No update for Story Editor, next week a major new feature
This week there is no update for Story Editor, but next week I will have implemented a major feature which makes that version of Story Editor a complete version.
The new feature can best be compared to a database in which you can create your own content types like persons, items and what else you can think of. Don’t know the age of a certain person? Just open a quick screen in which you can look up your character!
But that being said it will take at least one more week to fully implement it so that is useable. After that I might add some more complex features, although I have to take care in not adding too much features.
Then I have to make a design decisions as I’m not yet finished. For one I could start working on a publishing site on which users can register and to which Story Editor can save and load stories. Imagine writing your story and then publishing it with a single click!
Or I could add relationships in the database. This I think is the biggest challenge, as I’m starting to write a database.
The last thing that is on my list is change the GUI so that it no longer depends on propriety software. That would mean I could put the source code online so that others have access to it as well and might learn from it.
Looking at things that I want to do and the final deadline (I stop actively working on this project when it is 2011) I might make it or I might just miss it.
Anyway here are some screenshots of what I mean with content types:
You can create your own types
Story Editor V1.0.0.5 (Export and printing)
A week has passed so I'm releasing another version of my favorite story writer solution: Story Editor.
So what is added in this version?
- Exporting to multiple file types is now supported. Think PDF, docx, html, rtf, txt and a few others.
- The application now has print and print preview capabilities.
Because the previous version implemented update detection you don't even download the installer, or if you want to use it, you can download it from here.
The next version will implement a complete new feature, which is the creation of contexts. Explaining what "contexts" are is a bit hard, but basically you can create your own database. For the non-technical skilled that means that you can create the context "character" in which you say that every character has a name, age, et cetera. This was actually the primary reason for me to create Story Editor as some story editors already allow this but only for a few contexts like character, item, location. But what if you are writing a space opera and you want to keep track of the various spaceships? You don’t want to store that in "character" or "location".
Well, that is where context comes in to play. Just create a context, design what the context should contain and start filling in.
I hope that I can implement the most basic feature in a single day (I have only 8 hours available for story editor) but otherwise this functionality will take a bit longer.
Anyway enjoy the latest release and if you encounter any problems, please let me know.
Story Editor v 1.0.0.4 (installer and auto-update)
It took longer than I had hoped, but the very first version of Story Editor, my favorite creative story writing software, now has an installer. No longer you will need to move around files. Just launch the installer and you are set to go.
I have also spend a bit of time to ensure that you don't need to worry if you have the latest version, because Story Editor will check if there is a new release for you. Nothing too intrusive, of course, because you are writing and you don't want to grab the mouse to click away an annoying "please restart your system" while you are writing.
When you see this at the bottom, just click on it and it will ask if you want the update, say yes and while it is being downloaded you can continue writing.
Once the download is complete, hit it again and the new version will be installed.
So what will be in the next version? Well, I'm going a bit back to add some more text editing functionality and also exporting/printing.
Don't worry about checking the website or reading my blog. From now on you will be notified 
Next version of Story editor
Quite a productive night, if I may say so.
Currently the new features are already worthy of a new release. It has an installer, it has file association and an update checker. Yep, now you can ignore my blog and still have the latest version of Story Editor.
However I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that you will have to wait untill it has been released. The good news is this release will most likely be done before the weekend. The reason for the delay is because a) it's late and b) I want to test the downloading mechanisme. Oh and of course, it needs to alert you when a new version is availabel. So I still got my work cut out for me for this week.
Releasing Story Editor V1.0.0.3
As promised I would release the next version of Story Editor a week later and well a week has past. For me it was a crazy week so I had decided to do some of the programming in the week instead of the weekend and this has paid off.
So what has changed?
First of all I have decided on an extension. You can still work using the old zip files, although I recommend you start using the sez format.
Second you can now reorder chapters and scenes, by selecting the chapter or scene in the outline and then use the green buttons.
Next week I will try to make the Story Editor installable with automatic updates, so that you don't have to download the whole package again.
Here is the link to my favorite creative story writing application: Story Editor V1.0.0.3.
Pay attention to which version when buying Windows 7
When I graduated I had decided that I would reserve a maximum of €500 to buy myself a present. Now that I have graduated I have looked around to see on what I would spend my hard earned money on and now, almost two weeks later, I have decided it would be Windows 7.
For the average customer (AKA me) there are three flavors I can buy: Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate. So I decided to do a little bit of research and I'm glad I did.
My laptop is used for both personal pleasure (games, writing and my personal projects) as well as for work. As of late I do a lot of remote desktop (RDP) and to my surprise, this is not included in Home Premium. Home Premium is actually a version between Windows Vista Home Basic and Windows Vista Home Premium.
This means that if I use Home Premium I will no longer be able to use my laptop for work. So I need to buy the more expensive version.
This brings me to another problem. My current laptop (Dell XPS M1530) is four years old, which makes it pretty much an outdated model. If in the future I would switch to another system then I'm pretty sure that they only install the cheapest windows version on it.
That in turn would mean that I, as customer, would need to buy another version of Windows Professional or Ultimate.
On the other side, I'm not responsible for equipment used at work. I just prefer to have all my work available and should my laptop fail, then I can buy a new system for personal use. I have no qualms with Windows 7 Home premium.
Still... I think I will sleep about it for another night or maybe even two before I decide on the matter.
UPDATE 02-09-2010: I stand corrected, a friend of mine just tested it and the only the RDP server is unavailable in Home Premium and the RDP client is. That means you can use RDP to connect to other desktops, but other desktops not to you.