Tagamac

Mariner Software in conjunction with Return Self Software have officially announced that Avenir 2.3, Tagamac’s choice for writing software, will be rebranded in January 2008 as StoryMill 3.0. StoryMill will cost $44.95 (or $49.95 for a boxed version), and will be available to current registered Avenir users for a $15 upgrade fee. Although Mariner Software is taking over distribution and QA for StoryMill, Todd Ransom, the original Avenir developer, will be retaining creative control over the program. Todd expects to release a StoryMill beta shortly.

StoryMill 3.0 is definitely a piece of software to keep an eye on, as besides being a complete rebranding with Mariner’s greater resources at its disposal, it is also a large update to Avenir in its own right and will include the hotly anticipated (at least by me and other Avenir forums lurkers) timelines feature, along with a number of others.

Although I personally find Avenir more to my taste (if only for its superior tagging and amazing annotations), Scrivener’s open-ended index-card way of working has made it something of a celebrity among writing applications. Tagging may take a back seat in Scrivener, but it’s certainly available once you’ve gotten over the initial mind-boggling deluge of features, and now Scrivener has received a fairly major update to version 1.1. I’d try to summarize the changes, but frankly I can’t. The release notes list 261 feature changes, bug fixes, and so forth. The change newbies to Scrivener (or those who tried it in the past and want another shot) will find most interesting is that the trial has not only been reset (so that you can try it again if you tried it in the past), but now it gives you 30 non-consecutive days to try the program (only counting days when you launch it).

Scrivener 1.1 is available from the Scrivener website or through the in-program auto-update and is an update well worth downloading.

Avenir, Tagamac’s choice for writing software, has been updated to 2.3.7. This point release fixes a bug with annotations and brings full support for Leopard. Leopard introduced a bug in how Avenir dealt with tags that prevented projects with tags in them from opening, which has fortunately been fixed.

Although the update is not currently showing up in the program’s auto-update, if you’re running Leopard you should grab it from the Avenir forums.

Hot on the heels of the recent 2.2 update is Notae 2.2.1. This minor update addresses a small number of bugs that made it through into 2.2. For more information, see the 2.2.1 blog announcement.

The developer also wants to reinstate support for French and German localizations, and is looking for someone fluent in English and French or German who would be willing to translate the dozen or so strings that have been added since the program was last localized. If you are interested, feel free to jump over to the Code Poetry website and contact him.

VoodooPad, everyone’s favorite wiki-style idea repository, has been updated to version 3.2.2. This minor update is mainly made up of bug fixes for all three flavors of VoodooPad (lite, standard, and pro) without adding any new features. The update is available through VoodooPad’s in-program auto-updating, or you can always download the most recent copy from the website if for some reason you don’t like Sparkle.

For more information, please see the VoodooPad release notes.

Notae, the completely tag-based digital notebook, has been updated to version 2.2. New features in this version include the ability to set certain notes as templates to later insert them into other notes via contextual menu, more robust contextual menus, the ability to auto-save documents when they close, and partial tag name matching in the search field when searching either all fields or tags. Numerous bug fixes are included, as well.

Although it is not perfect for every situation, Notae is one of my favorite applications for collecting large quantities of notes (I use it to track the tagging software over on the software page, among other things) and its tagging implementation is one of the best you’ll find in Mac software. If you’re looking for a simple application to gather your random snippets of text in, definitely give Notae a look. For more information about the 2.2 release, see the changelog or the 2.2 release announcement.

Although it isn’t strictly a tagging app, VoodooPad has been updated to version 3.2.1. VoodooPad is a Wiki-style notepad that recently began offering tag-style categories as one of its side features. This update includes a large number of bug fixes and feature improvements. Most notably from my point of view is new support for linking to email messages via MailTags’ message:// protocol.

Even if it isn’t very strong on tagging, VoodooPad is still one of my favorite applications for brainstorming and idea generation, and is definitely worth checking out if you haven’t previously. For more information about the 3.2.1 release, see the release notes.

Avenir, Tagamac’s choice for fiction-writing tools, has been updated to 1.3.6. This minor update includes Growl notifications for .Mac backups and autosaves along with a smattering of behavior changes and bug fixes. You can download the update either within your current version of Avenir 2.3.x or by visiting the Avenir site.

For a full list of changes, see the 2.3.6 beta 1 and beta 2 posts.