Friends, congratulations to everyone on the coming of spring!
On this occasion we have a great gift for everyone - a new version of Story Architect 0.7.7 improved and supplemented!
We are in the Windows app store!
First of all, I would like to share the happy news - STARC is now available for installation directly from the Windows app store!
It's official!
No more questions about the application being dangerous to install on your computer, or similar remarks from your computer's security system.
The installation link is here. Also, there you can and should leave reviews and share your impressions on the application.
Cloud service improvements
In the new version, we found and fixed a couple of rather critical issues of real-time synchronization.
One of them concerned a case when a user was connected to a cloud project and for a long time during a working session, did not add text, but just watched the co-author adding it. :) After that, when he/she started adding text, the changes were not shown to the co-authors on the other side of the screen. This problem has now been fixed.
Another improvement concerned synchronization of changes after a connection to the cloud service was broken and work continued in offline mode. When the connection was restored, changes could be sent to the server in the wrong order, which led to the problem of text unsynchronization for a while until the whole document was synchronized. This issue has been fixed as well.
Please try out the updated version. Team experience will now be much more reliable.
Improved application factory reset
Another important thing that has been improved in the current version of the app is the factory reset.
Previously, resetting the settings deleted all information related to the application's operation. For example, the list of recent projects, user session, etc. This led to the erroneous impression that all projects were deleted along with the factory reset (but this is not true, just the list of paths to recent projects was deleted).
Now the reset is performed exactly for settings, i.e. for all parameters that are set on the application settings page. Additional information will not be reset.
Import improvements
The new version includes major improvements to the import capabilities.
The most significant of them is the ability to import several files at once.
Now, when importing, you can select all the documents you need to import, choose in what form you want to import them and voilà - all of them are already loaded into the project and are at your fingertips.
What's more:
- the ability to import text documents from PDF and DOCX files has been added
- import from PDF now supports underlined and strike through formats
- improved import of scripts from DOCX in some cases
- added import of text documents and folders from KIT Scenarist projects
Other improvements
But that's not all! :)
Some improvements and fixes that are not included in any of the sections above, but are also intended to make the application even more convenient and stable:
- display of subscriptions/available discounts in personal account is improved
- the context menu of documents in the project navigator is improved
- the option to show/hide drafts is removed, because in some cases it led to confusion. Now, if a document has drafts, their list is always shown
- the current draft that is being worked with is automatically selected at export request
- display of drop-down lists when working with a script is improved, now they will not go beyond the right border of the screen
- an option to correct double capitalization is added, now this setting can be disabled
- an option to display page number on the first page is added (this option can be enabled in the parameters of the template used to display the text)
- interaction with the event date in the timeline module is improved (now there is no need to enter the time, you can just enter the date)
- a ban on editing documents that are in the bin is added
- a problem with updating project information on the screen with the list of projects is fixed
- an application crash when adding connections in relationship/location/world map and mind maps is fixed
- a problem with moving characters and locations to the end of the list is fixed
- a problem with copying beats in the screenplay outline/novel plan is fixed
- a problem with pasting text into the novel plan editor from the clipboard is fixed
- a problem with text formatting on page breaks during exporting is fixed
- a problem with exporting remarks in PDF format for Hebrew and Arabic is fixed
- a problem with the width of the editor text box, when the option to display scenery is disabled, is fixed in some cases
- a problem with exiting full-screen mode in Linux family operating systems is fixed.
Why did it take so long?
In a nutshell, we experimented a lot after the New Year....
We started working on showrunner tools. Gradually, an understanding of how all these tools could be built into the application took shape. We even made a statistics module for the show. But, so far, all of this is still pretty raw to be publicly released, so we decided to include them in the next update.
We've also started working on a new presentation module that will allow you to upload PDF files with presentations to your projects, so you can store even more useful information along with your projects.
I hope the next update won't take too long and we'll hear from you again very soon, friends!
Have fun creating!
P.S. And also we finally have an answer to the most frequently asked question for the last six months (it sounds like this: what about the iOS version?) - the first version is ready! All March we'll be testing it and publishing it in the app store. And, if everything goes according to plan, the app will be available for download and installation within 1,5-2 weeks!