I am new to Scrivener, have been using it quite intensely the last few days, working on a complex historical/legal project. Perhaps the features I would like to see are already implemented and I don’t know about them.
It would be nice to be able to create aliases for documents, so that the same document could appear at different places in an outline.
I would like it if there were a clearer indication of which pane in split-pane view is currently active. I find myself often clicking to open something and discovering that the pane I thought was active wasn’t – this is admittedly my fault, but if there were a clearer indication of the active pane (say with a color symbolization of some sort, e.g., a little icon) I think it would be better. Thanks.
(2) is something that you’ll probably get better at as you work in the application more and more. The active split is indicated by underlining the title. This was chosen because it is obvious if you know where to look, while at the same time not being overly obvious to those who use this application every day. You want to strike a balance between providing information and not providing information overload. That is part of what makes an application pleasing to work with for hours.
Re the underlining on the active pane – thanks, I’m sure that’s well-documented, it’s a great help to be conscious of it. I think that’s perfectly adequate as a marker, btw.
Yep, as already stated, the underline shows the focus. As for aliases, I’m afraid that is unlikely to make it into any 1.x release. Scrivener was never meant as a full outliner or Finder-like app; it was meant for creating a clearly structured document for exporting along with associated research, so each document can only exist at one place in the binder. In the current implementation, there would be no way to support aliases.
You can’t create an alias, but you can create a duplicate of a document. Just select it and then Cmd-D. The new document is docname-1 in the Binder, and you may place it anywhere. I do this when I have a document that I want to revise but also keep a copy of the original, unrevised form, and then see them both in a split view.
In the DevonTech products, it’s possible to create a file and then a “replicant” of it. It’s not a duplicate but a sort of clone: revise one version, and the other picks up those revisions, too.
There aren’t aliases but perhaps references will be suitable? In the inspector, one of the possible views at the bottom is “references” (along with notes and keywords), where you can link to either a file or website that isn’t in your project, OR to a document that is in your project.
It won’t show up in multiple places in the binder, but it will still be associated with particular parts of your document, as many of them as you like.