Thank you for very much for your answer, but I would like to make my point clearer since I think it touches the very philosophy of Scrivener. In my opinion, the lack of what I’m looking for goes against what I see as Scrivener’s revolutionary concept of how to write a project. But first let me explain again my problem is, or more exactly what is it not:
I have no problem organizing my documents on my computer and I can find any file (pdf/jpg/html…) that I need for my writing project very quickly since I place them all in a special folder exactly for that purpose (let’s call this folder “original research folder”). There is no use of saving them elsewhere since I found them and saves them exactly for the purpose of working on them in my Scrivener Project. They are well defined, well named, and have all the right keywords for me to find them quickly, so: order and orientation are not a problem here and so I don’t need any file-manager program.
Now, how do I access these files (who, I wish to remind, were collected in the first place for my Scrivener project) from within the Scrivener research folder? Scrivener offers me two options:
- to import them as files.
- to import them as Aliases.
The first option is very problematic for one who wants to keep his work organized and simple, and this for two reasons: to import a file to Scrivener means that Scrivener makes a copy of it, renames it (with a number), stores it in internal folder which is not meant to be accessed easily by the user. Now, when you want to edit one of your research files and keep Scrivener up-to-date, then you should go the the original file on your computer, then edit it, then turn back to Scrivener, then delete the old version, then find and import again the edited file from your original folder. This is too much! specially when handling files that were prepared in the first place in order to use them within a Scrivener project. Secondly, if one wishes to have a lot of research files in hand when writing a project, not limiting herself or himself to few specific files but to have ability to jump from one file to another, checking this and then associatively checking that, then he or she has the interest of having one defined main source that can be used in several projects. importing this kind of a source to each project makes them heavy, and also makes the possibility of syncing all the Research Folders on each project a messy task and almost impossible.
It is better, then, to import files as Aliases: a. for having one origin for all projects. b. for having direct access to the original file. c. for being less heavy. d. for synchronizing changes automatically.
But here again the work get messy when I wish to add a file in to my original source folder. I must go now to each project and create the aliases for the new added files.
And now to the philosophy:
The great advantage of Scrivener is that it ables me to have “all in one” writing experience. Instead of having each element of my writing as a separated file or having them all unseparated in one sheet, I can have them as separated elements of one file (=project). In fact, this makes Scrivener your actual text file manager. More you use Scrivener the more you tend to organize your writings elements by it. You get rid of an “object oriented” thinking about your writings and adopt a “functional oriented” thinking. Each element is now just an element that can be compiled or not, can be used here and there, here or there, all depends on what your project is. It is then more flexible, more adequate to your ever-changing wills and projects and it ables you at the same time to be both creative and well attached to your inventory of ideas, fragments. drafts, etc. Thus, Scrivener becomes your actual text files manager, since it the platform from which you both create your elements and organize them under projects, categories, files etc. More Scrivener has a better file-mangaer orientation the more it fulfills its revolutionary concept of how to handle writing.
Now, while this revolutionary orientation is well done with one’s own writings (drafts) it is not done with the research materials (research items), who should be considered as writing elements right as much as drafts are. A way must be found to make the Research Folder more naturally intergraded with Scrivener’s Philosophy. If that means to make Scrivener a kind of independent file manager, then so be it: in its essence it is already a one!
I suggest to the developers of Scrivener to add two features:
- to add an option to make a Scrivener research folder which is accessible to the user. A folder that you can download files directly into it, past and copy files into it, etc., instead of syncing, importing or making aliases.
- to create another item on the bar along side Drafts, Research and Trash: an Explorer in which one can find his original files in his system, upload them to Scrivener directly from this explorer, and to have the option to get a Quick look at them.
Thanks,
N.
). This just isn’t what Scrivener is designed for, and it doesn’t fit in with Scrivener’s binder paradigm. Suddenly you’d have to have a whole folder that works differently from the rest of the binder - you wouldn’t be able to drag files around inside it (since it would be synced with an external folder, and the file system does not allow arbitrary ordering) and folders within this folder would not be like regular Scrivener folders (which are really text documents and folders in one). You have to remember that, despite the folders and files metaphor, Scrivener’s binder is actually very different to a file system. It’s thus not really possible to sync one with the other without radically changing how things work.