Thank you for the kind words!
4,570 karma · joined August 28, 2011
More about me at http://milen.me/
- I believe in a strong, centralised product vision and execution - The code will be packaged up and sold by unscrupulous people who will not contribute back
I’m a strong advocate of interoperability and open data formats. The Monodraw data format is not proprietary and I do have plans for a plain text format (currently, it’s just zipped JSON which doesn’t play nice with VCS).
Interoperability is key to competition and avoiding lock-in, so I’ll push in that direction as my time permits.
I haven’t updated the official website (priorities and lack of free time).
I’ve pushed out some updates after the maintenance mode announcement but the frequency is not guaranteed since my free time is extremely limited.
I’m still committed to fixing any breakages due to OS upgrades and ensuring the product continues to work.
While I have some new features in the pipeline, I cannot commit to any timelines as I don’t know when I will ship them.
I want to thank everyone who’s supported the product throughout the years, it means a lot to me.
Happy to answer any further questions.
Thank you all for the kind words regarding the app.
Unfortunately, my time is extremely limited which is why I haven’t had the chance to push more updates out.
I’ve got a few highly requested features in the works but I cannot promise when they’ll see the light of day (I usually get to make progress during my holidays).
I’m still committed to fixing any breakages due to OS upgrades and ensuring the product continues to work.
I've been told it was used for wire-framing and mind-mapping which I never envisioned!
So, I'll try to get to it eventually but no promises on timeline.
In fact, it's technically impossible to recover all the information that was originally present in the Monodraw document because the conversion to text is inherently lossy. Now, you can probably try to use some heuristics to recover as much information as possible (e.g., detect boxes, arrows). That would certainly work in many simple cases where there's no overlapping shapes.
Having said that, I've got other, higher priority updates planned in the pipeline before I can even consider whether to tackle this problem.
Full disclosure: I'm the developer of Monodraw. If you have any questions, happy to answer here.
It currently runs on macOS.
[1] https://developers.facebook.com/docs/camera-effects/tutorial...
[1] https://monodraw.helftone.com
[2] https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-snippets-update-sneak-pee...
[3] https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-snippets-update-released/
I wrote about the MAS exodus [1] more than a year ago and people were skeptical back then. Think again - here's a list of great apps [3] that are only available outside the MAS. Those are not just small time hobbyist apps - those are professional tools.
Pieter (founder of Bohemian, company behind Sketch) listed many problems with the MAS at a recent conference [5]. Wil Shipley (well-known within the community) has also written about it [6].
And now you have another flagship OS X app ditching the MAS due to the multitude problems it creates. The message is loud and clear - if you're a real software business, not a hobbyist at home, don't waste your time with the MAS - it simply does not allow you to run your busienss properly.
When the companies building the flagship apps for the platform publicly state they cannot do business due to the restrictions of the Mac App Store and then abandon the dysfunctional virtual marketplace, then you know Apple have pushed them beyond the edge. No company would just decide to leave the MAS unless the situation is hurting them significantly and holding them back. And unfortunately, there are almost no words to describe how bad the MAS has been for the ecosystem and innovation on the platform. [2]
You also get ridiculous stuff like Intuit because of the limitations [4].
Even if Apple fixes the Mac App Store one day, which is highly unlikely given that in 5 years they have done absolutely nothing, developers have been burned once and will be skeptical. You know, the whole "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me".
When people say that everything is fine and dandy with the MAS, they seem to be misguided - no one is asking Apple to make everyone a millionare. Developers are asking for Apple not to force simplistic business models and allow companies to have the ability to choose what works for them.
I used to be hopeful for years but no more. I have zero faith that Apple will listen to indies and solve their problem, they've got no leverage. And that's a real pity. Instead of pairing high quality hardware with high quality software, we have a platform encouraging predatory tactics and milking of customers. A truly sad situation. And that's a real shame because the platform I love and have invested a decade in deserves better. It might even be too late - the damage to developers has been enormous.
[1] http://blog.helftone.com/mac-app-store-the-subtle-exodus/
[2] http://mjtsai.com/blog/2015/11/12/no-one-minding-the-store/
[3] http://dancounsell.typed.com/articles/not-on-the-mac-app-sto...
[4] http://mjtsai.com/blog/2015/11/24/quicken-2015-switches-from...
[5] https://twitter.com/tmaes/status/657213874970763267
[6] https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/669321851793879040
This means the app is not portable as it is right now. But with the recent announcement from Microsoft about their support for Obj-C, this might be something that could happen in the future (MS does not yet support AppKit).
(Monodraw developer)
Regarding pricing: I wish we could price it much lower but the reality is that this tool is extremely niche. We've also put a _huge_ amount of work into it and I hope it shows in the amount of polish (although there are many more things we would like to improve and add but we had to call v1 at some point). If we ever stand a chance to continue making the best software we can, we have to price it in such a way that will allow us to do that. Note that we might still fail and not achieve a sustainable level but if we priced it at, say, $30 or $20 then we would definitely not be able to continue making the apps we want.
Regarding 10.9+ requirement: we do depend on the improvements in AppKit in 10.9 regarding layer-backed views and hence the requirement.
Hope that clarifies both issues.
It was a very simple decision for me - putting any kind of activation etc would just annoy the real customers. Whoever wants to pirate the app will do so regardless of any other protection mechanisms.
(Monodraw developer)
That's exactly how it works! Select any number of shapes, hit Cmd-C and it will copy them to the clipboard. You can even set a preference to include a comment tag when copying to the clipboard.
> And another quick thought. I haven't looked closely at your save format, but it'd be great if one could also have periodic autosave to *.txt or even autosave after every change.
As a standard OS X document app, it autosaves are regular intervals that are determined by the OS (in particular, every time you leave the app, as well).
I think it should be entirely possible. Different parts of your novel can just be different shapes and you can arrange them on the infinite canvas as you wish.
In addition, Monodraw now supports embedding of pictures on the canvas, so you should be able to have additional visual cues.
Feel free to get in touch if you have any specific use cases in mind - always happy to hear more from our users.
Thanks!
I'm a supporter of all platforms but I do not have any cross-platform desktop GUI skills.
Thank you for your kind words :) I think the business model has been inspired from the indie scene over the years. Simply put, I do not want to charge customers before the product is of quality that I deem adequate. That's why the beta is freely available without any restrictions. If anyone feels generous enough to support us before v1 ships, they get 40% off in return.
Yes, I plan to provide ample warning over email, Twitter + our blog.
> I'm not 100% sure I'll really get regular use out of it, but I'm tempted to buy a copy anyway, mainly because I think you deserve reward for the effort that's obviously gone into it.
I greatly appreciate the support. Even if you don't purchase it, knowing that you like the app is enough to motivate me to further work on it. From a financial perspective, every purchase counts - as an indie, my livelihood depends on the apps I make, I don't have any other income.
> If I could wish for anything it would be this: is it even remotely possible for shapes from a plain text file to be interpreted as monodraw objects, rather than just one big text field?
That has been requested a few times and it's something that I'm considering. It's not very high on my list but if I receive enough requests for it, I'll bump up it. I don't have a roadmap that is set in stone and I'm pretty flexible when it comes to the development of Monodraw - I'm willing to listen to the users.
Regarding animations, everything can be turned off (some people love them, others hate them). Check out the options in the Prefs window (Monodraw > Preferences from the menu bar).