[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Metal Mick

I don't know why. You know nothing about me or what I'm actually using it for. And as you'll read, I'm unsure if you have any real knowledge of LSB.

Whoa! My post wasn't aimed at you, at all! Why did you take it that way? I said what I meant--I was really surprised when I got to the end of the thread, because you said you'd tried LSB, and I thought, when I got to the end, that your experience would be like mine--that's all I said.

They don't seem to be on the wiki anymore, so I can't assess the worth of them as an LSB user.

That was maintained by a woman...I can't recall her name (Roweena, Weena...something like that, on her site)...but I built the directory page, and contributed a number of articles. I did spend a lot of time with LSB, and I'm a fairly experienced software user on many levels, from old DB apps to Unix to writing my own website to using a fair number of SAAS apps to run my business. I'm not the steely-eyed-missile-man coder that a ton of MR members are, but I'm not a squishy end user, either.

I actually use the Timeline, but can't fathom what you mean by this comment. I placed characters on the y-axis, time on the x-axis and had text where there were intersections. Y-axis and x-axis remain visible at all times; scrolling up sees some names disappear, but the order can be changed. So too, the labels on the x-axis to reflect more time-critical events.

I'll even go back and look at it, but when I used it--which I admit, was more than 2 years ago, it was fairly non-functional. I think--and I freely state that the last time I looked at this was back then--you had to create it manually, whereas in Ywriter, it worked from the scenes you'd already built. I don't know if this is still accurate vis-a-vis LSB.

The mindmap is a weak part of the application. It is very problematic to use.

I'm glad we can agree on something! ;-)

This is wrong. I just tried it on my novel. It would seem your two years of ownership was ill-spent. I'd suggest that you are probably better off with Word, yWrite, OneNote, Freemind, and any other application you fancy, then the LSB mailing list will have to face one less person having a "shrieking fit" when he finds he can't do something.

You've conflated different things. I initially was talking about being able to move existing, typed chapters within the Storyboards or sequences and output the revised order (my "shriek" was something else altogether). Now, I specifically asked the developer about this when I first obtained LSB, and he said it couldn't be done. The discussion is on the Yahoo list, feel free to check. If he's changed it since then, good for him (I told him then that it should work that way, IMHO). But once the chapters were created, and populated with RTF files, 2 years ago, it could not be done. You could move chapters with headers only around, and then output THAT to a builder, and then you could "marry" existing chapters to a Builder (by copy & pasting them), but you could not, then, re-sequence an already typed story using a Storyboard.

What I "shrieked" about was that I attempted to do naught more than output 5 lousy "chapters" (honestly--not even 2K words, IIRC) from LSB into a single RTF file to bring into Publisher to make a handout for our clients. It crashed. I'm pretty sure it wasn't anything I did--seriously.

Firstly, I am not a "fritterer", and I'm not certain what is meant by a "visual kind of person". I'd rather you didn't form judgments on me based on what software I use. I've striven for objectivity in this and other parts of MR and keep an open mind.

Did I say you were? I did not. I said, in my opinion, LSB appeals to fritterers, in a general way. If I'd known you were going to take every single thing I said personally, I wouldn't have bothered to post, but my understanding of the thread was that people were interested in takes on different writing software. My experience with LSB was, has been, and remains, very annoying. And what do you mean, what do I mean about "a visual kind of person?" Hell, I think that's fairly straightforward. There are some people in the world who "think" mostly in images, in pictures. Filmmakers tend to be that type of person. Others think primarily in words--I'm that kind of person. I can easily see where LSB, with its "prettiness," and the galleries, storyboards with images, sequences (ditto), and everything else that uses pictures, can appeal to a visual kind of person. That's ALL I meant. In hindsight, I can see that addressing the post to you created some type of perceived personal attack that was not meant. I already know that people get upset when something they've chosen isn't liked by someone else, so I guess I should have addressed the post generally. (I once received a blistering email from a woman who was mad that I'd reviewed "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" as being much ado about nothing. {shrug}).

LSB creates and stores the chapters in rtf. I still have not had a crash. Nor have I seen a need to export from LSB into RTF. I just open the file...

Yes, I know...but I created several chapters. In order to "build" the manuscript, into a single book you have to, well, "build" it. It crashed. {More shrugging}. Of course, someone had to instantly insist that I "must have" typed the material in Word (the ubiquitous villain of the piece) and pasted it into LSB, which was absolutely not what I'd done. I'd typed the whole thing in LSB. (Nor do I understand that--why type something in Word and then paste it INTO your "writing program?" Don't get that perspective, either.)

I remain unconvinced that this statement is true.

Yes, thank you, you've made that abundantly clear.

You don't like LSB, that's fine. I do. you and your monitors have a good day now.

Ditto. As I said, had I known this would turn into such a conflagration, I shouldn't have bothered to post. I think that people should hear about both good AND bad experiences with software (and other things). Again, sorry that it seems to have gotten up your nose; it wasn't my intent--I was genuinely surprised.

In my experience, YWriter does almost everything that LSB does, if not more. I've been more productive using YWriter with Freemind and a directory full of images, or Word with Freemind and a directory full of images, than I have with LSB. LSB is very, very pretty. It certainly attempts to address a beginning point for EVERY type of writer--plotters, panters, novelists, screenwriters, etc. (I believe that the screenwriting aspect is the original concept behind the software--if you stand back and look at it, it's definitely oriented in that direction.) IN MY OPINION, which has nothing whatsoever to do with anyone here, it spends more time looking pretty than it does being very efficient. If one is a visual type of person, I think it can be very appealing, and, if you use many visual cues while writing, you may LOVE IT. If, like me, you are more "think in words and outlines," and a plotter, and don't use a lot of visual stimuli in writing, it may NOT appeal to you.

There? OK? Hopefully you can relax now.

Hitch