What yWriter Desktop features do you want added to yWriter Android?

[yWriter Mobile App Support]

Hi yWriter beta testers,

I'm taking a look at what important features from yWriter for desktop should be added to the mobile app next. I've recently added character goals and scene start time/durations.

If there's any features from the desktop app that you'd really like to see added to the mobile app, now's a great time to let me know.

Thanks,

Liz

yWriter App Support

[Darthnewton]

Hello Liz,
Well I have been testing right along but been slow at posting my results
(or about to post and found you fixed what I was going to bring up lol).

Anyway, great you added the ability to delete files, however as of
v2023.17.2.172 even if you deleted an imported file the link on the main
menu remained.  The only way I found to get rid of that was to delete
all app storage in the Android settings.

I still would like another place to store the files locally instead of
the default storage.  Say a folder I made on the SDCARD or external SDcard.

Suggestion to put the RTF editor button in the three dots menu instead
of right across the top?  It would take less screen space.

The RTF editor still has a focus problem (at least as of v2023.17.2.172
) and hides the bottom text of the scene when the keyboard is
displayed.  I worked around that by adding a bunch of blank space to the
end of the scene then go into the RTF editor.

The Tutorial pops up a LOT now.  I understand when a new version is
installed, but after every file import/open?  That seems a bit much. 
Nice it is there though.

I will grab the latest one tomorrow and give it a spin.

As for what features I would like from yWriter desktop, having the
Characters, Items, Details, locations, notes accessible while in the
scene (and editable if possible) are the only features I found missing. 
Going out of the scene to look something up or edit is certainly
workable but it is much better to do it while in the scene.  But you
have added most of this already.

-DN

[Giulia Fancelli Clifford]

Hi Liz,

I sent a reply to this email a couple of days ago, but I haven't seen it appear on the screen yet. Having no way of finding out whether you received my message or not, I'm sending the message again. 

So, there are 3 features that I think would be useful from the desktop app:

1. be able to set the distance between lines and paragraphs. On the desktop app, I can set the distance between lines up to 200 (which I assume is a double-spaced paragraph), but with the mobile app, all the paragraphs are single-spaced, and it makes it quite hard to read when the story's long. 

2. be able to set the font: with the desktop app, I can choose different fonts, but the mobile app still shows the default font. It's handy to use different fonts because sometimes we get so used to what we have written that we don't see glaring mistakes, and when we change the font, the mistakes are much easier to spot. 

3. be able to export the file to HTML or RTF from the mobile app. It would make things easier when you're out and about. 

I can't remember exactly what I had written in my previous email, but these are the things that come out of the top of my head right now. If I think about anything new, I'll let you know! Thank you again for your wonderful work!

Giulia

[yWriter Mobile App Support]

Hi,

Thanks for your suggestions.

@Darth With the link being removed, are you referring to the 'Continue (project name) link? (Note: once you open a project in another location, that should be overridden.). The tutorial issue should be resolved now. Characters, Items, Details and Locations are accessible and editable while in the scene (they've now been moved to a new tab 'References'). I'm still looking into the rich text editor focus issue and opening local files in a nicer way than the 'Open With yWriter' process, that may take some time.

@Giulia You can export to RTF using the drop down menu when a project is open. In the new version you can now set font, linespace, underline and strikethrough in rich text editor. More rich text options will come as I get them working.

Liz

yWriter App Support

[Darthnewton]

Liz,
I meant the "imported project" that appears in the main menu when you
first start the app.  And if I import again, I then have two
buttons/links.  Unless I am missing something, the only way to get rid
of those is to clear all app data from Android settings.

One other suggestion, I see you added an auto save.  That is nice except
I would prefer to have a option to disable it.  For the simple reason I
am using local storage most of the time and this will save flash write
cycles if it only saves once and a while rather than all the time.  I
also find the notice it has done an autosave distracting if I am in the
middle of a scene.  If not a disable, then perhaps a configuration that
can be set.  That would work too so I could set it to an hour or more
rather than save every minute or less.  Perhaps the latest version does
this, I am one version behind I see.  I will have to grab that tomorrow
and try it.

-DN

[yWriter Mobile App Support]

@Darth Thanks for the feedback. I think for the autosave I'll give it a little loading icon that appear briefly somewhere instead of the pop-ups, and have an autosave frequency option in settings.

[Christian Bieck]

Hi Liz,

not really a feature from the Desktop app, but the biggest issue I currently have with using both mobile apps (iOS and Android) is that I can't cross-sync with my desktop devices -- I don't use Dropbox as my cloud storage, but rather Jottacloud. (I just copied my WiP to Dropbox for testing purposes, but it doesn't make sense to do any work there right now). I assume implementing something like that would be fairly complex?

Thanks

Christian

[yWriter Mobile App Support]

@Christian

More cloud options are definitely on my to-do list, but it's a complex one for sure and I'm still investigating.

The current workaround in the app would be using Open With yWriter from JottaCloud and then Save As -> Other -> JottaCloud (if JottaCloud app supports this) - but I understand this is not as smooth of a workflow as the Dropbox one.

To go into more detail, which may or may not be interesting...

The current approach means I have to write and maintain separate file handling code and authorisation code for each cloud storage option (e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive...), which is costly so if I do this I'll probably restrict it to the most popular cloud storage options (Google Drive, OneDrive, etc). Google Drive is an especially difficult one ever since they changed their API a few years ago. That's why only Dropbox is supported at the moment.

My hope is that from my investigation I can find a different solution instead that allows choosing from many cloud storage options (perhaps including less common ones) without needing to write individual file handling and authorisation code for each.

Regards,

Liz

yWriter App Support

[Christian Bieck]

Thanks, Liz. The workaround seems to work on Android, I can live with that. Thanks for your efforts.

Cheers

Christian