Coming In Auteureist 2.0

Last time I gave you a peek at a couple UI tweaks that will be part of 2.0. This time a couple of functional improvements.

First, Auteureist 2.0 remembers where you were when you quit, and will take you back to the same screen and item you are working on. This works whether you are task switching or actually quit the app.

Second, I am improving importing. Pre 2.0 the only way to import was through Auteurist Sync, the desktop app. Starting in 2.0 you will also be able to import via mail. This is how it works. First, whenever you get an email with a text or Final Draft attachment, you can hold your finger down on it to get a menu. Here is the email.

Here is the import menu.

Tapping on the Open In Auteureist item will launch the app and if you are importing it will display an import menu.

With this you can specify where you want to import to, either a new composition, or into the current item you are working on. Auteureist will then parse multiple chapters, scenes, etc and import them. This works with text, and Final Draft fdx files.

This will make exchanging and importing documents easier.

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Retinal display and Auteureist

Just a quick look at the difference between the retinal and iPhone3GS displays… Here is the 3GS

And here is the same thing on the iPhone4

The size difference is due to resolution difference. Here are the two side by side at the same scale with the 4 on the right…

See the full gallery on Posterous

The retinal display is a lot sharper and less dithered and pixelated. Very easy on the eyes.

Auteureist 2.0 UI Update Sneak Peek

Auteureist 2.0 is under development now that iOS4 is out and I can develop for it.  Things are moving along nicely and I felt I could share a sneak peek at what to look forward to.

First of all, fast app switching (multitasking) is working.  As a result of getting that in place there have been some vast improvements in memory and performance. For example, startup times to the first screen are about 10-15x faster!  It is now about a second whereas it took about 15 seconds if you had a LARGE database.  Now it’s no longer painful 😉

 

 

Memory is managed a lot better as result.  What this means is the app should be a lot more stable and responsive overall.I am also going to be using a lot of 4 capabilities, so I recommend everyone update to 4.  

As part of 2.0 I am simplifying the UI. I never really liked all the toolbars, but they were efficient.  However, they clutter things up.  Also, I am adding some “polish” to the UI in the form of a skin.  Here is a peak at the main screen with the skin.  It just looks much nicer and professional.  If you don’t like it, you can turn it off and the app will revert to “bare” mode.

 

Speaking of toolbars the text editing screen has been simplified. Here is the old:

 

And the new:

 

 

All the functionality is still there.  If the keyboard is up, tapping on the title will dismiss it.  If the keyboard is down, tapping the title switches between displaying the title and the word/page count.

 

The Save button is now labeled Options.  Tapping it brings up a menu with the functions that wereoriginally on the second toolbar.

The new UI is a lot simpler to understand and cleans up the window providing you with more space to type in. It’s really great and intuitive. 

There will be more UI changes in 2.0 but those will have to wait for another sneak peek.

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iPhone 4 IOS And Auteureist

I have been quiet the last couple of weeks. I went to the Apple WWDC and as you know Apple announced the iPhone 4 and the release of iOS4 this coming week. I have been also catching up with all the work stuff I missed while at the conference. The conference was great, and I met a lot of great people. I also learned a lot about what is coming in 4 and more significantly about some of the things I’ve been doing incorrectly in Auteureist. Not horible things but inefficient things.

Having said that, and with 4 this week, it doesn’t make sense for me to rush 1.3 because it doesn’t take advantage of all the great 4 features. So I am going to hold off on 1.3 until I can fix some of the things I now know how to do better and to give me time to add in some 4 features to make life better for all of you getting either the 4 OS or phone. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Auteureist will be more polished, stable, responsive and powerful. Additionally, I want to add the ability to import FinalDraft documents, right now Auteureist only exports. iOS4 makes importing a lot easier. This will be available as part of Scriptwriting Mode.

So, the next release will be a BIG release. It, therefore, won’t be 1.3 but 2.0. And the iPad version will be out at the same time. When? I can’t say at this point. I have a lot of work to do.

I hope your patience will be rewarded.

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Another Update

Just a quick note. I am still testing and tweaking 1.3. Most of my time is focused on making sure the new export/formatting logic is stable and outputting the correct stuff.

Just a bit of background: up until now I wasn’t happy with how I was generating the exports in MMD. It worked but it was poorly designed. So as part of 1.3 I’ve rewritten that logic and now it is much easier to plug in new formatting options (you’ll see some in 1.3, such as FDX for FinalDraft). An additional benefit is that it is much better at conserving memory and a bit faster. Speed really hasn’t been an issue until you start working with large novels and scripts as I have. Then it can take a couple of seconds to generate the output. So 1.3 will be a bit faster with these large projects as well (by about a second or two). In 1.3 you’ll also get finer control of what gets exported—and some new things such as now you will have a title page generated.

So that’s where my time is mostly going. I’ve also fixed some minor annoyances and infrequent bugs. So I am testing and retesting. It’s still not perfect. But it’s better than 1.2.

So when will I be ready to submit? At this point I hope mid June. It’s close, but I don’t feel happy with it right now.
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