I suspect that this problem has arisen before, but I can’t think under what heading to look!
I want to prepare for a Geometry course I’m going to teach in August. In theory, of course, a course is more than a writing project, but I’m approaching it as if it were a set of notes.
There are several threads that run through the course, for instance: (1) A series of sketches, in which each one depends on some of the preceding ones, and some theorems. (2) a series of theorems, in which each one depends on some of the preceding theorems, and some sketches.
I had thought of putting all the sketches in a folder, parallel to the Drafts folder, and all the theorems in the Drafts folder, and then building up the thread by pulling in the theorems and sketches in appropriate order. But it seems as if everything has to be created inside the Drafts folder?
The sketches have to be created as documents of a program called Sketchpad, whereas the theorems are simply text (and formulas, perhaps). I would have thought that such an interleaving of two media, e.g. text and diagrams, is a common application of Scrivener? How does one get started?
You don’t have to create content in the Draft folder. In fact, you don’t need to use the Draft folder at all if you don’t want to.
Simple solution is to create a new top-level folder (“Geometry 101” or whatever) and use that for all your content.
You could also use your suggested solution and create folders with a parallel structure to the Draft folder and create internal links between them. Personally, I find it too difficult to maintain that type of set-up, but if it works for you, it works!
If you are just assembling notes for your own use, you can structure the Binder however you like.
If, however, you want to do something like create notes and assignment sheets for the students, those materials will need to be in the Draft folder. Only Draft folder documents will be assembled by the Compile tool.
See Section 15.5 in the Scrivener manual for more information about images specifically.
Since I posted my question I have found out a little more, and your responses are making sense.
I think I’m trying to make Scrivener do more than it is typically made to do, and I think it’s up to the challenge.
I want to make pdf output, and that will have to wait until all the text has been assembled in, like, Word.
I want to make epub output, and that will have to wait until all the Sketches are converted to images, which is something someone (Katherine?) anticipates. (Sketches are not images; they’re a sort of mathematical vector graphics.)
It would be awesome if Scrivener could generate pdf output on the fly, but …
The problem is that I haven’t quite got my head around the fact that Scrivener does a lot less than a beginner thinks it does, but it does what it does very elaborately. But one of my friends, who works with just text, put her stuff in Scrivener and generated an Ebook that is just fantastic.
Thanks for the replies! The organizational capabilities of Scrivener alone are very helpful.
Scrivener can make PDF output. And epub output. That’s what the Compile function is for. See Chapter 24 of the Scrivener manual, particularly Section 24.3 on output formats.
Yes, in either case you’ll need to convert the Sketches files to an image format to include them in your output document.
