hi there,
is there a way to insert a calendar in scrivener? say to put a small monthly calendar on the right (or left) beside the page i’m writing. it would help a lot my work when i have to know “where” i am and how much time i have to use (beyond other things).
thanks
fg
You could run iCal and shrink its window then place it beside the writing window in Scrivener. It would run as a separate program but you could set up one “Calendar” for your particular project ehn choose to only show that in iCal
thanks for the suggestion.
is there any chance to get it inside scriv software?
Use Apple’s month-at-a-glance calendar widget in Dashboard. Then you can pop a month calendar up with a single key press.
–Greg
P.S. If you are unsure about enabling widgets: To install that widget, go into Dashboard, click the big Plus (+) sign at bottom left, find the Calendar widget on the list at the bottom of the screen, click it (move the resulting calendar window if you like), then click the big Times (X) sign at bottom left of the screen. Now you are good to go.
Hmmm well one way you could put a calendar inside Scrivener is to first go to iCal and fill out the calendar with everything first. Then print the calendar. In the Print Settins instead of printing out on paper you Save as PDF. Then import the PDF into the Binder (Research, split pane and there you have it. The draw back is editing the Calendar you should open iCal, edit the said calendar, save as PDF then delete the one in Scriverner and replace it with the “updated” one. This would be for “reference” really and not a good method if you are constantly editing the calendar. If you are constantly editing the calendar just use iCal in a window beside SCR or use the Widget. There is another indepth trick you can do to take a widget from Dashboard and leave it on your desktop but you would need to set your Dashboard to Debug mode using Terminal commands which is a little more in depth.
gr and wock,
thanks a lot. your suggestions are really appreciated and i i’ll use that way in the near future.
hope the next scrivener release will have a calendar as a standard binder feature, to get it as i run scriv.
thanks again.
Hi,
There is no way of opening a calendar actually within Scrivener, as Scrivener has no such feature, sorry (and it’s not something I think really belongs in Scrivener).
All the best,
Keith
hi keith,
thanks for your replay.
i’ll use the gr and wock suggestions.
I can see a place for a calendar in Scrivener.
(By the way I just got the software last week and think it’s amazing! I tell every person at the coffee shop where I write to get it. I had 120 unwieldy Word pages of random chapters lying around for years, and I decided this summer to try organize them into an actual novel. Someone told me about Scrivener and it has really helped me with the task.)
But for the book to work I need to figure out which date and day of the week each chapter takes place. The only thing I can think to do is cut and paste each of my Corkboard cards into a month view of iCal, or type the chapter names individually.
If I could drag and drop the cards into the day on a month view calendar it would give an excellent visual of my novel’s timeline.
Or is there something I’m missing?
Thanks!
SVW
SunValleyWriter, I suggest you take a look at this thread; you may find it of interest …
https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/on-scrivener-storymill-and-the-value-of-timelines/3359/1
Mark
Dear SVW,
I think what you are looking for is what a timeline application does. There are various applications out there for this sort of framing out of a time sequence. I don’t use one myself, so I cannot recommend one.
There has been a good deal of discussion on this forum about timeline apps (pros, cons, usage scenarios), and also about the possibility or value of having a timeline app in or working in conjunction with Scrivener. (Someone on this forum is right now working on a timeline application that Scrivener folks have given a great deal of input to.) Etc.
It all makes interesting reading. So, I suggest you do a forum search on the word ‘timeline’ and check it out.
Best,
Greg
P.S. I think the original poster was not looking for a timeline function of the sort you are looking for. iKlee was looking for a work calendar – something to keep his or her writing schedule on track.
Check out this post about “Having a clock in full screen trick,” here.
This post shows how to make the clock widget float on your desktop, and you could use the same technique for the calendar widget.
Once you get this trick to work, you can drag any widget back and forth between your desktop and your dashboard by simply dragging the widget with your mouse and hitting your dashboard key. This will take a second or two when you open and close Scrivener, or if you want to, you can just leave it on your desktop at all times.
Richard
hello,
i was thinking something like this (sorry to propose something different than scrivener, just to be sure to explain it)
marinersoftware.com/sitepage.php?page=87
I agree that some kind of calender could be helpful in Scrivener. I have to open a calender a lot of times at the beginning of a project to check when my characters are born and how old they are during the events in a story. Of course I can use icall (although for some reason, that program is crashing all the time about 10 seconds after opening it so I never use it), but it would be nice to be able to do this in Scrivener.
André
I believe the calendar you are seeing in those screenshots is just tagging dates on which journal entries were made (much like a calendar display on a blog might). It is a diary function–not anything that you could use to frame out a timeline of events for your characters.
A timeline application is your ticket. Honest.
–Greg
Not quite what you’re describing, but there is MagiCal. It’s accessible thru your menu bar, you can scroll thru calendars for previous and upcoming months.
There is also DesktopCalendar which places a user-configurable calendar on your desktop. It’s only the current month that’s displayed, I think. But if you’ve got Exposé shortcuts set up, then you’re just a keystroke or mouse move away.
You could probably also do the same thing via GeekTool.
thanks everyone for your help.
something inside scrivener should be the thing.
until that day i think i’ll use my paper calendar, just over my (wood) desktop. old fashioned and no virtual things.
but now its time for sand and sea happy summer to you all.
I have a relatively simple need for tracking dates in Scrivener. I would LOVE to be able to add a column to the binder view, in which I could edit anything I wanted. I would, in this case, type dates into these fields, so that I could see at a glance how time was passing in the scenes of my novel.
I think my request is not horribly complicated to program. Just allow the optional addition of a column to the right (or left, I don’t care which) of the scene/file titles, in which I can insert text. It would be nice to allow me to adjust the width of the column. {Implementation suggestion: the column is always there, but by default it is hidden from view.}
In effect, I am asking for two boxes (instead of one) in which to write the title of each scene.
I’m sure you all can think of many other uses for such a column of text.
I can’t speak for the developer, but I don’t think he’ll go for this, as adding columns to the binder is not how he’s approached any of the other requests for more info in the binder over the years.
However, you can add a custom metadata date field, then add it to the outline view next to the title along with any other metadata fields you like.
rdale,
That is the perfect solution to my problem. The outline view with my added field will give me exactly the overview I want. Thanks!!! (I’m now checking out how to do that.)
if I may summarize: I requested adding a column to the binder display. Adding a column to the outline display (which i already implmented) has the same value, and by gosh, there are all sorts of things one can do with the metadata.