Jerry's Profile

  • http://jerssoftwarehut.com
  • Sep 17, 2005
  • 2
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Latest comments made by: Jerry

  • Amorde, somewhere in the business plan is a Windows version. My sincere hope (OK, it's a pipe dream) is for a port of Cocoa to wintel before I have to tackle the software from the ground up all over again. I will have to pay some big bucks to Microsoft before I can even figure out how much work it will be. Possibly it's not relevant here, but Apple has made some Earth-shatteringly good tools available to developers - for free. When you're playing catch-up, a strategy like that makes sense. To use the latest Microsoft technology, I am out of pocket some serious cash - even before I spend the significant amounts of time required to get things working (here, I assume things have not improved since the last time I installed and configured a Windows development environment). Uh... but I digress. I know the code exists over at OpenOffice that would allow me to export a styled document to Word, but the much more likely approach I will take is an XML-CSS export that Word could subsequently import and interpret, with structure information intact. It's two steps, but much more versatile for other folks, like the LaTeX folks, for whom "Word" is the dirtiest word of all.
    Czech RepublicJerry had this to say on Sep 23, 2005 Posts: 2
    Unleashing the Writer: Jer's Novel Writer
  • Hey, wow! Thanks for the review. I hope JNW helps you write better. Strephon has posted many helpful comments in the Jer's Software Hut forums, and I look forward to his continued feedback. He's the kind of friend who tells you where it's really at. As far as my commitment, I have been working on Jer's Novel Writer for two years now and I will continue to do so. It will move forward. Having said that, I am a writer first, and a software developer second. It's taken me fifteen years to get there, and I'm not going back now. So, I'm committed, but the timetable for releases can take a sudden lurch if, say, I have to leave home to work on a film for two months, or I get a cold. It's true, the help is really lacking right now. Most things are obvious, some even thoughtless, but there are parts that just don't work the same as other word processors - not things you have to worry about much (which is what makes them different) but when you're setting defaults a little explanation here and there would be nice. For screenplays, I also use Final Draft, but in the next year I intend to give them a run for their money -- at least for blue-sky script writing. I'll likely never do things like pink pages, though. I have used plain-text editors, and still do, but for fiction, when I want italics, I just want to hit cmd-i, type, and hit cmd-i again. And margin notes are addictive. I hope you and your writing readers find success with JNW or whatever tool works for them. In the end, it's not about the tool, it's about what you make with the tool, and a good writer will make a good product no matter the technology. Thanks once more for the very kind words. Oh, and it's "Jerry". Jerry Seeger Jer's Software Hut
    Czech RepublicJerry had this to say on Sep 13, 2005 Posts: 2
    Unleashing the Writer: Jer's Novel Writer