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Old 10-01-2012, 10:18 PM   #250
Hitch
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Metal Mick View Post
Hi Toxo,

re the info on MN, and other bits and pieces: you're welcome. Like you I thought MN offers a lot of things. It still does, but support from the developer isn't one of them. With a little effort it could be an excellent product, perhaps even best-of-breed.

All I can say about the LSB offer is that it is an out-and-out bargain. I'm now at 75k words in LSB, and it has never crashed - something MN was exceptionally prone to. LSB remains a delight to use and offers some terrific tools for the emerging writer.

Regarding Softmaker Office, I tried it once a good few years ago now, and thought it was okay. I am still looking for something that handles numbered and bulleted lists the way my much-loved Lotus WordPro did, and at the time I think SO was some way behind even OO (now Libre Office). That may no longer be the case. And so far as I can determine, there is still nothing for long documents that approaches WordPro.

Many thanks, Toxo for posting your thoughts and information. I appreciate it very much.

Cheers,
You really still like LSB? Wow, I honestly thought when I got to the end of this thread, your experience would be like mine--when it comes to LSB, I thought it was all hat and no cattle. I mean, yeah, it's flashy-looking, but the only thing about it that I ended up liking was the character generator, which was handy for characters that would wander in and out of scenes, if you didn't want to expend a lot of energy on them.

I spent the time and learned it; even contributed articles to the LSB wiki; but at the end of the day, it's easier to use Word, and its fabulous outlining and document mapping, over LSB. LSB makes things, in my opinion, horribly over-complex. I mean, what's the usefulness of a colored background (whoop) and a timeline that, unlike YWriter, doesn't even show you one character compared to another? The MindMap is hopelessly primitive, compared to something as simple as FreeMind (free). I found both the "Sequences" and the "Storyboard" not only useless, but gigantic timewasters. The builder? Meh. Still waiting to see for what possible use that would ever be better than a OneNote entry. The Story Outline was useful--but not better than Word, or FreeMind, for that matter.

I was actually shocked when I realized that I couldn't write (for example) five chapters, then put them into the Storyboard, move them around, and output the result. No, neither Storyboard nor Sequences works that way--it only allows you to reorder things that aren't WRITTEN yet. (Hunh?). Once they're written, you have to drag and drop them around in a Planner or a Builder. What's the POINT of having Storyboarding or Sequencing, then? And the idea that the sequencer is "different" than Storyboarding because the latter is for the whole book and Sequencing is for a scene...man, talk about PADDING. And it plays music? Equally big whoop. (I mean, who does not have desktop music these days?) "Journals," for your characters to write in? Character Dossiers, okay...I can see people using that, but again, if you have OneNote, why? The Gallery? Why, again? I'd bet that 99% of the people on MR know how to make directories and sub-dirs (oh, wait...folders), so why not just make a dir, stick a sub-dir in there for images...why go through all the brain-damage of putting images, that you already have on your computer, IN LSB? Honestly--and I mean that, I'm not being snarky--I just don't GET it.

I don't care that much about blowing the $40 or $45 or whatever it was, but I was irked at the giant waste of time. I recently used it--or tried to use it, like a dolt--for a series of short KB articles I was doing for our clientele (ebooking 101, that sort of short piece). I tried to output the RTF, which one would think would be simple, and the thing crashed. I was so frustrated I had a shrieking fit over at their forums. If you can't write a simple thousand or so words in 5 "chapters' and be able to put it together, then, as far as I'm concerned, it's a total waste of time and effort. I think, if someone needs software, just to "get in the zone," they should use YWriter, which still has more oomph than LSB and works GREAT.

People say that LSB "is complex," and I couldn't disagree more. I think it's incredibly simple--it's a front-end for a db with some text files attached. The problem is not that it does too much; it's that it doesn't. I think it's the kind of program that is perfect for "fritterers," people who love to be distracted by bright shiny things, but, hell, I loathe it. Every time I think about using it, I can feel my head getting tight. You must be a visual kind of person, Metal Mick; I'm not.

Sorry, don't mean to spew--but as as far as I am concerned, it is definitely lots of flash, lots of distractions, and very little productivity in the way of actual tools. Just my $.02. I have never tried Scrivener, but I understand that it, too, has this "all in one place" mindset, which I suppose I can see as useful. I don't know how (and I have four monitors) anyone can get anything done with LSB, myself. At the end of the day, you're putting chapters in RTF files. You can do the same thing in Word, use the document mapping and master document feature, and have fewer problems (don't even get me started about how much cleanup I had to DO on that RTF when I cut-and-pasted it into Word because I couldn't export it, due to the crashes). I'm glad it's working for you, but, MAN, that has not been my experience, and I've had it for two years.

Hitch
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