naracea version 1.0 available

I feel kind of nervous, but it seems naracea v1.0 is ready. I wasn’t able to find any major bug in the application for couple of weeks now, all functionality I wanted for 1.0 is there, the registration is finally available, so there is no reason to wait:

naracea version 1.0 is available.

Actually this is kind of big deal for me. I was never releasing my own app in this way before, so I’m still learning, and well, I have sense of accomplishment, since there were times when I felt like I’m never going to get this far in the project.

Now, there is couple of things I want to talk about.

First one is registration model. Naracea is a shareware: you have 30-day evaluation period during which you should verify program does fit your particular use cases. After that you must either register or remove the application from your computer. Pretty standard stuff, I think. The registration is valid for all versions from 1.0 to 2.0, so if you like the application, but you would like to see more features there, do not worry, you can register now and then just update.

Considering this, I put lot of thinking into setting the price right. I’ve read couple of articles suggesting setting the price higher at first and then decreasing it, but I disagree with this. naracea is version 1.0 program. While I think it is solid release, it is still version 1.0 program, and we all know what that means. There are lot of features which I really want to add, but delaying release because there is one more thing I want to add would lead to nowhere. I would be never done this way, because there are always things I want to add to the program. I use the editor every day, so I know very well what other features would make it even more useful.

To get back to the point: setting price higher initially would punish early adopters for their trust in me and my product. And making somebody to pay more for less features (1.0 product vs 2.0 product) isn’t really what I see as good thing to do. I understand registering v1.0 product is act of faith, and you should be rewarded not penalized. Therefore I set the price point not to what seems economically viable for me in long term, but to what I think is right. That means that in the course of getting to the version 2.0, the registration fee will get somehow higher. So, registering right now gives you lowest registration fee and prospect for a whole bunch of new features.

This registration scheme also allows me to keep only one supported version of the application, so I can focus on further development of the program. Bug fixes will come only for the most recent release and I will be able to put as much effort as possible in new features, since there will be always only two versions I need to work on: the latest stable release for which most critical bug fixes will be delivered, and the vNext, which will contain new features. This should allow me to keep the development cycle between minor releases short (where short means something around 3 or 4 months).

This takes me to the second point I want to mention here: features which will come in future 1.x versions.

As I foresee it now, there should be one minor release for every new feature. Once feature is implemented, first beta for that release will be available with fixes coming every two or three weeks (by the way — I’m still looking for more beta users, so if you want to have access to latest features and be able to influence where the naracea goes, send me an email).

The features I plan are many. First of all, I’ll replace current text editing control with something much more powerful (work on this has already started). This should remove many limitations naracea has right now – there will be possibility for for syntax highlighting, showing whitespaces, column selections, changing tab size etc. I’m not saying I will put all these features in to UI, because I still want to keep the UI kind of minimalistic, but the possibility to have them will be there.

After this, there is support for markdown (so the text can be easily converted into formatted HTML) and spellchecker, which is essential feature for text editor targeted on writing. Then I want to focus on navigation in text and history (go to line, go to date/time in history etc.), more statistics about the text (word count, sentence count) and better branch presentation (tree of branches). After these things get a bit blurry, since I have long list of features which I haven’t prioritized yet, but which I definitively want to have.

To make long story short: I want naracea to be full featured writing text editor before the version number changes to 2.0.

So, try naracea. If you like the concept and you see potential in the application, register, and let me know what you like about it, or which features you miss. I’m listening. Really.