Alias--or anything like it?

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

Hi, folks,

Anyone know of a way for a document in the binder to be re-created as a second “live” copy (like an alias)?

I have an outline done in one order and I’d like to work on it another order–but I’d like both versions of the outline to update as I go.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Danno

2

Hi,

I’m afraid there is no way of doing this at present, as the binder doesn’t support aliases. I’ll probably look at something like this for 2.0.

Best,
Keith

3

…for the quick reply. That’ll save me trying to figure out how to do something it’s not meant to do!

danno

4

This can be done in DevonThink if you’re desperate for the feature.

It’s not writing software and I barely open it any more these days, but I used to structure stories (and everything else in my life for that matter) in DevonThink, so it is doable.

Robin

5

…in favor of the “alias in the binder” concept.

There are times when you want to write things in one order, and then view them in another. Aliases would be a powerful feature; combined with “Edit Scrivenings” it would be phenomenal.

chrisw

PS: Keep up the good work!

6

I thought about this for a minutes and I also think this would be great. I can seem myself creating several master folders at the draft level then creating several different versions of a manuscript. Print each out, submit them to my home editors (the Mrs and little ones) and see which one “sticks”. Then simply delete all the teflon versions. This would require that all visible doc binder are pointers to a real doc on disk and once the last pointer is deleted the real doc can be trashed.

Sounds like a killer feature to me.

I can wait though.

Jaysen

7

I realized I should explain this further, because add is it begs the question “why do you have to write things in the order you display them?”

You don’t, of course, but you might want to display them in an order differently from how they are organized, if only to see how something looks. If you have a story that has three narrative threads in it, you might want to organize them for writing as three distinct paths, but experiment with order by creating aliases, moving the aliases around, and then “Edit Scrivenings” them in the test order. Easier than actually moving them temporarily.

I’d expect you to be able to do the same thing when compiling the draft.

chrisw