What's new in Shaxpir: Everyone 4.5.0
Oct 8, 2018
- Today, I’m thrilled to announce the release of Shaxpir 4.5 which includes a brand new linguistic feature, straight out of our R&D labs: an Automatic Popup Thesaurus.
- To use it, just click on any word or phrase in your manuscript, then click the new Thesaurus button on the toolbar (or use the keyboard shortcut: Control-T on Windows, and Command-T on Macintosh), and Shaxpir will show you a list of conceptually-related words to choose from. Click on any of those choices to replace your original word with the suggested choice.
- What makes this feature so compelling, though, is that it’s completely unlike any thesaurus you’ve ever used before. Traditionally, a thesaurus is an unchanging book created by lexicographers, documenting all the well-worn lists of synonyms and antonyms in their lexicon.
- But the thesaurus we built for Shaxpir is completely different. We’ve spent more than two years building a gigantic linguistic model of literature (which you can explore at prosecraft.io).
- This new thesaurus is the latest product of our ongoing linguistic research.
- We taught our machine-learning algorithms to recognize which kinds of words can be used in which kinds of contexts, by looking at the types of words and phrases that tend to occur within similar sentences and paragraphs.
- For example, throughout our giant library of literature, the word “stars” is often used interchangeably with the word “constellations”, so our thesaurus suggests it as a potential replacement in this context. Which is what we’d expect from an ordinary thesaurus.
- But the Shaxpir thesaurus also suggests a bunch of other associated words — words like “comets”, “horizon”, “moonlight”, and “shimmering” — which we’ve observed throughout our fiction library, being used in the same kinds of phrases and sentences as the word “stars”.
- A typical thesaurus would exclude these words, since they’re not strictly synonyms or antonyms. But our algorithm includes them in its list of suggestions, because they’ve been proven — with hundreds of millions of observations, from real-world literature! — to be useful to real authors.
- It’s like having the collective creative wisdom of thousands of published authors, and their combined vocabularies, at your side while you write.
New in Shaxpir: Everyone 4.4.1 (Mar 28, 2018)
- For the first time, this release gives every author the ability to see the Emotional Story Arc of their entire novel, based on a sophisticated sentiment analysis of the positive and negative words in their text.
- By analyzing the balance between positive words (like “home” and “trust”) and negative words (like “disaster” and “fighting”), we can actually show an author the changing emotional intensity of their story arc.
- With tools like this, an author can more mindfully craft the language of their prose to match the intended arc of the characters’ journey.
- We first introduced this chart our on our companion website, ProseCraft.io, where authors can perform linguistic analysis on an enormous library of popular novels, written by thousands of different authors, and compare their writing style with the authors they most admire.
- With the release of Shaxpir 4.4, we’ve incorporated this analysis method into an actual word-processor for professional authors… the first writing platform ever to offer this kind of sophisticated linguistic analysis of fiction. It’s all based on cutting-edge research pioneered by the geniuses at the UVM Computational Story Lab , and now it’s available to any author in the world.
- In addition to the new Sentiment Analysis features, we’ve also fixed a bunch of bugs and annoyances:
- Adding margin comments caused the editor to scroll back to the top.
- The Add Avatar button sometimes had no effect.
- It was impossible to Delete an Avatar, once created!
- Sometimes, when resizing an image thumbnail, the cropping handles failed to appear.
- Automatic insertion of section breaks (after typing “***”) sometimes had unpredictable effects after UNDO.
- The SpellCheck dictionary was missing some very basic words (such as: and, the, of, etc.)
- Other minor layout glitches and bugs.
New in Shaxpir: Everyone 4.2.2 (Nov 2, 2017)
- I’ve taken the same linguistic analysis of the prosecraft engine and incorporated it into our desktop writing software, so that you can see linguistic measurements of your own writing — like vividness, passive voice, adverbs, and sentiment analysis — updated in real time, as you work, with a gorgeous new text-rendering engine.
- Shaxpir can also show you a detailed high-level summary of the writing style in each of your projects, with every linguistic metric compared against the prosecraft library, so that you can understand exactly how your writing style compares with the authors you admire.
- Shaxpir doesn’t tell you how to write. It just helps you understand your stylistic quirks, so that you can make mindful linguistic choices.
- A tremendous amount of engineering effort has gone into this project over the past six months, as well as lots of delightful little design details, and a few long-overdue bugfixes.
New in Shaxpir: Everyone 4.1.0 (May 2, 2017)
- Enhancements in this version:
- Custom Typefaces: Users with Shaxpir 4: Pro subscriptions can now choose from among nine different custom typefaces to use for their writing, separately from choosing their own custom themes. Previously, each typeface was only available within a specific theme, but now the themes and typefaces can be selected independently of each other.
- Improved Sync-Status: The sync-status toolbar button now shows pending picture uploads and download counts, alongside the time elapsed since last sync.
- Toolbar Buttons for SpellCheck & Sentiment Analysis: SpellCheck and Sentiment Analysis have been part of Shaxpir since version 3.0, but now those features are easier to find and activate, with their own toolbar buttons.
- Picture Download Spinners: While waiting for pictures to download, Shaxpir now shows a spinner, instead of displaying a broken-link icon. Each picture automatically appears when its download completes.
- Bugs fixed in this version:
- Fixed Bogus Insecurity Warning: Shaxpir always uses strong SSL encryption to communicate with our server, but the previous version of Shaxpir sometimes showed a warning message on the login screen about insecure connections. We’ve fixed the warning message, to accurately reflect the secure nature of Shaxpir’s login connections, so you can rest assured that your connection is always safe.
- Fixed Corrupt EPUB Export: The previous version created corrupt ePub export files whenever the user chose to omit the Table of Contents from the export. This version exports a correct ePub file, even when no Table of Contents is included.
- Fixed Unreliable Styles Menu: In the previous release, the Styles toolbar menu sometimes misbehaved, not appearing even after multiple clicks. We’ve fixed it in this version so that it shows up every time.
- Custom Theme Tweaks: The previous version used a few awkward color color combinations (foreground same as background, etc) in the new set of Custom Themes. This version uses better color contrast in those cases.
- Fixed Disappearing Delete Button: In the previous release, the delete button (with a trash-can icon) sometimes disappeared from the upper-right corner of all Chapters and Notes. This version restores the button to its rightful place.
- Fixed Comments Reappearing After Deletion: In the previous release, margin comments would sometimes reappear after being deleted. This version fixes the bug, so that comments are correctly deleted.
- Fixed Confusing Billing Message: The previous version sometimes showed a confusing message on the Billing panel, in some places saying the user is subscribed to Shaxpir 4: Everyone and in another place saying the user is subscribed to Shaxpir 4: Pro. This version resolves the confusion, with an improved message.
- Fixed Crash on First Launch (Macintosh): Previous versions of Shaxpir have suffered from a bug in the PKG installer causing the application to crash on first launch after installation, necessitating complete uninstall-then-reinstall. We fixed this by switching to a DMG installer, which is simpler and more reliable.
- Fixed Broken Logo on Software-Update Screen: Whenever there’s a new version of Shaxpir available, the login screen downloads the new version before letting you login. Unfortunately, the last release has a broken image link for the logo. It also fails to open the user’s Downloads folder on Macintosh when the installer finishes downloading. Oops. Also, unfortunately, you’ll see both of those problems today if you’re updating Shaxpir from within the app (because, obviously, it won’t be fixed until after you update). But it will all look great and work correctly the next time we release an update!
New in Shaxpir: Everyone 3.0.0 (Oct 27, 2016)
- Your workspace includes all-new templates for fiction and non-fiction books, as well as short-stories, articles, and ideas.
- You can export your manuscript in Microsoft Word Format, to share it with colleagues, literary agents, and editors.
- Use our brand-new Linguistic Highlighting Engine to analyze the tone of your writing and improve your prose.
- Use our new Spell Check highlighter to find misspelled words, review suggestions, and make corrections.