WriteRoom-Leopard-Test Version

Posted January 26, 2008 by jesse

Edit

Changed back the way that typewriter scrolling works. Having it scroll automatically on any cursor changes worked well in some cases, but cause problems when trying to double-click select a work. Instead I went back to the old behavior, but I've added in an animated scroll, I hope that will make it less likely that people are disoriented when the cursor line is scrolled to center as you start typing. This animation has a bug in that it won't work sometimes when you start typing at the top of a document, but in general it seems to work fairly well.

...

I've just released a new version of the WriteRoom-Leopard-Test app. You can download it here:

http://hogbaysoftware.com/files/assets/0000/003...

This version is Leopard only. Feature-wise it should be very similar to the "current" non test version of WriteRoom. But code wise lots of stuff is changing so that I can take advantage of new features in Leopard.

Note, these Leopard-Test version's are just test versions, they are not official releases. That means they will not show up on the releases page, and it also means that the "Software Update" feature won't work correctly with them since they are not official releases. I'll update this post when I make future Leopard test releases, so if you always want the latest keep an eye on this page for now.

This release of the Leopard test version changes:

Better behavior when Launched on OS X 10.4. Instead of just quitting it will say you need to upgrade, and will provide a link to earlier versions of WriteRoom that are compatible with OS X 10.4.
Changed behavior of typerwriter scrolling, so that cursor stays centered always, even if you are just moving it with the arrow keys.
Possibly other changes, I haven't been keeping careful track.

Don Parr - November 21, 2007 6:12 PM

Thanks Jesse! I had to use the link from a previous post, this one appears to be incomplete :(? I downloaded this test version (2.5) on both my Macs, G4 and Intel, and will be testing it very soon.

jesse - November 21, 2007 6:35 PM

Opps, thanks. I just fixed that link.

Don Parr - November 23, 2007 9:09 AM

Jesse, so far the only issue I've noticed with the Leopard Test Version 2.5 is that, at least on my iBook G4, the simple email script no longer works :(. It does with version 2.3.6 (43). This is the only issue (for me) I've noticed so far :).

Franck Guadagnini - November 25, 2007 10:44 AM

A few crashes here, I’ll send you the logs by email.

I don’t like the new behavior of the typewriter scrolling, could it be possible to make it an option : under the slider which allows to choose between "bottom of screen" and "middle of screen" in the Full screen Preferences, it could be a checkbox that would say : "Always keep the cursor in the middle of the screen"…

I’ve also discovered that while WR can now open (but not save) documents in the odt and docx formats (just like TextEdit under Leopard), it opens them as plain text, thus loosing all italics, etc.

Otherwise, I’m glad that I can now use the better engine for smart quotes, and the hyperlink auto-recognition.

Don Parr - December 8, 2007 5:10 PM

Jesse, I was able to get the simple email script to work with the WriteRoom-Leopard-Test version by renaming this version to "WriteRoom," not sure why it does strange things with the script when named "WriteRoom-Leopard-Test," but it does. I found this to be good news, so thought I would share :).

ClintMacD - December 9, 2007 11:39 AM

Jesse:

This is a bug report for WriteRoom-Leopard-Test.

I have the Preferences set so that document info is shown when I move the mouse to the lower left hand corner of the screen. If I move the mouse to that corner, move it a few pixels higher, then move it back down, the document info will flash on and off a few times each second.

Amusing, but probably not the expected behavior.

Best wishes, Clint

JeffB - January 5, 2008 11:50 AM

I can confirm this same behavior, although I only had the Word Count displayed. The little word count window did a little dance in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. Holding the mouse over that spot stopped the behavior.

ClintMacD - December 9, 2007 12:15 PM

Jesse:

Here is another bug (or, at least, an unexpected behavior) in WriteRoom-Leopard-Test. When trying to select a word by double clicking, the word jumps and another word is selected. I think this is a consequence of the new typewriter scrolling behavior, where the first click causes the screen to jump/center to that position, losing the second click. This makes it nigh impossible to select a word by double-clicking.

(By the way, I find the new "jump on click" behavior to be more disturbing than the previous "jump on type" behavior. Perhaps a "slide on type" behavior might be mellower. :-) )

Best wishes, Clint

ClintMacD - December 9, 2007 12:20 PM

Jesse:

Bug: an "unexpected quit." But, at least, no data were lost!

Best wishes, Clint

P. S. to this "unexpected quit." WriteRoom Leopard test did not remember the text encoding after the quit, and had to told using the Reload with Encoding… command.

Best wishes, Clint

ClintMacD - December 9, 2007 12:23 PM

Jesse:

The Leopard Preferences pane is a little too long for a 1024 x 768 PowerBook screen.

Best wishes, Clint

JeffB - January 5, 2008 12:02 PM

Just an overall note re: Edit in WriteRoom. Everything appears as it should. Shortcut appears in my ~/Library/InputManagers folder but the item does not appear in any Edit menus and using the shortcut does nothing as well. I'm going to look into whether the Quicken Scheduler is the cause of the problem as that is a known issue for other programs that monitor keyboard input.

JeffB - January 5, 2008 12:17 PM

turning off the Quicken Scheduler did not make a difference. any other clues as to why Edit in WriteRoom may not be working?

MacBook, Mac OS 10.5.1

jesse - January 5, 2008 12:33 PM

See this post

http://hogbaysoftware.com/forums/writeroom/topi..._EditinWriteRoombecoming_QuickCursor

JeffB - January 6, 2008 4:54 PM

I saw that AFTER I made my post. Thanks!

JeffB - January 6, 2008 5:01 PM

Two general notes:

In this beta I'm noticing that if I delete text using the delete key I'll occasionally get a line that runs under what would have been the text that I deleted.

Also, when the text on the page is double spaced, can you make it so the cursor is only as tall as the characters on the first line, not as tall as both spaces? It just looks odd to me to have the cursor be two lines tall when the font itself is only one line tall.

Thanks!

Franck Guadagnini - January 18, 2008 5:21 AM

Jesse,

I tend to have a lot of freezes and unexepected quits. I use WR test version every day, and write most of the time in the same file, which become bigger and bigger, now it’s 42000 words, and I think WR doesn’t deal well with my slow processor (G4 1GHZ — I know it’s outdated ; I wait for the new macbook air to be visible here in Paris before to choose between it and a macbook).

Hope you will have soon time to put in WR.

I can send you lots of crash logs if your interested.

Franck Guadagnini - January 27, 2008 3:46 AM

Hello Jesse,

There’s something wrong with the smart quotes in the last version of WR-test-version (51): in the previous vesion (43), the smart quotes worked like in TextEdit under Leopard: they adapted to the the language of the system, which was unvaluable for me. Now we've reverted to the way the official version of WR works, eg: the quotes are not that smart anymore, they just change " in “ or ”, and not " in « or », which sould be in french.

Please please please, revert to the way the smart quotes worked in WR-test-version 43, it just a pain for me—and other non-english users as well—to loose this great feature.

jesse - January 27, 2008 2:24 PM

Opps sorry about that, will be fixed for the next development release.

Franck Guadagnini - January 27, 2008 4:36 PM

Thank you very much! I can’t wait…

JeffB - January 27, 2008 1:02 PM

Latest build of WR crashes every time it opens. Tell me where to send a crash log and I'll email it to you.

jesse - January 27, 2008 1:28 PM

Please send the report to jesse at hogbaysoftware.com

jesse - January 27, 2008 2:13 PM

By the way, is anyone else noticing that the tinted mouse pointer image in full screen mode looks a bit messed up? I haven't touched the code, but recently it started looking messed up to me on my main development machine, a Core 2 Duo MacBook pro laptop. But then I just check and it looks fine on my G5 iMac. I'm not sure if this is my bug, or a bug in Apple's core image filters that I'm using to tint the original image.

Anyway if you have a chance let me know if the tinted arrow looks good or bad, and also list what type of system you are on. Thanks.

JeffB - January 28, 2008 3:51 PM

I am seeing the cursor weirdness that you're talking about on my MacBook. Cursor is normal on my iMac.

The cursor actually looks as if it's skewed slightly. the right side is longer than the left. The highlight on the left is brighter than the highlight on the right of the pointer and the tail looks kind of squiggly.

jesse - January 29, 2008 7:24 AM

What processor is in your iMac?

JeffB - January 29, 2008 8:27 AM

2 GHz Intel Core Duo

jesse - January 29, 2008 8:50 AM

Thanks, I was thinking that possible it was some Intel/PowerPC issue, but I guess not.

JeffB - January 28, 2008 9:25 AM

Just a couple of notes re: the new release.

Document statistics still bounce if you take the mouse and drag it quickly down to the bottom left-hand side of the page. This is a consistent, repeatable issue.
Cursor still two lines high when using double-spacing.
I did get this to work on my office computer, but I still get a crash on my MacBook. Both have same OS 10.5.1. Both Intel. By the way, this crash happens at the new "This is a beta" splash screen that appears when you first open the program.

Jesse, let me know if that crash log was helpful or if you need something else from me.

Prefs still allow you to click anywhere and have a check appear.

That's it for the moment.

jesse - January 28, 2008 10:13 AM

Jeff,

Thanks for the crash report, I see where it's coming from, but still unsure why it's happening.

JeffB - January 28, 2008 3:48 PM

FYI, suddenly, this is no longer crashing. No clue why? (But I have to admit I'm happy about it!)

Franck Guadagnini - January 28, 2008 12:18 PM

Jesse,

I’ve noticed the same typo twice in the Preferences of the last version (51) : in the Editing options, you’ve written "capitlaize".

Otherwise, this version is very slow on my old powerbokk G4 12" 1 Ghz (which I may soon replace by a brand new macbook air ! Just wait to be able to see and play with it here in Paris, I think I won’t resit…) : if I type quite fast, I have to wait for the cursor to catch me…

Plus, I’m often obliged to force quit the app, which refuse to quit even after I’ve closed the last window.

On the positive side, I like very much the new auto-capitalize feature.

jesse - January 29, 2008 7:23 AM

Fixed the spelling error. And thanks for reporting the other errors. At this point I'm still just "playing" with the leopard version while most of my focus is on TaskPaper 1.1. Once that gets out I'll start to focus hard on stabilizing the next version of WriteRoom and making sure that it's fast.

Jonas Beckman - February 9, 2008 5:27 PM

Hi!

Here is a small bug-report for Leopard-Test version:

Disabling "Enabled auto-capitalize "i" in new documents" doesn't seem to work. I tried with brand new documents after re-starting WriteRoom.

For some non-English languages this is very annoying. In Swedish, for instance, "i" means the same as English "in" - and it's never capitalized in the middle of a sentence.

English: "This is in the middle of the sentence."
Swedish: "Detta är mitt i meningen."

Apart from this minor blemish, I really enjoy writing in WriteRoom. I bought it a few days ago and look forward to see it develop.

jesse - February 12, 2008 7:34 AM

Thanks, I've fixed for the next release. I think you might be able to work around the problem in a specific document by manually unchecking:

Edit > Substitutions > Capitalize i's

Jonas Beckman - February 14, 2008 4:01 PM

Hi! Good to hear that you've found a solution. And yes, you can work around it that way in a specific document. Thanks! I'll do that until the next version.

Markus Danielsson - February 15, 2008 3:24 AM

I managed to circumvent the auto-capitalising using that method, but when I relaunched the document today I still get capitalised Is, despite it being unchecked both in the main preferences and in the document settings themselves.

Maybe 10.5.2 broke something? :p

Just a heads up.

Also, was auto-updating broken in v50? Because I checked for updates and nothing showed up, and I think I downloaded v51 from the same link in this thread. Maybe you could dedicate a thread to just posting the updates? Or have a page with links to all released so far so one gets an idea of how progress is going?

Jonas Beckman - February 14, 2008 4:06 PM

BTW - another bug report. I fairly often crash when quitting the app from full-screen mode. This happens on a Santa Rosa Macbook Pro (I haven't tried on any other Mac yet).

If anyone else is seeing this, I'll be happy to see if I can reproduce it more consistently. I see no obvious pattern so far.

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