Installing yWriter 8

[Gale Francis]

I've installed the software and I've installed .NET-5 but the yWriter 8 does not locate the NET. I've tried this several times starting from scratch. Help.

Thanks, Gale

[Simon Haynes]

yWriter 8 now uses dotnet 6 instead of 5.

Cheers

Simon

On Mon, 2 May 2022 at 04:22, Gale Francis <gaelg...@gmail.com> wrote:

I've installed the software and I've installed .NET-5 but the yWriter 8 does not locate the NET. I've tried this several times starting from scratch. Help.

Thanks, Gale

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[Todd Carnes]

I didn't realize that yWriter 8 was even a thing.

Now I have something new to check out. :)

Are there any significant differences from version 7?

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ywriter/CAN0R%3DkQXhdC%2BZyQAb6q212xNdYH_we3wgM5_MbYrAoiyxvbS1w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Simon Haynes]

Alas no. All versions of ywriter (5, 6, 7 and 8) use the same codebase, they're just compiled against different versions of dotnet.

5 and 6 are for XP and Vista respectively, 7 is the one to use, and 8 is just a test compiled against the very latest runtimes.

Oh and Microsoft removed speech from dotnet 5 and 6, hoping to charge people for their online service instead, so yWriter 8 doesn't have that.

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[Noodles]

Hello,
I installed yWriter 8. Unfortunately it is not possible to start the program. I keep getting the same error message even though I have Net 6 or 7 installed. If it helps, I'm using Windows 11 Pro

[Todd Carnes]

This is provided by Microsoft for .Net 6. Will it not work for your
purposes?

https://www.nuget.org/packages/System.Speech/

Todd

[Todd Carnes]

It seems to still be under active development. A preview of version
7.0.0 was released 18 days ago.

[William Walls]

So, is yW8 not yet viable, then?

[Simon Haynes]

There is absolutely no point installing or using yWriter8, unless you want to see if Dotnet 6 is installed and working on your machine.

The description on the yWriter8 page is pretty clear:

The forthcoming yWriter8 doesn't mean yWriter7 will suddenly become obsolete. On the contrary, yWriter8 is exactly the same as version 7, except it's built with dotnet 6.

Right now it's just a preview release, to ensure nothing is broken. I know the text-to-speech isn't working, because during the conversion I discovered that dotnet 6 had no speech engine.

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[Simon Haynes]

Re the speech in dotnet 5/6, as I've mentioned before MS has moved to nickle-and-dime developers by charging them fractions of a penny per every word that users listen to.  Obviously this isn't going to fly, so no text to speech in yWriter from dotnet 5 and up.

[Slery]

Have you looked into the espeak engine? I personally like it, but most people don't. 

Cindy 

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[William Walls]

Pretty clear to a developer, maybe, and I understand that a lot of people on this forum are. I'm not, although I do have a tech background so I'm not without some ability to troubleshoot basic issues. But the issue I'm having is that the yW8 installer says that .Net 6 isn't installed on my system (when it is). I'm then prompted as to whether I'd like to download the .Net 6 files, and when I click 'Yes,' nothing happens. The installer gives me neither yW8 nor .Net 6. I had to find the .Net 6 runtime on my own and download it from MS. I've installed .Net 6 runtime several times now and the .Net 6 installer reports that the installation is successful, but no amount of successful installations (according to the .Net 6 installer) seems to satisfy the yW8 installer.

I love yWriter and have used it for nearly 15 years now. I wasn't being snarky with my question (at least, not on purpose), and I don't think my question was out of line. If the purpose of offering yW8 is to see if .Net 6 is installed on one's system, then it doesn't seem to work for that purpose. Please don't shoot the messenger.

[Peter T.]

Just for completeness: For OpenOffice and LibreOffice there is a "Read Text" extension that is supposed to work under several operating systems. Under Windows it can use the operating system's own reader (which might depend on the presence of a dotnet 4.x version, who knows). 

So if you use yWriter 8 together with OpenOffice/LibreOffice, there's still an option to have your text read aloud. 

Whatever the case, I myself see no reason to switch from yWriter 7 to yWriter 8 at the moment.

[Peter T.]

I actually tried yWriter 8 a while back as well. Although I can't remember the details, I have to agree that it wasn't easy with the dotnet 5 or 6 installation. At the time, I blamed it on the fact that a somewhat outdated Windows 10 version was running in a VM for the test, but I'm not sure. After some fiddling it finally worked, but I gave up on it anyway.

[Slery]

I personally use NVDA since I am legally blind. Narrator just got braille and it is still pretty crappy compared to other screen readers.

Cindy 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ywriter/7d9cd497-1deb-4036-8b1d-40fbab74dee8n%40googlegroups.com.

[Simon Haynes]

I avoid all third-party libraries in my software, always.  They inevitably go out of date, or fail to work with older versions of my software - some of which goes back 23 years now.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ywriter/181fd23ae58.2842.f0bd2674ee4d4c5be431136f0087cc7b%40gmail.com.

[Simon Haynes]

Sorry, that wasn't my intention.  I put yWriter 8 up purely as a testing exercise and it was never for general use, so I get distracted by people asking for help with something which isn't really meant to be used.

Originally yWriter8 was dotnet 5, but then Microsoft ditched that and replaced it with dotnet 6, and clearly there's something not being detected. You can definitely download the runtime from their site, but honestly, I need everyone to use yWriter 5 through 7. (7 for anyone not using Vista or before.)

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ywriter/8927d469-b3c9-4452-b032-8f987ba3eab2n%40googlegroups.com.

[William Walls]

Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification.

William Walls

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[Kevin Wolfe]

Hey Simon,

This post about using yWriter 5 through 7 is only a month old, but your spacejock.com site seems to recommend downloading version 8, which I just did.  I was looking into loading .net6, as spacejock.com  recommends, when I found this post.  Wondering if I should back out and go with version 7, but guessing version 8 is now a 'go' as your website notes, and that this is now an 'old' post.

Thanks in advance for any direction.

Cheers

[Kevin Wolfe]

Skip my last message Simon.  I read the full post, which I should have done first, and it seems I'll go with version 8 of yWriter and .net6.  Congrats on getting V8 out.

Cheers

On Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 9:12:04 PM UTC-5 Simon Haynes wrote:

[Simon Haynes]

yWriter 7 is the latest.  yWriter is an outdated test version.

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[Kevin Wolfe]

Thanks for this post Simon!  I'd downloaded ywriter8 but couldn't get it to run.  I was lead to it by Googling 'how do i load ywriter', which brings you right to downloading version 8.  Thanks to this post I uninstalled ywriter8, found and loaded ywriter7, and it took right off.  Thanks again.

BTW - I fibbed earlier.  I volunteer for a company that helps the elderly called Elder Network.  The person I'm trying to help here is a former IT guy himself (UI), as am I (SAP), that wants to get into writing books (competition?:) ).  He has RA, hence my voice recognition questions.  For him, and myself, THANK YOU for providing this application.  I'll fire up this app for him tomorrow; I hope that he loves it.  In the meantime, I plan on checking out one of your books now that I know what a helpful guy you are.

Thanks again!

Sincerely, Kevin Wolfe

[Simon Haynes]

Thanks for the follow-up.

The reason I created yWriter 8 was because Microsoft released dotnet 5, and as usual I released a version compiled against these new libraries. Then MS ditched dotnet 5 and released dotnet 6 to replace it, but at the same time they've been working on a new 'universal' UI called Maui.

Dotnet 5 and 6 - naturally - will drop support for older operating systems, just as Dotnet 4.8 doesn't run on Vista. I expect Windows 7 will be next to go, then Windows 8. This is the reason yWriter 5 and 6 exist - to support older hardware.

I've already thrown out the old Android yWriter and have been tinkering in Maui to create a cross-platform version that will run unmodified on Windows and Android. It would run on Mac and IOS as well, but my expensive Mac Mini is now a boat anchor as Apple has decided it's too old to run their XCode programming language, and it's not worth me paying for another one. (Mac and IOS users are a tiny percentage of the overall.)

Maui is still very new, though, and it lacks a lot of the features I need. It looks like it was designed for TVs, Tablets and Phones, rather than desktop use, and since yWriter will always be primarily desktop-focused there's zero point me converting the whole program at this stage. Just hundreds of hours of work for little reason.

We'll see what the future brings, but for now I've been working on my own listview controls (as seen in the new yWriter7 Beta - I think) which allow full colour customisation.  If not yWriter7 beta, they can certainly be seen and tested in yPlay2, my MP3 player, which has the same theme engine as  yWriter.

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