Sente for iPad, v1.1.0, with support for the new retina display, has just become available in the app store in the U.S. It should be available everywhere within the next few hours.
Michael
We are happy to announce that Sente for iPad v1.1.0 is now available in the app store. This update includes support for the new iPad with the retina display.
The full version of Sente for iPad was submitted at the same time, but is still awaiting review.
Michael
I wrote recently about some changes coming in Sente's support for synchronized libraries and I promised more details. Here is some additional information on what is coming.
First, some things that are not changing. Sync will continue to be cloud-based, operating on any number of copies of a library on any number of Macs and/or iPads, located anywhere on the Internet. Sync will continue to support permission restrictions on copies so you can distribute, for example, a read-only copy of a library to colleagues or students. Sync will continue to replicate everything in a library, including attachments, PDF highlighting, notes, etc.
One thing that will change is that sync will no longer use port 993, but will instead use the same port that secure HTTP uses. The transmissions will continue to be encrypted, but there should be very few cases where sync cannot get through a firewall. Sync will work wherever you can access a secure web page in your browser.
The upper limit on attachment size will also go away. You will be able to control whether very large attachments are uploaded or downloaded, but there will not be a hard limit enforced by the server.
Sync2 will also make it easier to install copies of a library on new devices. Instead of creating a synced copy on one machine and moving that copy to the second device, you will be able to install a library directly from the server on any device.
One consequence of this change is that using sync for backups becomes trivial. As long as a library has sync turned on, you can install an up-to-the-minute copy from the server anywhere at any time. Replace your computer? Install Sente and download your libraries from the sync server. Purchase a new iPad? Same thing, just install Sente and download your libraries.
Sync performance is also being improved. In our early testing, uploads and downloads happen at speeds much closer to the raw connection speed than in the current version. Uptime will also improve because we are eliminating a third party component that has caused reliability problems in the past.
When Sente 6.6 is released, previously synced libraries will continue to work, but we will be encouraging users to convert their libraries over to sync2. It will not be possible to create new synchronized libraries using the old sync technology, and some features will be disabled on old sync libraries (like the ability to create new synced copies). At some later time, Sente will no longer be able to open old synced libraries, so any old libraries will have to be converted by that time. Converting from the old sync to the new sync is simply a matter of turning off the old sync, turning new sync on, and then open the library from the server on all of your devices.
We have the new sync mechanism running here and we are refining the user interface to use this new technology. We will make a beta version of Sente 6.6 available in the next month or two so people can try it out for themselves. It is pretty slick -- we think you are going to like it. And then you will probably just forget about it, except when you wonder why all your programs don't work like this!
Michael
p.s. Sente 6.6 will, of course, be a free upgrade for everyone with a Sente 6 license.
We believe that we have fixed a problem with the sync servers that cause some users not to be able to download some attachments. If you were having this problem, you might want to read on, but no action is required; the fix was entirely at the server end.
It is worth noting that all attachments were stored fine on the server; the problem was simply getting them back from the server in all cases.
So, if you were seeing this problem, you should now be able to obtain the files by clicking on the link in the error message. If this is not the case, please open a support thread and tell us about what you are seeing.
Coming Changes to Sync
I will also take this opportunity to tell everyone that we are actively working on extensive changes to our sync server design. While we are, in general, very pleased with the way sync has been working, there are a few aspects that we have wanted to improve for a while. For example, we would like to:
- Remove the size cap on attachment size. Currently we cannot sync attachments over 20MB. This works for most attachments, but there are more and more files over this size that people want to sync.
- Switch from using port 993 to standard HTTP ports so people who are behind very restrictive firewalls can still sync.
- Improve performance and reliability. Our current sync engine relies on a third-party tool that works pretty well, but not perfectly and we wanted more control over this key part of the Sente ecosystem. The new version will be entirely under our control.
We are very pleased to announce the official release of Sente 6.5.0.
Sente 6.5 is a major update to the application, and the result of almost a year of development here at Third Street Software and months of testing by Sente users. We had several goals for this major update, including significantly improving the user experience for both new and existing customers.
Because of the extent of the user interface changes we were making in Sente 6.5, we knew that we had to be sure that existing customers, the people who depend on Sente every day, liked the changes. To achieve this goal we made a series of private previews available, and then a series of public previews, and we listened carefully to what we heard. Sente 6.5 is a much better program because so many people took the time to give us detailed feedback on these preview releases.
So, what is new in Sente 6.5? A lot. I will not be able to list all of the new features here, but here are some highlights:
- The new multiple-line reference list view is much more attractive and readable. While the old, grid view is still available, most users prefer the new view for most work.
- Single collection tabs let you open tabs containing only those references in any collection in your library, like one showing all references with a particular status.
- The completely new reference editor is more attractive and usable. It supports custom layouts based on reference type, and all layouts can be tailored to meet your specific needs.
- The new notes interface features color coding to match the highlighting you added to your PDFs, and the ability to jump from any note to its original source in the PDF.
- New window layout options let you set up each tab to make best use of your particular screen setup. You can, for example, place the reference list at the left edge of single collection tabs, making them particularly useful on a large monitor.
- Support for Full Screen Mode under Lion (OS X 10.7).
- Improved citation lookup now supports many more data sources. The new Citation Lookup sheet, which can be used either as files are being added to your library, or after the fact, makes it easy to locate the citation data for a paper using dozens of common sources.
- Scan-in-place support for Microsoft Word and Apple Pages lets you work with a formatted version of your document at all times. When you select the scan-in-place option, Sente formats any recently added citations and lets you keep right on editing without missing a beat.
- Compatibility with Word + EndNote lets you easily collaborate with colleagues who still use EndNote with Word. You will be able to edit and scan their documents, and they will be able to do the same with yours.
- Common customizations now sync between copies of your library. Items like your custom statuses, reference type definitions, custom reference attributes, web bookmarks, QuickTags, hotword definitions, reference editor configurations and more are all automatically synchronized to all other copies of a library. (These changes do not yet appear in Sente for iPad -- this is coming.)
- The new Print-to-Sente command, available in all print dialogs on your system, lets you quickly send any document as a PDF to Sente.
- There is a completely new user manual, available in both PDF and EPUB formats.
As always, there are some high-priority features or changes that did not make it into this release, like the ability to search for text within a PDF, or a command to share a reference and PDF through email. These are high on our list and should be appearing in upcoming releases in the near future.
We are also announcing a complete overhaul of our web site, designed to reflect the changes in the application itself. If you are accessing this blog post through an RSS feed, I would encourage you to visit the site to learn more about Sente 6.5.
Sente 6.5 is a free upgrade for everyone with a Sente 6 license.
Sente 6.5 requires Mac OS X 10.6 or higher. We recommend the use of 10.7.
So, please take a look at Sente 6.5 -- we think you are going to like what you see!
Michael
Sente 6.5, Preview 5 is now available for download. There are some nice new features in this preview. We are getting very close to the official release of Sente 6.5, so if you have not yet taken the time to try out the previews, this would be a great time to get started.
A New Notes Interface
The notes editor has been significantly updated. Visually, each note is now presented as a "sticky" with the same color as any related highlighting (if any). This means that if you are one of those users who use highlighting color to convey meaning about the selection, it will now be easier to spot particular kinds of notes in the note editor. And if you do not currently use highlighting color to signify anything, perhaps you will start once you use the new design!
Also, each note now has a menu of commands. This menu appears when the mouse hovers over the note. This menu of commands includes:
- Open / Close (this replaces the disclosure triangles from Sente 6.2)
- Source (to jump to the text in the PDF that was originally selected when creating the note)
- Delete
- Copy
Holding down the Option key before clicking on a command in a note changes several to apply to all notes (e.g., Open All).
Revised Add File Interface
We have made some important changes to what happens when you drop one or more files onto Sente.
In this preview, if Sente is able to locate the citation information using the first DOI in a PDF, the reference will be immediately displayed for review.
If Sente is unable to reliably identify the citation information for a PDF, you will be given the chance to retrieve the citation data using targeted browsing.
Conveniently, if you select some text in the PDF in the Citation Lookup sheet, you will immediately be presented with a list of web pages that Sente can load to help you find the correct citation. This list will contain your favorite bookmarks. Also, the list will include any autolink-based URLs that are designed to work with a text selection, rather than data in a reference. These links might, for example, perform a search on a data source using the selected text as the search string. This makes it very easy to search many literature sources.
By supporting targeted browsing in the citation lookup sheet, Sente now makes it easy to use many more data sources for citation information than were supported in version 6.2.
For more information on this new feature, please download the new version of the user manual and read the chapter on Adding PDFs and Other Files.
Scan-in-Place Support for Pages
This release also adds support for scan-in-place with Apple Pages. This new approach to the file scanning process makes it much easier to work with documents in which all the citations are in their final format. This feature is currently still in testing, so there are probably some bugs. If you write with Pages and have a few minutes to test, please send us bug reports.
Ignore Cover Page on PDFs
This is a small, but important, change. There is now a command that lets you tell Sente to ignore a cover page on a PDF. The command appears in the Edit > Attachment menu, and in the context menu when viewing a PDF. You can toggle this setting on and off on a per-PDF basis. When turned on, the first page in the PDF will not appear, and page number calculations for notes will be adjusted accordingly. Existing page numbers on notes will not be affected by toggling this setting on or off.
Downloads
Here are the download links:
and the current draft of the user manual:
If you click on the EPUB link in Safari on an iPad or iPhone, you should be given the chance to load the file into iBooks.
Feedback
As always, please provide feedback through this forum:
https://sente.tenderapp.com/discussions/sente-65-preview
If you have not yet tried any of the Sente 6.5 previews, please also read the announcements for the earlier versions on this blog. There is important information there that you will want to know before you get started.
We are pleased to announce the availability of the next public preview of Sente 6.5.
There a quite a few changes in this preview. Here are some highlights:
- There is a completely new autolink interface. This includes the way that autolink templates are managed (this is now in the Autolink Setup pane in the source list) and the way they are accessed (click on the "links" icon in the attachment view header).
- The attachment view now automatically loads one of the autolinks (as controlled in the setup pane), or the autolinks page itself, when there are no attachments on a reference.
- The attachment view header has been improved.
- The output gesture configuration has been moved into Sente Preferences. This is where you say what Sente should do when you drag a reference from the reference list, for example.
- There is a new Add Reference sheet that is used when adding references to your library (e.g., through targeted browsing, or when dropping a URL onto a library). You can edit the reference in this sheet before updating the library (e.g., you can set a status, add tags, etc.)
- There is a new Add File sheet that appears when you drop PDFs or other files onto your library. You now also have options of adding multiple files using template references (e.g., to automatically assign tags to all files in a batch).
- There is now a Create Reference from this Web Page in the context menu in Sente's web view. Sente will automatically add a web archive of the page to the new reference.
- Crossref.org is now used to lookup citation data for a DOI.
There are many more bug fixes and small improvements as well.
We are encouraging everyone to begin moving to Sente 6.5. The official release is just a few weeks away, so this is very close to the official version (although we still have one or two nice changes to roll out!).
Preview 4 can be downloaded here:
http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com/downloads/Sente-6.5-Previews/Sente65p4.zip
The current draft of the user manual can be downloaded here:
http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com/downloads/Sente-User-Manual/Sente-6.5-User-Manual-DRAFT-2011-11-20.pdf
http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com/downloads/Sente-User-Manual/Sente-6.5-User-Manual-DRAFT-2011-11-20.epub
If you are have not already tried one of the earlier preview releases of Sente 6.5, please see our blog post here:
http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com/blog/2011/10/sente-65-public-preview.html
We look forward to receiving your feedback on this new preview release.
Michael
The current versions of Sente for iPad and Sente Viewer (both are v1.0.8) are running successfully for some users on iOS 5.0 and not at all for others. We are investigating now and will submit a fix as soon as possible.
Michael
[UPDATE 17-Oct-2011: We are looking for a few people who are experiencing problems with the iOS 5 upgrade to send us the UUID of their iPads. We will send them a build for testing later today. Please do not submit your device ID unless you will be available for testing later today because we want to submit the update as soon as we think that it is working for people.]
[UPDATE 19-Oct-2011: We have submitted new versions of both iPad apps to Apple with what we believe is a fix to the crash on launch on iOS 5. Their approval process can take days to complete, or even longer. Sorry for the inconvenience, but we think the fix is on its way.]
[UPDATE 21-Oct-2011: The updates are now both available in the app store. Early reports indicate that these new releases address the problems people were seeing with iOS 5.]
Sente 6.5, Public Preview
We are excited to announce that we are making a preview release of Sente 6.5 available publicly for download on our site. We are not yet done with the work on Sente 6.5, but there are number of important changes that are done and the preview releases are generally good enough for daily use.
You are welcome to download the new preview release (instructions are provided further down in this message). You can run the preview on your existing Sente 6 library (although see below for details on this).
We will be producing a few more preview releases of Sente 6.5 before releasing 6.5.0. These will not be available through the automatic update mechanism in Sente, so please watch the blog for future announcements. (Better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed for the blog and learn about all Sente developments as they happen!)
If you do decide to try the preview releases, please let us know what you think (this is, after all, why we are making the previews public!). We have created a special category in our forum for Sente 6.5. Previews. You are welcome to browse through the existing threads there and to add new threads as appropriate. We would really like to hear from you as we are working on the last few items before we make Sente 6.5 official.
Who Should Run the Preview Releases?
Anyone can run the Sente 6.5 preview releases. If you are just trying Sente to see if it will suit your needs, you should definitely try the previews, because the new interface will soon be the standard Sente interface. If you are an existing Sente 6 user, you will probably want to give the previews a try as well. However, because you are likely to have a lot invested in your library already, please use normal caution (e.g., make a backup of your library) before trying the previews.
Many of the testers in the private preview program have largely switched to using nothing but the preview releases; they prefer the new interface and almost everything from Sente 6.2 is already in the 6.5 previews.
The bottom line is that the Sente 6.5 previews are solid and are very close to being released. There are a few items that are still missing from 6.2 (see below for details), and there are a few features that we are still working on adding. We are waiting to formally announce Sente 6.5 until this additional development has been completed. In the mean time, the previews are very usable (and a big improvement over 6.2, we think!).
Highlights
There are a lot of changes in Sente 6.5, and more coming. Sente 6.5 is the best looking, most powerful and easiest to use version of Sente ever. Here are some of the most important changes.
New Main Window Design
The main window has been completely rewritten. Almost every aspect of the window has been updated. Some of the specific changes are listed later in this message.
New Window Layout Options
Sente 6.5 now lets you change the relative positioning of the reference list and the attachment view. This makes it possible to take advantage of the large, wide screens now found on many Macs.
Single Collection Tabs
Just as you can double-click on a reference in the reference list to have it opened in its own tab, in Sente 6.5 you can double click on a collection to have it open in its own tab. This lets you create tabs for, say, the collection of all references added in the last week, or all those with "To Be Read" status.
New Multiple-Line Reference List
There is a new option for displaying the references. This new design looks more like the list in Sente for iPad. The old grid-view is still there as an option.
New Reference Editor
The reference editor has been completely rewritten from the ground up. The new design is cleaner, simpler, and more functional. And it still throughly customizable so that you can see just the information you want.
Full Screen Mode (in Lion)
For people running OS X 10.7, Sente 6.5 supports the new full screen mode. This is a great way of working with Sente.
Compatibility with Word + EndNote
You can now exchange documents with users who are still using EndNote with Microsoft Word, including users running on Windows. You can open documents they send to you, make changes, including adding and editing citations, and send them the new document and they will be able to open and edit the document. The only requirement is that documents be stored in docx (not doc) format.
Scan-In-Place
Sente now supports a new, streamlined file scanning process that eliminates the need to think in terms of input and output documents. When you use the scan-in-place option when scanning an open document, Sente will automatically replace the open document with the document resulting from the scan (after saving a copy of the original, of course). And, because the "rescannable" option is always used for the output format, you can just keep editing where you left off.
A Full User Manual
Sente 6.5 now includes a 300 page user manual, available as both a PDF and an epub file (for reading in iBooks). The manual is not yet complete, but the current draft is available for download (see below).
What's Missing?
We are still working on a new remaining items that we would like to finish before we officially release Sente 6.5.0. Some of these items are new, some are features that are present in Sente 6.2, but which have not yet been replaced for 6.5.
Here are some of the items present in Sente 6.2, but still missing in the Sente 6.5 previews:
- Autolink setup and access. We are changing the interface to autolinks and the changes are not yet complete.
- Configuration of output "gestures" (e.g., copy/paste, drag and drop, etc.). Again, we are changing the way this is handled (in 6.2 it is handled through the Format menu) and the changes are not yet complete.
- Manual data entry during the QuickAdd process.
- Bibliography format editor does not current see custom reference types.
Compatible with Sente 6.2
Sente 6.5 is largely compatible with Sente 6.2. This means that you can open your library in Sente 6.5, add or edit reference, and then return to Sente 6.2 and your changes will be there. There are differences in the way the two versions handle preferences and library setup, so some of these changes will not translate back and forth between the two versions. (For example, if you define a new custom reference type in 6.5, that type will not be available in 6.2; although references of that type will remain visible in both versions.)
In general, we would recommend making a copy of your Sente library for your initial testing of the Sente 6.5. previews. This will let you make changes freely in the copy without changing your official library. Then, if you think that you would like to use the previews for actual work, delete the copy of the library and open the main copy in the preview. Even though there are very few incompatibilities between the two versions, if you need to switch back and forth frequently, you are likely to find the small issues frustrating over time.
You should NEVER run Sente 6.2 and Sente 6.5 at the same time.
System Requirements
Sente 6.5 requires Mac OS X 10.6.7 or higher. (Note that this is a change from Sente 6.2, which can be run under 10.5.)
Upgrades
Sente 6.5 will be a free upgrade to everyone with a Sente 6 license. People with licenses to Sente 5 or earlier can purchase an upgrade to Sente 6 for $39.95 on our site.
Downloading and Installing the Preview
The first public preview of Sente 6.5 can be downloaded here:
http://thirdstreetsoftware.lunarpages.net/Sente65p3.zip
All previews of Sente 6.5 use the same license codes as Sente 6.2, so if you have a Sente 6 license, you can run the previews without restriction.
The current draft of the user manual, in both PDF and epub formats, can be downloaded here:
http://thirdstreetsoftware.lunarpages.net/Sente-6.5-User-Manual-DRAFT-2011-10-06.pdf
http://thirdstreetsoftware.lunarpages.net/Sente-6.5-User-Manual-DRAFT-2011-10-06.epub
If you download the epub version by clicking on the link above on an iPad, you should be given the opportunity to add the manual to iBooks.
Feedback
We want to hear your thoughts about the preview releases. We have created a dedicated forum on our site for the previews.
https://sente.tenderapp.com/discussions/sente-65-preview
You are welcome to post your thoughts, complaints, requests, etc. related to these preview in that forum. It will remain public until sometime after the official release of Sente 6.5.0.
Sente 6.5.0 Official
We are still working toward the official release of Sente 6.5.0. We are planning on adding a few more features, and we will be cleaning up some remain details on what we have already done. In addition, depending on the feedback we receive during the preview period, we may modify the definition of the official release a bit.
In the absence of significant changes to our plans for 6.5, we expect the official release to happen later this Fall. Sorry we cannot be more precise at this time.
Until Sente 6.5.0 is out, many users will be able to switch to the preview releases for most, if not all, of their daily work. We will try to make each successive preview stable and useful (although, of course, you should take reasonable precautions, like making sure that you always have a good backup copy of your library).
Please note that you will NOT be automatically informed about new previews. You will only learn about new previews through our web site, and in particular, our blog. So, please add our blog to your RSS reader -- we really do not post that frequently, so you will probably not find the volume of posts annoying!
It has been just about one month since we made our first preview of Sente 6.5 available to a limited set of experienced Sente users. Since then we have received some great feedback from these users and we are about to release a new preview to these same people.
The point of limiting these private previews to experienced Sente users is that we wanted to be sure that the new user interface works well for those people who depend on Sente in their daily work. If the new design does not work well for existing Sente users, it really does not matter if it appeals to new users.
I am very happy to report that the first preview was very well received by our testers. We are confident that, when the time comes to release 6.5.0, our current users will, in general, like the new interface and view the update as a real improvement to the software.
We also received quite a few good suggestions for improvements to the interface, and we have implemented many of these and we will soon release a new preview including many of these enhancements.
We still have some important work to do before we will be ready to officially release Sent 6.5.0, but the preview releases are good enough to use for most daily work. So, rather than keeping everyone waiting for the official release, we will soon be making the preview releases available to everyone.
I will write more about this when the time comes, but in a few weeks you will be able to try the preview releases for yourself on your own data. Switching back and forth between 6.2 and 6.5 works nicely (although some new settings in 6.5 will not, of course, have any effect in 6.2).
We look forward to a new round of feedback when the previews go public. And many of you will find that you can simply switch to the using the previews for your daily work, reverting to 6.2 only for those few features that have not yet been implemented in 6.5, and there are very few of those remaining.
Not all of the new features or design changes will be important to all users, but I think that most of you will find some aspects of the 6.5 design that you will strongly prefer over the 6.2 design. I know that I greatly prefer the new design and look forward to switching permanently to the new version.
So, if you are interested in trying out the Sente 6.5 previews, you will get your chance in the next few weeks. The official release is still planned for later this Fall.
Michael
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