The final beta of PageFour prior to the release of version 1.6 has just been made available. Download instructions can be found on the beta page.
Apologies for the delay - I’m aware that this version is a little behind schedule. Having implemented the new Smart Quotes feature last week, everything looked to be in order and I was ready to release on Thursday. Final testing however, turned up a major problem - none of the smart quotes were printing correctly. This issue took a little while to solve, and involved some major reworking of the printing mechanism. So if anyone encounters new or strange behaviour when printing, please drop me an email.
Not that you will, of course! It’s all working perfectly.
The changes in this release are cosmetic, and mostly linked to the PageFour working environment. A new page of options has been added to the Options dialog, accessible from the Tools menu, and a new menu option appears on the View menu.
- 1. Smart Quotes.
When you launch PageFour for the first time, smart quotes will be switched off. To turn them on, open the Options dialog, click on the new ‘Word Processor’ page, and check the box marked “Use smart quotes (curly quotes).” Whether you decide to do this or not is very much a personal decision, but it can be switched on or off at any time.
This will NOT change the quotes on your existing Pages, but it will allow you to carry on working from that point on with whichever type of quotes you choose.
2. Page Margins
The left and right page margins within the word processor have up to now been set to a standard and unchangeable 20 pixels. The new options allow you to change these settings, and may prove popular with users working on wide screens. Simply enter the pixel width that best suits you and the screen you work with.
3. Background Colour
The background colour of the word processor is now fully customisable. This change ONLY affects the word processor - all other PageFour windows will continue to display the old background colours.
4. URL detection
URLs have always appeared as standard blue links in PageFour. Clicking on these links does what most people expect - it attempts to open the link in your default web browser. Switching off the “Launch web browser when URLs clicked” checkbox causes all links to be treated as plain text.
5. All On /All Off
When working on laptops or PCs with small monitors, screen space is often limited. The new option on the View menu, marked All Off or All On allows you to switch all unnecessary PageFour features off and on again very quickly. This affects the toolbar, Notebook lists and status bar. A shortcut key combination of Ctrl+O has the same effect.
As mentioned in the previous post, implementing correct handling for en and em dashes was beyond the scope of this release. However, a mechanism HAS been put in place to ‘convert’ standard dash combinations to en and em dashes when saving to a file outside PageFour. This feature is a stop-gap measure until dashes are fully handled in a future release.
Anyone interested in using this feature should contact me directly for details, as it will not form a ‘standard’ part of version 1.6, and will not appear in the PageFour help file.
Version 1.6 will be released as soon as the help file has been updated and any remaining bugs ironed out. Please let me know of any problems or issues with the beta version, so they can be addressed quickly.
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:18 pm
I tried to download the beta just now, and the download link gave me version 1.54 instead. Is there a problem with the file on the server?
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:20 pm
You need to refresh (F5) your beta page. The page has just been updated, so the previous page was probably still in your web cache.
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Hmm…weird. The beta page *said* I was downloading v1.55, as did the file link, but what I got back was 1.54. I tried it again with IE instead of Firefox, and all seems good now.
Sometimes I really hate computers.
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:46 pm
It’s funny, because as I looked at the beta version, I convinced myself I wouldn’t need the search across folders/pages option. An hour later, when I had to find a keyword somewhere in my pages, the epiphany occurred.
The tool gets better and better. Thanks for making the updated version…
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:11 am
Glad you like the new search Dan. To my mind, it’s by far the most useful feature in this release - with 17 Notebooks and who knows how many folders and Pages, I’d be lost without it.
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:01 am
I found out about PageFour purely by accident. I found out about GiveAwayoftheDay and a day later PageFour was offered. Hands down, this is the best offering they have had. In fact, it is the only I have bothered to download.
Given the use I have invested in the tool and how well it works for me, I’m thinking of chipping in and supporting the product with a purchase. It’s a great little tool…
Dan
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:42 am
Since you’re talking about new features, is there a way or will there be a way to view non-printing characters? Mostly I like being able to see whether or not I’ve accidentally hit the space bar too many times while waiting for the right words to come.
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:26 am
A follow-up comment, now that I’ve gotten the beta installed: The ability to change the word processor’s background color is lovely, but can we have an option to change the foreground color that’s displayed also? Even though I obviously want my novel to print black-on-white, the Word Perfect for DOS-style white-on-blue screen is much easier on my eyes. Is this doable?
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:01 am
Hi Magess - Non printing characters eh? I’m assuming you mean a quick method of identifying more than one space. Not at the moment I’m afraid - it’s an unusual enough feature that I’d be a little unsure where to put it in PageFour. Still, I’ll make a note and see if it comes up again.
The foreground colour, Tammy, is not as straight forward as the background - sorry to say. At the moment that’s pretty much down to the font colour, which you probably don’t want to change if printing or saving to external files are involved. I’ll have a think on it - as all these things ARE possible - but it won’t make it into this upcoming release.
I completely agree with Dan’s last comment though. A purchase sounds like a wonderful idea!
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Unusual? It’s the thing that puts black dots in for spaces and paragraph symbols at the ends of paragaphs… arrows for tabs.
I have a few other feature requests too, if you’re collecting them.
I’d like to have a page count somewhere. This seems like something that should exist and I’m just missing. But the status bar on the bottom tells me how many pages are in my notebook, and gives me some cryptic numbers that change as I type. Characters per paragraph? When what I’m interested in is how many pages it will be when printed. The only way I could figure to find out was to actually try printing it. Maybe it could be a stat that shows up alongside the word count?
And I’d like to see a new kind of page to add to a notebook, a checklist page. Right now, I have my outline, which is mostly just a series of paragraphs, and as I cover things, I highlight the text and apply strikethrough. I think it’d be much easier if I had a page with actual check boxes that I could click which would either apply strikethrough or alter the text color or something. It’s amazingly satisfying to mark something off the list, and I think it would be great if I could simulate what I do on paper on the screen.
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:34 pm
I’m with you now Magess. Whenever I saw that in MS Word, I always assumed I’d done something wrong, and promptly closed and reopened. Shows how much I know.
The page count has been requested before, and probably will appear in a future release. On the surface, it sounds very simple, but it does start getting complicated when you take the Print Templates into account. For each template (single/double line spacing, different fonts) the page count would be different. But yes, this will be looked into in the future.
The checklist page sounds interesting, but I’m not convinced. The single most important element in the PageFour design, right from day 1, was to keep it simple, and avoid adding feature after feature. So far, all features in PageFour are specific to creative writers, and though a checklist would be desirable for some people, to my mind, it doesn’t really fit with the product. But of course, I’m always ready to be swayed by public opinion.
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Hey Darren - great changes!! LOVE the All On/Off feature. Even on my desktop, it forces me to concentrate on the work, not on clicking around other notebooks *g*.
Also like that you made the SQs an option to be turned on, rather than off.
Looking forward to 1.6
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:47 pm
I agree with Darren. Please keep the tool as simple as possible. There’s so many task list managers out there, freeware and commercial, to replicate that here would be a bit redundant. One of the biggest value propositions to PageFour is how lightweight it is.
I keep a task list as a page under a Planning folder. I bullet out the tasks and when I need to specifically schedule work to be done, use my PDA (or Outlook)…
I find it’s even more fun to delete the tasks I complete. I take a Snapshot each day so that I can always look back on progress.
Clouding the vision of the tool is risky - you can wind up alienating everyone. Those folks who want a writing tool and those who want a planning tool. In the end, neither party gets the depth of tool they really desire. Jack of all trades, so-to-speak.
* Dan steps down from his soapbox *
Cheers!
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:09 pm
I can see not wanting to crowd the program with unrelated items. I just don’t see how hitting particular plot points or details or bits of dialog is unrelated to something I’m writing.
Granted, I never used to write with any sort of outline or guide. For some reason what I’ve been doing recently has seemed to call for knowing where the story was going before it got there. And it seems to help motivation-wise. Push through the parts I don’t necessarily like to get them crossed off because what matters in the rough draft is getting to the end.
It’s up to you, obviously, I was just thinking that a page designed to do that sort of thing would be a little neater than setting the text to strikethrough as I got things done.
Cool about the page numbers. I’ve heard that pagination is a real pain to manage. Like Word is -terrible- at it. While there are some Mac programs (Mellel) that seem to accomplish page count reflows like magic. There must be a secret. Not that I know what it would be. *G*
May 24th, 2007 at 12:32 am
Ok Darren - I’m in! I am officially a customer. Just purchased a few minutes ago. A confident purchase as well - no buyer’s remorse on this one…
May 24th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Welcome to the club Dan. Of course, you do realise that now you’ve paid money, I’ll stop talking to you and completely ignore you? It’s in the sales manual - all the big software companies do it.
The On/Off switch was created on a whim, Teresa. Like you, I often find myself getting distracted when I should be working.
May 24th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Ugh… Unintended consequences. I thought that manual was only the stuff of myths and legends.
Ok, I guess I’ll just have to call the entry-level support call center. I just hope the hold music is entertaining. *grins*
-dan
May 24th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Hi Darren, thanks for your hard work on the betas. Did you happen to look into the password verification we talked about where you could see what password you input so initial errors could be minimized if it was typed incorrectly? Thanks, Robert M.
May 24th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Hi Darren, thanks for adding the All On/Off thingy. I have yet to download the beta and install but I think that is a great idea.
I look forward to using it when I’m on a smaller screen instead of my desktop monitor.
Still, please remember to think about offering the option of being able to switch the List pane from the left to the right side. Maybe not such a big deal for others but to have the option of being able to decide which side to put it on would be nice.
Certainly not a deal breaker for me since I am already a paying customer and sing your praises and PageFour wherever I go. But for some reason, my eye keeps wanting to look to the right (maybe because of so much time with Outlook and the reading pane?) for the List Pane.
Keep up the good work!
May 24th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Robert, the initial password entry system hasn’t been changed for this version I’m afraid. Not to say it won’t come, but I’m waiting to see if any more people have issues with it first.
The whole left/right orientation thing has come up a few times Aaron. That must likely WILL appear in a future version - again, not this release, as I’ve drawn a line under 1.6 as far as new features go.