Introducing Scrivener 3 | Hacker News Reader

Introducing Scrivener 3

literatureandlatte.com

214 pointsjanpio102 comments

For screenwriting I highly recommend checking out emacs fountain mode [1] (plus imenu-list and Olivetti minor modes). In combination with org-mode it is the most powerful writing/outlining tool you can imagine.

Also, if you haven't tried them, I highly recommend checking out WorkFlowy [2], Gingko [3], or Nulis [4] (disclaimer - nulis is my own project). Outlining and organizing projects as a tree structure is insanely powerful and convenient.

The idea of organizing a script/novel as a tree structure rather than a flat outline allows you to "zoom into" as many levels as you want, and conveniently focus on any part of your work. I recommend using separate branches for worldbuilding, characters, notes, and plot outline, summarize the high level ideas quickly, and expand on them by adding more levels.

Writing the actual draft though is much more convenient in emacs + fountain/markdown + org/imenu.

To take it to a crazy level of awesomeness consider storing your files in git, or at least dropbox, to have a history of revisions.

---

[1] https://github.com/rnkn/fountain-mode

[2] https://workflowy.com

[3] https://gingkoapp.com

[4] https://github.com/raymestalez/nulis

Also, emacs/fountain screenshot:

https://i.imgur.com/AJpUNsz.png

Looks awesome, truly a pleasure to use.

I'd like to support a new project by a fellow HN user. What's your main difference (present or intended) from Gingko?

Thanks! Nulis is open source, allows you to edit all the cards simultaneously(instead of double-click/esc to jump between editing modes), has writing stats(to develop daily writing habit), and allows you to save trees offline.

I'm also working on a desktop version that will share the code with online version, so that will be convenient to use and develop.

I noticed the desktop version, and that it's cross-platform. That could be super-cool for security sensitive stuff/remote location work.

I'm making a bunch of workflow changes these days so I'll try a small project in this to see how it goes. thanks very much for the suggestions and the work you've done on this already.

I hope you will find Nulis useful! =)

To be fair, I should mention that gingko's author is also working on a desktop version [1]. He's rewriting it from scratch, and it looks like it will be very cool once he does.

[1] https://beta.gingko.io

Workflowy fans should also check out Dynalist. It started out as more or less a Workflowy clone, but has been developed much more actively than Workflowy.

https://dynalist.io/

If you need to edit text in a tree structure, ms-word outline mode is a really good option. Info here: http://www.dummies.com/software/microsoft-office/word/how-to...

I'll piggy back off of this and shamelessly plug my mind-mapping outliner app, Mindscope for iOS, for anyone on iPad or iPhone wanting to outline and collect everything without losing the forest for the trees since you simply "zoom" into the level of detail you need.

Have heard from quite a few writers that use and love Mindscope.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mindscope-thought-organizer/...

It's funny you should mention Emacs...

I was initially a fully paid-up Scrivener user, but just couldn't get on with it. I found myself fighting with it far more than I would have liked - especially around generated output. Granted this would have been nearly ten years ago now I think. I switched to Ulysses. I found I loved writing in Markdown! I then upgraded to Ulysses III when that came out and never looked back.

But GitHub changed everything...

Now I write pretty much everything in Emacs. I initially used AsciiDoc markdown, but now I use Github flavoured markdown (GFM) in Emacs. Public writing is in a public repo on GitHub and I have a private repo there too for personal/work-in-progress type stuff. Full revision history and command line goodness. Lovely jubbly.

The way I tend to write is each chapter is a GFM file. I can use command line tools to turn that into HTML/PDF and sometimes roll my own tools in Python/shell. I do sometimes write shorter pieces and combine them.

I do still use Ulysses for things like lists and odd notes, but it's getting less common.

I guess at the end of the day it's whatever works for you, but yes Emacs with GitHub is working really well for all my writing needs right now.

I always thought that a major reason to use Scrivener was to do with studios being very fussy about standardised formats and layouts - something that may take quite a bit of time to setup in other editors. You also don't want to do it through trial and error if they are going to discard on first failure. Is this not true? If true, how do you ensure your Emacs output matches requirements?

Good work on the new release. As a long time Scrivener 2 user, I'm happy to see this.

However, I wanted a simpler and subjectively nicer looking tool for distraction-free writing and thus made my own. It's free, has a few social features built-in, tracks writing progress/goals/distractions, and can make good looking books.

Also, adding features to Singular Writer has been really easy, as evidenced by it being in existence for a few months. For the Windows crowd, we've had feature parity from day one.

Check it out if you want to write more [with friends].

http://www.singularwriterapp.com/

Some details about the person behind it and maybe some links (on the page) would be great. These days I'm wary of downloading anything I can't get a wide range of opinions on by searching, and all I get are irrelevant results.

That's an excellent point! In focusing on the features and such, I forgot to write up an About page, I'll do that.

For those reading here, I'm the guy that wrote a blog post on how to self-publish a book in 2017 that was on the front page here for a day or so back in February (www.zhubert.com). After that, I realized how ludicrous it was that publishing had to entail so much complexity, so I started thinking about what I wanted while writing my second book, then took a break and wrote the app instead.

The binaries are code signed for their respective platforms, and the links off the main page demonstrate the features by category (Writing, Publishing, Social). There are some nice pictures, some animated gifs, and a Twitter account over at https://twitter.com/singularapp.

I'll write up a better About page later, but there's now one featured prominently on the landing page.

sorry to be that guy...could there be a Linux version one day? I feel unclean if I have to start Windows

There definitely could be, it might not even be that hard. I'll add it to my Trello for investigation.

My mum uses Linux and is a writer and wants Scrivener (yes, Linux is mainstream).

There used to be a Linux version. You can still find it, it's v.1.6 or so (predating v.2), needs 32-bit libraries and is unsupported. But you can get it running. The problem is if you bring the project file into a new version it will convert the file format and there's no going back.

I am fairly certain of this: A port to Linux of your latest version would be worth your troubles Sir.

Alrighty, it’s now available on the website. Tell your friends :)

Your landing page is very clear and easy.

One tiny thing: the screenshot window title is "Social Writer" but every other reference is to "Singular Writer".

Great eye!

Originally the project was called Social Writer and those screenshots date back to that time. I decided the name was too limiting and changed it a couple of weeks ago.

Images will update shortly.

This looks great. At first sight, it seems more like an alternative to Ulysses. Would you say that's accurate?

I think I was shooting for something in between the two. If you've read the post by Hugh Howey about Neo, you'll find that we tend to think quite a bit a like.

Productivity and publishing, that's what I wanted.

Ulysses looks great but had nothing to help me measure my novel's progress. Writing down before/after word counts was just lame (sorry). The publishing tools were also rather limited.

Scrivener helped me publish my first book, but, as I mentioned, I didn't like looking at it (sorry!).

So Singular Writer aimed to have the looks of Ulysses and the brawn of Scrivener (without all the configuration).

Curious whether you have any plans for an iOS app accompanying this? My partner uses Scrivener for writing currently, but does a lot of it on their iPad, so Scrivener's app + Dropbox sync is a fairly important thing for them.

(Scrivener's Dropbox sync being frequently buggy may help explain why I'm asking about this for them...)

That definitely sounds frustrating. Personally I don't like how intrusive it is, always blocking the loading of the app while it shows me the sync process.

iOS (like desktop Linux and Android) are entirely possible and would be fun to build. The underlying data storage is platform agnostic (hurray SQL) and the development environment is bifurcated only along desktop vs native lines.

This is pretty much why I stopped using Scrivener entirely and started using WriterDuet for screenwriting. Trying to sync on Google Drive was an impossible shitshow. Still pisses me off.

>(Scrivener's Dropbox sync being frequently buggy may help explain why I'm asking about this for them...)

Hmm, never had an issue with Scrivener/Dropbox sync.

Mind you, I open Scrivener only 3-4 times a week and close it after I'm done with a document. I also don't use it frequently from my other machines (iMac/iPad), so it mainly syncs what I save on the main driver.

Yeah, they have a workflow that's very switching-dependent. Go out and work with the iPad all day, then switch and edit on a laptop at home.

They also like working at some coffee shops with not-ideal WiFi, which may help to expose bad sync cases. (I think it's fine for the sync to fail sometimes, but they've lost work before to this, which seems unacceptable.)

Question -

If it's free how do you plan to sustain it.

I hate seeing people struggle to support their app. Even the Ulysses guys got blowback when they went from one-time payment to a subscription model - which seems totally warranted from a power user.

Great question.

Right now it's super lean and I haven't needed any additional income to support it. In the future that might change.

If I were to charge for anything, it'd be paid "themes" for the eBook side of things. I feel that aligns with my objective of making a writing tool for everyone, while getting paid by people making money off it.

I like this! As a not-very-serious writer, I had previously been doing my writing with VSCode plus a couple of extensions and themes to make it look like Ulysses, but I think I will give this a look. I'd be happy to chip in some money if you put a donation link up.

How very nice of you to offer!

In lieu of donations to Singular Writer, may I suggest a non-profit, perhaps No Kid Hungry (www.nokidhungry.org)?

Will do.

I'm 10k words into my little writing hobby and will try this. Imported two chapters and I like the simplicity and aesthetics a lot. Absolutely love setting X words and having it tracked...simple, intuitive, awesome. I'm slowly getting back into writing after a hiatus so I'm sitting at a measly 500 words/day goal :D

My other authoring tool (Papyrus Autor) is great when it comes to Grammar/Spellchecking/Style and is pretty much the go to tool for German writers however it feels too cluttered for my personal taste. So I'm switching over to singular for prewriting with spellchecking turned off and then I'll load it into PA for the other tools (which will be an interesting and humbling experience).

10k! That's awesome. Keep going!

If it helps motivation, try inviting a few friends and sharing your word counts with them.

I spent two years working on my first book, barely hitting 5k/week during the first draft. My experience definitely affirms that as long as you don't stop, you'll finish it! ;)

Thanks for this. My 9 year old daughter loves writing stories and is starting to get more serious about it, this looks like the perfect tool for her.

Hurray! That's fantastic!

This looks great! I have two questions: 1) Can you resize the notecards for easier management 2) Can you export to .docx for publication submission?

Thanks!

1) for instance with a little slider? yeah, that makes sense, Trello'ing 2) .docx export is already in Trello, so hopefully not too long of a wait

Before anyone says wouldn't it be great if there was a Linux version, Literature and Latte had one for more than a year. They discontinued it after less than 10 licenses sold.

Perhaps that was because of the separate code base for each platform which meant in the previous versions the UI and feature set varied. L & L claim the Windows and MacOS versions will have the same UI but the fact version 3.x wasn't released for both are once is enough to tell me the code bases have most likely not converged.

The windows version has worked fine with Wine up to now anyway, so hopefully that won't change in V3.

As far as I know, they never sold licenses for the Linux version. It was always in beta. In the forums, people offered to buy licenses--perhaps users of the Linux version bought a Mac or Windows license and told L&L, but I don't remember the Linux version ever being for sale.

Yeah see my other reply: they asked for donations but never received more than half a dozen over two years. I misremembered their selling it for linux. It was free and donation appreciated but not required.

> They discontinued it after less than 10 licenses sold.

How do you know that? Can you share a link?

I don't think Scrivener for Linux was ever sold by Literature and Latte.

Lee Powell from Literature and Latte stated in a 2011 comment⁰ in Linux Journal: "We don't have the resources at this time to tweak it into a polished, native-feeling Linux application, and so it will continue to run as free beta software for the foreseeable future, until such time as we are able to give it the extra attention required to move it towards an official, commercial release"

The latest Linux version of Scrivener I can find is from October 2015 and is still a BETA – so from 2011—2015 Scrivener for Linux was always in beta and unsupported. The release announcement reads: Version 1.7.2.4 is identical to the current Linux 1.7.2.3 version, but with the beta expiry removed. Version 1.9.0.1 also has no expiry. Both versions remain unsupported.

I am asking you again to state your sources, and in the absence of that I'm gonna assume you're talking out of your ass.

⓪ - https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/scrivener-now-linux#com... ① - https://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&...

But it's in your second link! They got less than a half dozen donations in two years. So you're right I misremembered their selling licenses. They asked for donations and got less than six in two years. Regardless the upshot is the same: they stopped development on the Linux version due to (IMHO) perceived lack of interest.

I was one of the people who purchased a Windows license as a thank you for the Linux Beta. I actually bought two: one for me and one for an aunt who kept threatening to write a book about her "traumatic" childhood. No one else in the family found it quite so traumatic as her and most of her trauma came from being exactly like her mother.

I bought the license for my aunt 50% as a "So shut up and write" prompt and 50% for hopefully therapeutic purposes. Give me your email address and I'll forward you the receipts lest you think I'm talking out my ass about that too.

>hannes81 wrote: Thank you very much! I have one question: Where can I donate for this version? Hannes

>>Thank you for the kind offer Hannes. I truly appreciate it, but it's on me. We did try a donation option in the Help menu of the previous Linux version, but had less than half-a-dozen donations over almost two years. Some users did however purchase a Windows license in appreciation, but we never pushed or had any expectation in this regard; and still do not...

The reply I quoted is signed "Lee" so I am assuming it's the same Lee Powell you quoted.

Scrivener is my emergency application: when I've written a total mess (and everything I ever write goes through that stage), I dump it into Scrivener, chop it to bits, and rebuild. This is an insta-upgrade.

I only used Scrivener for my master thesis a few years ago but keep recommending it to everyone who is about to write a longer text. It's a great tool and helped me a lot to overcome writing procrastination. Very happy to see it's actively developed.

I'm curious what features you found/find most helpful.

I also used it just for my thesis. Most helpful feature was being able to jot thoughts down into cards that could then be moved around and organized until coherent chapters coalesced. If you do the same in a plain outlining tool, you may find yourself distracted by the order it pre-imposes.

The nested cards are definitely a great tool to create the structure. Even after the initial outline, I came back to them every now and then to re-evaluate the logic flow or to place new sub-topics that came up.

The biggest win for me was how Scrivener supports an iterative workflow. I started with keywords on the cards for what a chapter should be about, wrote a few sentences describing the keywords inside the document, added context so the sentences became paragraphs, fleshed it out and polished it. During this process I used colour labels in the outline view[1] to keep track of the state of a chapter.

All this took away the pressure to write a long, good and coherent text. I only had to increment little by little to which my brain had far less resistance. If I was stuck on a chapter or couldn't motivate myself to keep working on it, I switched to another one and do a little work here, a little work there.

Also the usual Latex applied as well: I only focussed on the content and didn't format anything properly and left placeholders for images. I used Pages (the old version with two sided layout) for the final assembly where I only had to worry about layout and not on the content.

[1]: http://www.techtoolsforwriters.com/using-labels-in-scrivener...

Linux users might be interested in this Emacs/Vim alternative: https://vimvalley.com/replacing-scrivener-with-emacs-and-vim...

I will be glad to see the 64 bit version on Windows. The current version seems quite sluggish compared to say, Word 2016. I've used it for 80k sized manuscripts and it starts to chug mid way through.

Also some better support for things like Git would be nice. It works currently, but is a bit of a hassle. Integrated commit/push etc would be awesome (like VS Code's model)

Other than that, great tool. I like being able to keep all my planning in the same place as the draft, and being able to switch between a synopsis for the scene and my actual writing.

I've been using emacs for about 27 years, and even wrote two novels ( e.g. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005JPPMS6 ) in it. Author friends tell me that I've really really REALLY got to try Scrivener, but I know from previous attempts at using other tools that nothing but emacs feels right to me.

I should give it a try, I suppose...but it's going to be really weird.

It's an amazing tool. I've been using it for screenwriting and worldbuilding for years. It's just a really clever take on a writing tool. I'm sure your Emacs kit fits your needs, but I'd bet even trying Scrivener, you might get some ideas to enhance your Emacs flow.

I fear that trying Scrivener might launch me into a five year quest to duplicate some of its features in elisp! :)

Send me the repo when you do!

Send me an email from Scrivener when you are done...

Checkmate Scrivener!

"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail" -- Jamie Zawinsky

Check out fountain-mode before you do that!

I've just finished the draft of my first novel using Scrivener. (it's a kids/YA Sci-Fi novel).

It's been a joy to use. I wrote the first 45k words written on the OS X version on my laptop.

But in May I started a new job, and then used the iPhone version to write the next 50k words. Pretty much written entirely on the London tube to/from work.

I've also emailed Keith, the lead dev, a few times and he's been very friendly. Even incorporated some of my suggestions into updates of the iOS version.

Anyway, if Emacs works for you, then I'd say stick with it, unless you see some compelling reason to change.

For me, I had never written a novel before so did some research and chose Scrivener. Prior to this my longest work was my PhD thesis, in LaTeX.

If you're looking for novelty, travel to some foreign country or buy a pair of fashionable jeans. Don't change the tools you've trusted for 27 years; a new tool is not going to make you a better, more creative, or more organized writer, especially if you're already using the most configurable one in existence.

As a data point, Donald Knuth uses a minimalistic Ubuntu setup with FVWM2 and Emacs (with a lot of custom keybindings), and that's enough for writing his big volumes.

I couldn't have written two books without Scrivener. Now I use it for a Commonplace Book.

It's a terrible shame that Scrivener 3 drops support for El Capitan. I want to try but upgrading my entire OS would be quite a hassle.

Might as well start thinking about upgrading anyway. If the past is an indicator, Apple will likely stop releasing security updates for El Capitan in a bit less than a year.

Still happily running an iMac 24" from 2008 (harddrive replaced with an SSd). Apple considers this hardware too old for macOs Sierra.

Probably will need to upgrade it to Windows 10 to keep it up to date.

With my user hat on, I agree. My main workstation is still going strong with 10.11 (the latest it officially supports), and there's no end-user features of >10.11 that I want (maybe APFS). Or even of newer hardware.

With my developer hat on, I completely understand where they're coming from. Sierra adds a ton of useful new functionality, and fixes a ton of bugs. (There's several new features in 10.11 which just seem completely broken for any non-trivial use, and which were fixed in 10.12.) Not needing to support 10.11 makes life a lot easier.

If I weren't using 10.11 myself, I'd make my application 10.12-only in a heartbeat.

Anyone used scrivener and found it a useful tool for general note taking, a personal wiki, or getting things done?

From the website, it looks like many of their features would be useful as a general work support tool, despite the emphasis on writing.

Personally, I use it for writing essays/research pieces and as part of that I take A LOT of notes, gather up sources and references. Scrivener is pretty brilliant for all of that IMO.

Note taking, probably not as good as Onenote or at least not as flexible. But it lets you keep notes in the same "place" as your work (assuming your work involves writing, of course) which for me personally is hugely beneficial.

For a wiki, I actually think it would work quite well. It gives you a lot of tools to sort and store information, and it plays nicely with storage like Dropbox. Only catch is, you need the software in order to be able to read/edit your wiki.

yeah, I actually use it as a role-playing campaign manager. Each campaign gets a scrivener book, and the various tools for tagging and organizing cards and resources scrivener has are perfect for this use case.

I use it for daily journaling, writing articles, etc. As well as for writing terrible short stories :)

It is quite a versatile bit of writing software. Stable and I've never lost any data. Lots of features (perhaps too many sometimes) and it is well designed imho. I've only used the Windows version though and from what I've seen the macOS version is a slightly different product (please correct me if I'm wrong).

I actually tried using Scrivener for writing half a novel, then realized that one plain text file per chapter with a plain text editor with a good display settings is all I need.

During college I wrote many essays and half a novella in Scrivener. It fit my style of writing, which is horribly non-linear. My novella required a lot of world-building and I appreciated Scrivener's dedicated section for notes and images relating to each story.

I think my best use of Scrivener was to take notes on taxonomy in biology class, making good use of nested documents. By the end of that class I had a huge chunk of the tree of life filled out. I think something like workflowy would be more apt at this task right now, but it was fantastic at the time. That said, workflowy has terrible support for images.

I highly recommend Scrivener for any project that has words. It is a great project management tool for taking and organizing notes, research projects, wiki writing, blog writing, journals, college papers, novels, GTD lists, etc. Personally, I think the most useful features cork board, the research folder, tags, and the formatter, but there are many other tools in Scrivener that make managing projects easy, regardless of size.

Scrivener also supports plugins, so 3rd-party companies can make templates and other tools for it. For example, if you like Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method of writing, you can get a Scrivener template that uses the Snowflake Method to help structure/outline your writing.

Finally, Literature & Latte is a great company to work with. They are responsive to questions and issues, and seem to really care about their customers.

i love scrivener, but i'm not a novel-writer. i use it to run role-playing campaigns. it's is more-or-less perfect for that kind of work. I can add images and PDFs under the research / resources section (i tend to mine existing and published content for a bit here and there), I can tag different cards with PCs and NPCs that are present / relevant, it is really a great organizing tool for that.

For those interested in a Windows Beta, check here: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=57&...

Even more amazing is a little tool called Scapple from the same author. I use it to brainstorm and collect thoughts. Absolutely love it and I read that they plan to update it as well. Can't wait.

I was about to ask about this tool. Looks amazing. How have you found it to alternatives (e.g. onenote / evernote, mindmap tools, etc.)?

It's not an alternative to a note-taking app. Scapple helps me to clear my thought process like no other tool. It works for me because it's so simple and limited. That's why I'm actually ambivalent about an upgrade and fear it might get too many new features and loses it's appeal, though as I understand the author he's fully aware of this. There are just a few things I miss

Introducing...V3 of what, exactly? Hmm - am I blind, or does that page have zero explanation of what Scrivener 3 actually is? RSS Reader? Ebook reader? The list of improvements could apply to just so many random things.

I am sure it is great and all, and that there is more details elsewhere on the site, but you lost me after a scroll or two trying to work out what this product is, and if it something that I might want to buy. Confused, tab closed, bye, sorry.

</constructive-criticism>

>does that page have zero explanation of wha Scrivener 3 actually is

The most famous word processor/editor for writers.

This is just an announcement for the new version. "Release notes". Click the product page or homepage for info on the product.

https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview

Yeah, that's definitely a page written for people who already know what Scrivener is and will have their ears perk up at the mention of the long-awaited V2.

Scrivener is a word processor specialized for long-form writing.

It lets you easily write a big piece of text in smaller chunks (chapters, paragraphs, whatever works for you), keep reference material handy, and compile it into the kinds of formats a professional writer is likely to need for passing their text on to the next stage in the publishing process.

Broadly, you can think of it as "an IDE for people who write prose, not code".

Maybe change this part of the website: "We don’t have an ETA yet, other than that Scrivener 3 for Windows will be available some time in 2018."

The version for Windows will appear next year. The codebase isn’t shared as far as I know. They’ve announced if you buy Scrivener 1 for Windows today, you’ll get a free upgrade to Scrivener 3. (Check the blog post for details.)

I'm sad they still don't have any real support for plain text or Markdown editing.

Scrivener isn't a word processor or editor as much as it is a project management tool for writing. The point is that you just focus on your writing as you use the tool and then compile it to whatever format you want, including plain text and MultiMarkdown. While Scrivener does support some level of formatting in the editor, that's mostly for convenience as you work with it, as far as I can tell. The final format of the output of the project occurs when you compile it.

I hope that helps.

Even having the possibility of all the crap that goes along with copy-pasting and broken formatting is a negative for me, not to mention the wasted hotkeys.

Love Scrivener, will upgrade, some problems because I use it on Windows and OS X synced with OneDrive.

Current workflow Scrivener -> markdown -> markdown-styles -> HTML -> DocRaptor -> PDF.

Does anyone know who created their video?

https://vimeo.com/235737232

Can the iOS version import/export files for Windows/Mac without going through cloud storage like Dropbox?

No - as far as I understand, this only works though iCloud. Works well in my experience though.

Even with iOS11 support for file management? That's unfortunate. Some documents are not allowed to be hosted in cloud storage.

Yes. I believe you can connect the file to a Mac; I don't remember if I pulled the file off that way or emailed it to myself.

Android please.

Sorry folks, but Fade In Pro is the best:

https://www.fadeinpro.com/

Rian Johnson wrote The Last Jedi using Fade In Pro. Gary Whitta wrote Rogue One using Fade In Pro.

(drops the mic)

Fade In Pro is for screenplays. Scrivener is for general writing with a focus on books. Different tools for different jobs.

It's still mentioned as screen play software, so there is overlap if that's what people are doing.

Not as many features, not in the same category.

Why the name dropping? It tells me nothing about the product except that it is suitable for writing screenplays.

Okay in hindsight this was a trolling comment and I apologize. I honestly thought Scrivener was a screenplay editor, but even so, my comment was pretty much ass-hattery.

Where's the delete button?

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