In general I like the app a lot - the design is great and the workflow is awesome. But I also think that the release is a little premature. For instance the Markdown syntax is implemented in a very special way. With the easiness of creating links by typing [] the whole system of reference links seems to be impossible. There is also no preference where you can change this behavior.
I did also not find any way to integrate with Marked - if I need to export something the Marked app is not shown as an export possibility and if I draw the document directly to the Marked app I get an error message. Not too happy as this are both main pillars of my workflow and I am not sure if the money is well spend until this is fixed (at least for me)....
There's an update to Marked waiting for approval which will make it show up in the send to menu. I'm not sure yet that it will be fully integrated with that version, but it will happen soon if it isn't.
I agree that the workflow handicaps certain aspects of Markdown you may be used to. It's not technically a pure Markdown editor the way that MultiMarkdown composer is. In order to create a new kind of editor, they took some liberties that I think are justified. The Markdown output of a Ulysses document is easy to process through various means.
That`s great to know, let's hope that the seven dwarfs in the App-Store will work quickly on that.
I think that Ulysses gets a huge amount right but outside of the editor niggles discussed here earlier I have a fundamental disconnect with storing my data within the ~/Library/Containers/ file structure, especially considering those files are given unintelligible file names. I certainly don't subscribe to the UX theory that files & folder structures need to be reinvented because they are in some way outdated. The Scrivener way of handeling the same functionality as Ulysses is so much more flexible, open & portable - each .scriv project file being a bundle of all the projects support files be they .txt, .rtf, .pdf etc.
And whilst I get your point that Soulmen are attempting to create a new kind of editor, my final criticism of Ulysses is that in trying to make Markdown more usable for non "text-geeks" they've attempted to reinvent a wheel that didn't need reinventing. For me, the whole raison d'être for using Markdown plain text files is data portability that survives roundtrip editing across multiple platforms/editing environments. Their combination of stripping back existing Markdown sytax whilst adding new bespoke syntax that's only supported by Ulysses goes completely against the use cases that drove John Gruber to create Markdown in the first place. Why they don't use Open Meta for the tagging capabilities is beyond me and the notes could could easily delivered via the same wiki style techniques that are used in nvALT. With these simple changes Ulysses would be a far more open system for those that want to integrate with their existing data via Dropbox.
Even with all these current V1 bugbears, I can see Ulysses becoming central to my writing workflows (especially writing intended for the web) but I believe it has a long way to go yet and suffers as so many apps do these days with an element of over hyping.
I'm loving Ulysses III. It is just beautiful in concept and execution. I have been searching for a good plain text writing environment, and this is it. The previous Ulysses was good, especially in its early years, but I'm in love with Ulysses III.
Scrivener is also very good for writing, but I'm just more comfortable with plain text, and a spartan, low maintenance UI. Working with seperate documents in the Finder is a hassle too, and causes me to lose focus; it is just high maintenance.
I wish Ulysses III had native Fountain support, but Markdown will do for now -- and will use Find & Replace to clean it up.
Do you know if the native file forma ist plain text...some kind of "super Markdown" - or is it binary?
Having purchased it I must admit it does feel very much like a V1 product that's strongly inspired by Scrivener (although some may say that Ulysses provided many of the design cues for Scrivener in the first place). The thing that I'm most nervous about is committing to iCoud as a storage platform given all the well documented problems of iCloud synchronisation. This nervousness is multiplied by the lack of data portability with the core Ulysses data storage scheme. You can of course set up Ulysses to work with Dropbox but it loses some of the core features that make the app attractive in the first place. The reality is that whilst the iCloud workflow is smooth and 'frictionless', the Dropbox workflow feels clunky in comparison.
I'm glad I purchased Ulysses especially considering it's current reduced price but think it's a little way off being ready for prime time usage. In many ways Ulysses has only made me longing for better plain text/Markdown support in Scrivener (which to my mind, remains a far superior application for writing long-form documents).
On a positive note the manner in which the edit window formats Markdown for readability is the best implementation of this kind of auto-formatting functionality I've yet come across. This is especially useful if your Markdown documents contain lots of links be they inline or reference links. Plus as Brett highlighted the interface is incredibly elegant and offers lots of powerful options without extra clutter.
My one bugbear with the Markdown readability rendering engine is that the preview HUD doesn't preview images that are hosted outside Ulysses (this is especially irritating for notes that started life as captured web pages or if you use cloud based services to host all your Markdown note images as I do). Even more irritating is that the auto-formatting tag placeholder doesn't allow you to display the images alt text so all you see is a pink IMG tag. The only other minor bugbear I came across in the editing window is that it doesn't allow for strongly emphasised text (***Something I personally use quite a lot***) These small niggles are the only real negatives of working within the edit window and I'm sure it's something that will be adressed in a future update.
One (minor) note is that the problems with iCloud sync are only around Core Data sync. Document sync works swimmingly in pretty much all cases.
Now, issues around syncing outside the Apple ecosystem (like in, say, a web browser) are still very relevant, but the documents should be there in all your Apple devices.
I understand the difference between the different core sync flavours and listened in to recent debug podcast with Brett Simmons, Justin Williams & Daniel Pascoe as it's a subject that I'm closely following. Unfortunately I've already suffered data loss whilst experimenting with the Ulysses sync capabilities across both Dropbox & iCloud. Luckily my data was backed up via the rollback facility in Dropbox.
I bought Ulysses II on your recommendation but found it hard to use, especially when exporting and printing. While waiting for III, I bought Scrivener, which I like a lot. I'm curious about Ulysses III but I wonder if it does much that I can't do with Scrivener? Is there a comparison somewhere?
Thanks so much for all your recommendations, reviews, &c.
Remarkbox