 7-digit fees per "hit"), married to each other and not knowing that the other one is in their own trade, are set up onto each other, by some organization, in order to kill each other. This is very funny and enjoyable, even for the organization (well, as long as the latter one doesn't realize both fail miserably), but the question remains why the organization would spend millions just for fun, instead of just hiring a third killer, for a fraction of that, to do away with both.

Anyway, this (b-o) "hit" amply proves that whenever the fun is enormous, even a giant plot hot will be happy accepted; not so in general, and in general, plot holes appear within the story, not at its very beginning, forming its very base in some way.

So, for fiction writers, my remarks above about UR's tree (entries) formatting (incl. the possibility of hiding or displaying those formats one-by-one) should be of real interest, in this special context to create reminder items in order to avoid possible plotholes (and also to remind you of ideas you would like to develop, or similar, then, hence the different colors).

It seems that in Ul, there's no way to smoothly intercalate such "reminders" of all sorts between your "text items", and if there is no such facility, you will have to organize your "reminders" in some other way.

Just a reminder. ;-)