Great video and really great introduction to the application. There are a couple of things I would like to say, though. The "sharing site" that you mentioned is actually a developer platform where (mostly) free software developers create, store, manage and share their code. The unknown source alert is a Windows/Antivirus issue which falsely flags things which it "thinks" is dangerous. For posterity sake, this is usually a false positive because FOSS code are usually very safe, infact more safe than usual proprietary ones. FOSS software which are usually developed by single or very few developers share their application on Github. They do not have large company funding their applications. So please do not think the application is not safe to use, it is just the issue of how Windows handles these. Your other user experience issues are very genuine. The installation process can be streamlined especially for the windows OS because users there are more accustomed to click and install things.
Thank you for this video. I am running the software on Linux and have had much fewer issues with stability and installation. You did a wonderful job of going over all the facets that an author would find useful.
Thanks for taking the time to do such a thorough review. I have known about Manuskript for a while and I learnt some new things through watching your clip. I'm sorry you had running issues in Windows - I've found that some other Linux-generated software has similar behaviour - DarkTable (RAW editing for images), so it could be something that might not be resolved for some time. I note that it's almost a year since you released this clip, and given this particular software is still in development, perhaps some new features have been added and some issue overcome. My biggest reservation about using it is that if I am including physical features for my characters - height, weight, age, etc., - then I need to create new headings for each in the relevant page, which can get tedious. I'd much prefer it if creating a feature was immediately included in the relevant page for all other characters.
From my Linux Mint laptop I used the flatpak option, as Linux's installations wouldn't let me run it. Initially opening the program today was very confusing, as it's not very intuitive-looking. But it's going to be quite a learning curve before even writing. I might try Bisibisco, too. Thanks for this initial tutorial anyway, Enia.
Thanks for review. Looks like a very good feature-filled software, but I am wary of it for the negatives you pointed out because those would definitely frustrate me. I'll keep an eye on it and hopefully they will fix those issues in the future.
First of all: Thank you for the overview, you gave me some good inspiration how to use this software. It's a pity that it doesn't seem to run flawlessly on windows. I run it on Debian Linux, installed it via the package manager and until now I had no problems what so ever.
Hi enia, I had difficulty with Manuskript as well. The current version online is 0.15 and it did not work for me at all in Windows 10 Home. I tried compatibility mode for various earlier versions of Windows without success. I eventually had success with version 0.11 which I had to obtain via the Wayback Machine. However, I think this presented a difficulty which the average person would not really want to bother with. I did a little looking and it is possible in the settings for the software (version 0.11 from 2022) to command the program to save frequently, every five minutes for example. Thank you for taking time to review Manuskript as it was definitely helpful information. I might tinker with it a bit and then contact the authors to let them know I ran into a bug in version 0.15.
Thank you for this 😀. I'll try out the frequent saving thing too. As of right now, I'm keeping Manuskript in mind because I like the layout quite a bit but wait if it gets better with the next few versions. 👍
I have had the same experience, now in August of 2024. I installed the Flatpak on OpenSUSE. While I wanted to give this software a go, owing to its feature set, I have found it ludicrously unstable. It crashes on me every few minutes.
Now, this is version 0.16.1 - In software development terms, that means this particular piece of software has not reached stability yet, otherwise it'd already reached version 1.0 or above. But for all I care, I have installed the latest git version on my Linux Fedora station, added a custom launcher and everything works just fine.
I installed this right in my Linux distro's package manager as a Flatpack... this is one of many cases for why I simply refuse to waste my or anyone else's time on Windows these days.
Thanks for the review. I suspect this program runs more comfortably on Linux than on Windows. I have it running on Linux without issue and chose it because I was looking for an alternative to Scrivener. I can get Scrivener running in Linux but only through Wine. Manuskript is Scrivener-ish.
Your problems may have been because of an issue where Linux and MacOS use / and Windows uses \ in the directory structure formats. That is supposed to be fixed in the latest update, .16.1.
Great video and really great introduction to the application. There are a couple of things I would like to say, though. The "sharing site" that you mentioned is actually a developer platform where (mostly) free software developers create, store, manage and share their code. The unknown source alert is a Windows/Antivirus issue which falsely flags things which it "thinks" is dangerous. For posterity sake, this is usually a false positive because FOSS code are usually very safe, infact more safe than usual proprietary ones. FOSS software which are usually developed by single or very few developers share their application on Github. They do not have large company funding their applications. So please do not think the application is not safe to use, it is just the issue of how Windows handles these. Your other user experience issues are very genuine.
The installation process can be streamlined especially for the windows OS because users there are more accustomed to click and install things.
Thank you for this explanation :) I hope it's okay that I pin your comment, so this part is visible for others too.
@@eniawrites Sure, No problem. Looking forward to your other instructional videos. Great work.
Thank you for this video. I am running the software on Linux and have had much fewer issues with stability and installation. You did a wonderful job of going over all the facets that an author would find useful.
Thanks for taking the time to do such a thorough review. I have known about Manuskript for a while and I learnt some new things through watching your clip. I'm sorry you had running issues in Windows - I've found that some other Linux-generated software has similar behaviour - DarkTable (RAW editing for images), so it could be something that might not be resolved for some time. I note that it's almost a year since you released this clip, and given this particular software is still in development, perhaps some new features have been added and some issue overcome. My biggest reservation about using it is that if I am including physical features for my characters - height, weight, age, etc., - then I need to create new headings for each in the relevant page, which can get tedious. I'd much prefer it if creating a feature was immediately included in the relevant page for all other characters.
From my Linux Mint laptop I used the flatpak option, as Linux's installations wouldn't let me run it. Initially opening the program today was very confusing, as it's not very intuitive-looking. But it's going to be quite a learning curve before even writing. I might try Bisibisco, too. Thanks for this initial tutorial anyway, Enia.
Thanks for review. Looks like a very good feature-filled software, but I am wary of it for the negatives you pointed out because those would definitely frustrate me. I'll keep an eye on it and hopefully they will fix those issues in the future.
Thank you, same. I'll add a comment or the like if I figure out what the issues were or if it got fixed 👍😁
First of all: Thank you for the overview, you gave me some good inspiration how to use this software.
It's a pity that it doesn't seem to run flawlessly on windows.
I run it on Debian Linux, installed it via the package manager and until now I had no problems what so ever.
Hi enia, I had difficulty with Manuskript as well. The current version online is 0.15 and it did not work for me at all in Windows 10 Home. I tried compatibility mode for various earlier versions of Windows without success. I eventually had success with version 0.11 which I had to obtain via the Wayback Machine. However, I think this presented a difficulty which the average person would not really want to bother with. I did a little looking and it is possible in the settings for the software (version 0.11 from 2022) to command the program to save frequently, every five minutes for example. Thank you for taking time to review Manuskript as it was definitely helpful information. I might tinker with it a bit and then contact the authors to let them know I ran into a bug in version 0.15.
Thank you for this 😀. I'll try out the frequent saving thing too. As of right now, I'm keeping Manuskript in mind because I like the layout quite a bit but wait if it gets better with the next few versions. 👍
I'm on linux xfce. I use the sofware downloaded on he website. The version is 0.15 and it work very well. I make a backup everyime I use he software.
Thank you for a very in depth review, it's very interesting and very useful. What would you recommend instead of Manuskript then? Preferably free?
Unfortunately, though it has a nice layout, it crashes each time I try to use it on Linux.
Which platform are you using? And which version did you test?
I have had the same experience, now in August of 2024. I installed the Flatpak on OpenSUSE. While I wanted to give this software a go, owing to its feature set, I have found it ludicrously unstable. It crashes on me every few minutes.
Now, this is version 0.16.1 - In software development terms, that means this particular piece of software has not reached stability yet, otherwise it'd already reached version 1.0 or above. But for all I care, I have installed the latest git version on my Linux Fedora station, added a custom launcher and everything works just fine.
I installed this right in my Linux distro's package manager as a Flatpack... this is one of many cases for why I simply refuse to waste my or anyone else's time on Windows these days.
Thanks for the review. I suspect this program runs more comfortably on Linux than on Windows. I have it running on Linux without issue and chose it because I was looking for an alternative to Scrivener. I can get Scrivener running in Linux but only through Wine. Manuskript is Scrivener-ish.
One question which might be seem weird but I have to ask: are you an INTP?
It looks like the last update was in 2017 (On the about it says 2015-2020) so it looks like it was abandoned.
Your problems may have been because of an issue where Linux and MacOS use / and Windows uses \ in the directory structure formats. That is supposed to be fixed in the latest update, .16.1.