Scrivener writing app – Install the beta in Ubuntu [.deb]

By , Published November 29, 2010

Until recently, unless you used a Mac, the popular writing application Scrivener was an app that passed most people by.

In the last few months things have been changing on that front with the launch of a native Windows beta in October which has finally  helped broaden the market for the tool. Better yet this version runs under Wine on Linux – after a bit of cajoling (see here for the how-to on that).

But there’s an even easier solution already available – an unofficial Linux version.

What is Scrivener?

Scrivener is a word processing app designed for writers with a unqiue interface and tool set focused on ‘generating content’ rather than simply allowing for content to be written.

Scrivener isn’t meant to replace OpenOffice Writer for dedicated word processing needs but rather for help in ‘structuring and writing those difficult first drafts of long texts such as novels, scripts and thesis’.

The application is not open-source or free software. Despite this Scrivener is in Beta is free to use with no limitations during its beta phase however each beta is ‘timebombed’ to expire at a given date. The usual cost of a Scrivener license is $45/£31.

Download

Over on the Literature & Latte message boards – the official support hub for Scrivener – a hardy bunch of folks have packaged up an unofficial version for Linux users which doesn’t require wine.

The latest .deb version is scrivener-beta_1.3beta5_i386.deb. (66MB)

32bit users will need to install both libaspell and libaspell-dev packages before attempting to install the .deb. 64bit users will find things are less straight-forward entirely so may wish to refer to this neat post by David L. Day for an easy ‘how to’.

Related posts:

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  2. Marave – Distraction free writing in Linux
  3. Install Picasa 3.5 In Linux
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  • http://technos.wordpress.com/ Daniele80

    What about the license? Is it free software?

    • Anonymous

      “The application is not open-source or free software. Despite this Scrivener is in Beta is free to use with no limitations during its beta phase however each beta is ‘timebombed’ to expire at a given date. The usual cost of a Scrivener license is $45/£31.”

  • http://petercast.net Peterson Silva

    This might be cool, although for thesis and stuff nothing beats LaTeX.

    • https://launchpad.net/~cscarney ~cscarney

      Scrivener does some useful things for long-form writers that LaTeX doesn’t — non-linear editing, organizing notes, cataloging source material, per-section version control, etc. Plus Scrivener (unlike LaTeX) is actually an *editor*, which is important to a lot of writers for whom having to *program* their documents is a bit of a distraction.

      The closest open-source analogue is probably StoryBook (which has similar features but a different workflow tailored specifically to novel writers).

      • http://petercast.net Peterson Silva

        non-linear editing: what exactly is this?
        organizing notes: lines starting with % + ctrl+f does the job pretty well.
        cataloging [sic] source material: hmm sorry didn’t get that. If you mean bibliography, bibtex is there.
        per-section version control: command include + git

        And programming the documents is exactly the contrary of distraction; LaTeX lets you focus on the content. By using abntex and bibtex I saved a lot of time with the proper formatting of my college work. And trust me, as I saw my father struggling with page numbering, footnotes and references in both Word and OpenOffice last year, I know for sure I saved quite a lot of time.

        • https://launchpad.net/~cscarney ~cscarney

          What I meant by non-linear editing is that every fragment of the document is a separate entity, which can be edited in isolation, moved around, reparented, linked, or excluded from the final document. It’s useful if you need to experiment with your document structure, create abridged versions for space-limited publications, try out alternate versions of sections, and so on.

          You could achieve something similar in LaTeX by having every paragraph in a separate .tex file and stringing them all together with include commands, but that would quickly become impractical. Scrivener does the work of organizing all of the document fragments to make this kind of workflow feasible.

          (programming analogy: Scrivener is to LaTeX as Eclipse is to C++)

          • http://petercast.net Peterson Silva

            I really don’t understand what’s so impractical about the include command, specially because people don’t usually change the order of _paragraphs_ so much so that you´d need a .tex per paragraph.You can have one section / chapter / part in each .tex file, which would not be impractical and still very useful.

            Moreover, tex files can be edited anywhere, even with notepad. I don’t know what kind of files scrivener produces, but even if it is odt (or, ugh, doc) openoffice doesn’t have the tools scrivener offers, so you’re kind of locked in to the app for _production_, not only for the final processing.

            Finally, I don’t know whether or not Scrivener produces beautifully typographed documents (including hyphenation), but being a WYSIWYG I’d be surprised if it did. i guess it’s pretty good to get started without too much effort, but I wouldn’t rely on it for thr real thing.

            So I don’t know if the analogy is good, but I always had the feeling that if I was a programmer, I’d use vim all the way ;)

          • http://twitter.com/matthew542 Mike Wagner

            Just because you can’t think of a situation that requires it does not mean that the situation does not exist.
            Comics, screenplays, and other forms can involve constant repositioning of scenes and assets.
            Once you’re at a revision you like you output the format you need.
            You might as well be arguing that all programmers should work in ASM because it outputs machine code.

          • http://petercast.net Peterson Silva

            @Mike

            Read my first comment (the one which originated the discussion).

          • http://www.futureisfiction.com/blog daretoeatapeach

            We’re not just talking about switching around a paragraph here or there, but whole scenes or even chapters. Of course you can cut and paste in any editor, but having the pieces pre-defined is very helpful.

            Keep in mind with college work you’re looking at editing no more than 20 pages, so finding and moving is simple. Say you have 150 single-space typed pages of novel and you want to take two scenes and combine them and add them to a separate scene. Going back and forth between these three scenes can be very intimidating when they’re many pages apart. Really the only practical way to do it is cut the scenes into a new document–but then you don’t have your entire novel in one place, which can be problematic.
            I was previously working in Open Office, and I had an outline but that doesn’t match up with actual pages (because page numbers are always changing). The bookmarks feature there is somewhat buggy and limited.
            Basically in Scrivener your outline IS your novel, so when you chance the outline you change the novel and vice-versa. That saves time and keeps you organized. It also makes it really obvious which sections are still short. You can add tags and you can create collections of scenes, so you can read through the progress of one aspect of the story (e.g. a recurring symbol, a plotline, a character) all at once without having to run complicated searches or copy the scenes into a new document just to read it.
            Maybe Latex can do all this?

          • http://petercast.net Peterson Silva

            @daretoeatapeach:disqus Yeah, it can, using comments =) and although using a very simple editor won’t make it as faster, using a more full-featured one, such as vim, will.

            Besides, I know what I’m talking about because I do just that. I’m working on a book right now, and I’ve written a 250+ pages book (www.m10livro.com.br) using the system, so… ;)

  • Anonymous

    This application looks AMAZING, but if it’s not free, then I will thumb my nose at it, or some more modern equivalent to the anachronistic turn of phrase :)

  • Anonymous

    Ok, I gave it a really, REALLY quick test. It’s pretty buggy, so I warn you. Getting anywhere takes a while because the menus are in violent disagreement with gnome-panel. Also, clicking on anything will give you something other than what you wanted. To use the application in its present form, you’ll have to train yourself to constantly click below what you want to get anywhere at all.

  • Dragonbite

    This is awesome. Not the product, but that a pay-for application is available for Linux.

    What would be idea is if it becomes available through the Ubuntu Software Store as a pay-for product. It could be one of the early adopters and be able to harness the possibilities.

  • http://nilsgeylen.com/blog Nils Geylen

    I just might give #Scrivener for Ubuntu Beta when it’s less buggy, for now I’m very happy with #FocusWriter which *is* free and open-source.

  • http://www.bodhost.co.uk/dedicated-servers-hosting.shtml UKDedicatedServers

    I must say open source has alot to do and Ubuntu has downloads on daily basis so more application at requirement.

  • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

    Get this into the software store.
    The good thing about getting products for content creators into the store is that content creators generally have a lot of twitter followers and people reading their blogs.
    Getting those kind of people talking about Ubuntu would be a good thing.

  • https://launchpad.net/~david4dev david4dev

    ”
    Scrivener is a word processing app designed for writers with a unqiue interface and tool set focused on ‘generating content’ rather than simply allowing for content to be written.

    Scrivener isn’t meant to replace OpenOffice Writer for dedicated word processing needs but rather for help in ‘structuring and writing those difficult first drafts of long texts such as novels, scripts and thesis’.
    ”

    Isn’t that what LyX (FOSS) has been doing for years? Or am I missing the point?

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QGUOKPDPIPMOPJK7RCCXIALHRI Ene Dene

      LyX is fantastic program, I’m surprised that more people aren’t using it. No word, openoffice document can come even close to elegance of documents made in LyX.

      • Anonymous

        Never heard of LyX.

        Just looked it up and it just looks like a word/excel processor, or am i missing the point?

        • Anonymous

          I’ve covered Lyx in depth on my site tux-crazy(dot)com so you’re most welcome there.

        • https://launchpad.net/~david4dev david4dev

          The main advantage of LyX is you don’t have to manually format everything like you do in WYSIWYG word processing programs. It allows you to focus on content and meaning. It uses LaTeX and but doesn’t require you to learn LaTeX code. My favourite feature is the equation editor – if you are a scientist or mathematician, you will truly appreciate the how easy it is to create equations compared with Libre/Open Office or Word.

      • http://twitter.com/matthew542 Mike Wagner

        LyX-Outline is pretty cool too. Takes LyX closer to Scrivener.

  • http://www.google.com/profiles/118301780118481730450 eyerouge

    What a joke… Use celtx instead…

    • raducu

      I was with scrivener for linux from the first day, I contributed on his forum thread with solutions for debian/amd64 users, but I must admit I still use only celtx (the good old 1.0 version) for novel writing. scrivener has some nice features, but is on his early development. Anyway, I’m happy that this native linux version exists :)

    • http://benevolence9.wordpress.com/ Chu

      XD Good for screenwriting, but not for novels.

  • Anonymous

    any chance someone can re-up the .deb please?

  • Anonymous

    The link for scrivener-beta is down; I am the packager for scrivener-beta, and… over-usage of my public dropbox caused them to disable the service! Will fix soon!

  • https://launchpad.net/~cabrey Craig Cabrey

    How is this being accomplished? If Scrivener is closed-source, then how is it being compiled for Ubuntu? Am I missing something here?

    • http://twitter.com/gregbair Greg Bair

      I’m oversimplifying, but all a .deb is is a gzipped archive of files. So, all it does is tell dpkg (the package installer) where to put the files inside. So whether it’s open-source or not doesn’t matter.

  • http://hadret.com/ Hadret

    Lame. Vim FTW!

  • http://benevolence9.wordpress.com/ Chu

    Being a fan of Ubuntu for these few years I can say but one thing — IT’S ABOUT TIME! T__T (Yeah, I’m a writer)

    I still wish there was an opensource alternative though…

  • Anonymous

    I installed the deb version in Ubuntu 10.04 but on trying to use it was told that the version had expired and a new version was aavilable. Unfortunately the “New Version” is an exe file only usable in Windows. MichaelIan

  • Anonymous

    I installed the deb Beta in Ubuntu 10.04. On accessing the program I was told that the version had expired and a new one was available. The “New Version” is in the form of an exe file only suitable for Windows. michaelian

 
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