Better Footnote Integration

[xiamenese]

@suavito

Because we spend so much time on the footnotes, the “pop out” screen on the right that appears and disappears as we add footnotes is frustrating.

Like I said, I prefer having the footnotes at the side and not at the bottom. But I would be frustrated too if the side bar appears and then disappears again. {INLINE FOOTNOTE: This is by the way one of the reasons I would never be able to work with Ulysses. It pops up and then hides the footnotes (and pictures) to not “distract” the user. Users who get distracted by their own content are a different brand of users than me.}

But Scrivener does not hide the footnotes, either in standard or in Scrivenings mode. Just turn the Inspector visible and voilà! They are always there just not at the bottom. (EDIT: If you are using the Inspector for footnotes only, that is.)

Even on my 13" MBA I have the inspector visible all the time, together with the binder and two editors … not a problem, and no great zooming of the text necessary even with 70 year-old eyes. The inspector normally shows the note pane for me; only occasionally I switch to view a snapshot of an earlier stage of the text.

@suavito

Moving footnotes is different but not difficult: Just drag the footnote on another word and that’s it. If you want to link it to more than just one word highlight these words first and then drop the footnote onto it. The caveat is not to delete the word(s) the footnote is linked to as there is no invisible footnote anchor behind it. The word is the anchor.

Actually, the anchor doesn’t have to be the word. As the OP is on Mac, turn on “Project > Text Preferences… > Use Footnote Marker” and choose whatever character suits; the default is *, which is what I’m happy with. Then you can just select the marker, pick it up and move it anywhere else in the text. I haven’t tried copying and pasting, but it’s worth a try.

@suavito

And one last word to references: I really like the combo of Scrivener and Bookends. Hit the shortcut for a footnote in Scrivener, hit cmd-y to open Bookends, choose the reference, hit cmd-y once again and your are back in the footnote to add a page number.

If only the collaboration with Mellel worked better. Both Mellel and Scrivener work extremely well with Bookends, but you can not just exchange structured rich text between Scrivener and Mellel. Which is sad because Mellel is one of the programs that can handle two different streams of notes like Scrivener.

I agree with you on Bookends. Although I use Nisus Writer Pro in preference to Mellel—and I don’t really need two note streams so don’t know if it’s possible in NWP, though it might be—there shouldn’t be any problem opening an RTF created by Scrivener in Mellel. I don’t have Mellel installed on this computer at the moment, so can’t check, but I’m sure there are other Scrivenerati happily working in conjunction with Mellel.

It’s perfectly possible to set up Scrivener to compile an RTF using fonts or font sizes for headings and colour variations for body paragraphs like block quotes, etc., and then in Mellel with a few minutes convert them into proper structured styles. Have a look at

Mellel and Scrivener Workflow Suggestions, Please

If you use Mellel with Scrivener, I would very much appreciate your suggestions, tips, and warnings for best use of the two apps in concert. I am a long-time user and fan of Scrivener (put me in the evangelist category!), but have only dabbled a bit with Mellel. I feel awfully attracted to Mellel’s implementation of styles across documents. (Darn you, Pages!) Many thanks for your help! Don

and

Mac software for managing 10+ cross-referenced books?

Years ago I drafted several heavily-formatted and cross-referenced technical books in FrameMaker 6 on a Mac running OS 9. Then Adobe discontinued the Mac version of FrameMaker. Now I’m about to resurrect and publish the old books and write some new ones (drafting them in Scrivener, of course; Scrivener rocks!!). While I have an old Mac that will run FrameMaker, Classic doesn’t support my modern productivity tools such as Typinator and Dragon Dictate. Which means my FrameMaker workflow is… probl…

Mr X

EDIT: Scrivener v. 3, due out whenever, will apparently have proper styles, so it will be even easier to use Mellel/NWP/Word in conjunction with it.