Feature requests for iPad version of Storyist

[verxion]

First off, I would like to say just how incredibly happy I am to have found Storyist for the iPad. This is truly a dream come true for me!

 

A few things have struck me though in my use of the app, and I suspect that many of them would be simple to fix. It is possible that there are ways to accomplish what I'm wanting that I haven't been able to find. Here goes:

 

1. Story sheets should have the attached photo on the icon so you have that visual cue before opening the sheet.

2. Outline view is very buggy when it comes to moving sections around. I seem to be able to move sections to a preceding position (say from chapter 2 to chapter 1), but moving down simply doesn't work at all.

3. Editing the notecards in the sidebar allows me to delete them, but I have not found any way to reorder them there. (The only place I've been able to reliably reorder the notecards is in the full screen notecard view.)

4. I'm not clear on what the # symbol is for when I add a new section, and while the chapter text does link up between the notecard and the text in the document, I haven't yet found a way to do the same thing for section titles. This would be nice...

 

Thanks again for an AWESOME app. I'm just hoping to make the experience even better.

 

-Joe

[marguerite]

Hi, Joe, and welcome to the forums!

I can answer part of 4. The # on a line by itself says to Storyist's machine brain, "New section here!" That's it. It's useful to add one at the end of the last section in a chapter, just to keep the program from getting confused if you reorder, but Storyist is so smart nowadays that it generally adds the # if you move that last section to a new place.

 

I have not experienced the problem you report with moving sections up and down. Does it affect only the index card display? Are you tapping the grabber graphic each time?

All best,

Marguerite

[verxion]

You can easily replicate the issue I describe by doing the following on your iPad:

 

1. Make a new project

2. Choose blank

3. Open the new blank project

4. Tap the plus button and choose new "Text File"

5. Choose Novel template

6. Tap on Novel to open it

7. Turn iPad sideways (Landscape mode)

8. Pin the outline sidebar

9. Add a new section using the + button

10. Tap the edit button

11. Tap on the word "Section"

12. Add a space and a 2 on the end of the section name

13. Tap the done button

14. Tap the plus button and add a new chapter

15. Add a new section by tapping the plus button again and choosing "add section"

16. Tap on the edit button

17. Drag the section from chapter 2 to be in between "Section 1" and "Section 2"

18. Try to drag ANY of the three sections to be within chapter 2 - it cannot be done

 

I've verified this issue on an iPad mini, an iPad 3, and an iPad 4

[verxion]

Can anyone else at least confirm they get the same situation?

[briandee]

I can confirm this. In Outline view it is not possible to drag a section down between chapters in the way that Verxon describes. However, I did notice that it only happens when you try to drag the section down to the last chapter in the list. So, if you create 3 chapters and then drag that section down to the second chapter it will work. But if you try to drag it to the third chapter, it won't. Does that make sense?

 

Creating another chapter below that is one workaround. The other is to move the sections around in index card view.

 

Brian

[Steve]

Hi verxion and briandee,

 

Thanks for the report and the detailed steps. I'm able to reproduce it here. As Brian mentioned, this does appear to be related to the fact that Chapter 2 is the last chapter, and you can work around the issue by creating a chapter following Chapter 2. You could also cut and paste the section where you want it to go or switch to the index card view and drag the card to the desired location.

 

I'll try to fix this for the next release.

 

-Steve

[verxion]

Thank you all for the information. I have been able to confirm the workaround, but I still look forward to the update. I suspect that for people new to the app this likely does not give the best impression.

 

Fortunately for me, I saw enough gold in the app to know better than to delete it!