Back in the good old days of skeuomorphism, the days of the first iPhone, I created  a writing app for iOS. Scrivener™ had recently come out on the Mac, and I wanted something similar for the iPhone because I wanted to write on the new cool gadget.

It was a weird idea then, and still is. Who would want to write a short story, much less a full novel, on such a small device? I would. So, I created Auteureist. It was written in ObjectiveC and used old-style XIBs instead of Storyboards to lay out the UI. I pushed it out to the App Store, and it garnered a bit of a following, but never really took off.

That’s fine.

I wrote it for myself and designed it the way I work and write, incorporating some ideas from Scrivener. In fact, later versions could import and export Scrivener projects. I used Auteureist on the iPhone to write a full novel using the phone’s keyboard and my thumbs. I never published that novel.

Anyway, time passed, and the iPhone spawned the iPad. I reworked the app to run on the first iPads. Then ObjectiveC gave way to Swift. I redesigned and reworked the app to use the new-fangled, so-called, easy-to-learn language. My code was buggy and inefficient since I was learning a brand new language. I never pushed that app to the store.

Then storyboards and XIBs gave rise to SwiftUI. Well, not really, but you get the point. I did another redesign using SwiftUI. It held promise, but the code was messy and fraught with bugs. Swift, SwiftUI, and my knowledge of them grew with time and recently, I decided I didn’t like the old code, so I tossed it into my archives and began anew.

I now have what I believe is the best version of Auteureist ever. The code is streamlined, more stable, and efficient. Today, I felt it was good enough to transition my new writing to the new version of Auteureist, from the old ObjectiveC/Swift version.

The app is far from done, but the core features are there and work. It’s stable, has a smaller footprint, and the way I store writing projects is more compact and better organized. I’ve learned a lot both in Swift, SwiftUI and how I now write.

Regardless of how good I think the app is, I don’t think I’ll ever release it. First, it’s a highly opinionated app that works the way I work and want it to. Second, I don’t want to deal with supporting the app beyond my own needs.

I still want a better icon.