I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a way to do this to no avail. I use strikethrough quite frequently, and have been frequently frustrated by the fact that it’s not an option on the Scrivener format bar (alongside bold/italics/underline). I know it’s possible to get it, but using a keyboard shortcut that requires three keys or navigating to a menu isn’t usually as convenient for me as hitting a button when I’m trying to edit.
Is there a way to edit the format bar and add strikethrough? Or is that something I’d have to ask as a feature request?
Yes it is!
I use strikethrough quite a lot when collaborating with others using Word. So I have added strikethrough to the standard Formatting toolbar. In Word you select View - Toolbars - Customize toolbars and menus, and then it’s just drag-and-drop. Anything available in the menus can be added to a toolbar.
How much programming that is involved, I don’t know. In the answer you referred to the argument was that “Scrivener is NOT a layout/word processor designed for final formatting.”, which I agree with. But who ever heard of strikethrough being part of final formatting? You use it to mark things you contemplate deleting, without actually deleting it.
Strikethrough is a fundamental part of revising text, not of final formatting.
If making the toolbar customizable is difficult, just add strikethrough to the standard bold, underline, italics (which are actually intended for final formatting, right?).
Yep. I am aware that there’s a keyboard shortcut on Mac as well, but as I said - when I’m going through editing things, it’s often not as convenient to keep switching between mouse and keyboard to hit a shortcut that requires three keys as it is to hit a button and keep going.
Since the strikethrough is right up beside the bold/underline/italics in my Word by default, I was very surprised that it was so inconvenient to navigate to in Scrivener - especially since it seems like exactly the kind of editing tool that Scrivener users would need/want. I use strikethrough in the editing phases, when I’m depending on Scrivener, rarely in final formatting.
I assume you’re keeping one hand on the mouse to highlight passages quickly and using the other hand to make changes - moving on to the next section, highlight it and make changes and so on. So having to press cmd-shift-_ means using both hands.
In that case, as a workaround pending the (unlikely) addition of a button, can’t you just redefine the strikethrough shortcut to be something easier to use with one hand – one of the function keys perhaps, or something rare like cmd-`? (If you’ve not done this before, it’s really easy – just ask.)
That’s actually a lot quicker than having to use the mouse to go to the top of the screen and back.
Emily seems to have changed platform from Windows to Mac. So, sorry Emily.
Anyway, as Brookter suggests, you could easily set your own shortcut to something easier … Cmd` is doable with one hand, so is Ctrl-Cmd-z, which is unlikely to have been assigned.
What kind of mouse do you use? If it has buttons, consider a tool like BetterTouchTool, which despite the name is in fact a pretty broad input device customisation suite (from keyboards to even the remote control that came with some Macs). You can assign things like overstrike to a mouse button that is modified by a keystroke, like Cmd-MiddleClick, or if you have one of those Magic Mice, create gestures such as swiping three fingers down. Or yes, as noted, you can just move the shortcut to left-hand keys.
I’m not sure how well Cmd-` will work since that is a system default for switching between windows within an application (as opposed to Cmd-Tab which switches between applications).
Thanks for the suggestions! I think the most practical solution for me is probably going to be reassigning the keyboard shortcut to something easier to hit with one hand. I haven’t done that before, so it didn’t occur to me as a possibility, but it should be easy enough to find directions for that.
(Ha, and no worries, xiamenese! I’d forgotten that my profile still listed Windows as my primary platform, so I didn’t think to update it before I asked my question. )
Windows doesn’t necessarily have some of the same system-provided facilities that Mac OS X does. As a result, Windows programs often have to provide their own versions of system-provided routines and functions in order to provide desired functionality. As a result, when Microsoft writes programs, they often do things that aren’t available natively through the operating system. Sometimes this philosophy spreads to their programs for non-Windows operating systems – they have the resources to port those function libraries and frameworks to other platforms. And that’s a lot of work.
I can’t remember any Mac app which provides a button for it in the toolbar, not even Pages. Nisus provides one for single and double strikethrough in the Character palette; Pages might; Mellel has an entry in a dropdown in their Character palette.
Nisus is the only editor I know based on the same Apple text engine as Scrivener that does, but Nisus has had a whole team working doing serious modification of the text engine. Pages and Mellel both use proprietary text engines and file formats, just like MS, so …
Another approach is to just let Scrivener keep track of this kind of information for you, rather than using font adjustments to make visual markings in the text. It’s definitely a matter of taste, but if you take a snapshot (Cmd-5) prior to an editing session, then you will later on be able to load the prior Snapshot in the Inspector, click the “Compare” button and view all additions and removals, even scan through them one by one with the arrow buttons at the top of this Inspector pane. You can also hold down the Option key and then drag and drop the snapshot into the main editor header bar to load it in comparison mode, if you find the sidebar a bit cramped.
[size=80]To achieve this effect, I did nothing more than select the first sentence in the paragraph and hit the delete key.[/size]
Also it’s worth noting you can copy and paste this marked up copy into any rich text editor, so if you are concerned about having a “hard copy” record of edits from a particular point in time rather than something generated off of a comparison between A and B, there you go.
Yep, that is a useful option in some cases, and I have started to make use of snapshots. It’s not quite what I need, though, when I have, for instance, a list of things that need to be done in my notes, or excised information that needs to be worked back in in several different places. I often use strikethrough in cases like that, where I want to be able to easily track what I have/haven’t done yet, in addition to being able to refer back to or compare with the original. ^^
