The way I write is to do a brain dump at the start, then make pass after pass, cutting away the superfluous waffle. So, early on, I have too much text that I need to cut away.
Would it be possible for a) the little target bar that appears on the right of the footer bar to be on all the time i.e. show the project target not just for individual documents and b) have it work better for word counts over the target amount e.g. the word count is currently 2000 words but the target is 1500 words
Maybe something like the progress bar being green apart from the right end which is red i.e. over the limit (by the appropriate proportions).
Cutting text down to a certain word count is a common activity when writing so I can see this being very useful. Or perhaps these are both available now and I’ve just not found it?
I think the first one is basically available already, and the second one definitely is.
The Project Targets window can be kept up while working. This is a floating window, so it even works in Composition/Full screen. The little progress bar in the footer is for the document you are looking at or working on, exclusively, and will disappear whenever the current document has no goal. On the Mac, if you want it to show a count for a number of documents (say you have a chapter length goal but do not really care how long the individual sections are), you can apply the goal to the container and then use Scrivenings mode on the container.
Okay, for instant colour transitions: you want to turn off the “Target progress bars use smooth transition between colors” option in the Appearance preference pane. The second thing you might wish to do is set the “Midway Color” to be the same as the “Start Color” in the Target Progress Bars section in this same pane. These options are not yet implemented on Windows. With this setup, the progress bar will be whatever colour you select until it hits to 50% and 100% points, and then it will instantly snap to that colour instead of gradually fading between them.
Thanks for the feedback but I’m not sure that will get the effect I asked for.
Maybe I’m being dense but I can’t get the round target icon to appear when a folder containing documents is selected (that’s a container, right?), and I don’t know any other way to make the progress bar appear. I appreciate that I could have a floating window but I’d really prefer to use the (already existing) progress bar in the footer.
I may not have been very clear but your advice regarding the progress bar colour transitions wouldn’t give me the effect I was after i.e. the end of bar turning red when the document’s (or selected documents) target is exceeded. Imagine a rev’ counter in a car where the markings at the end of the dial are red. Maybe a bit like this:
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
That would show the word count is roughly 30% over the target
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
And that would show it’s about 50% over.
I wasn’t aware of those progress bar settings so that’s very useful to know - thanks.
By the way, I am using the Mac version of Scrivener.
The round target icon only appears when the editor is visible, and when not in scrivenings mode. So, select a folder, and then deselect what is selected in “Group Mode” in the toolbar. (Alternatively, you can set the target via the outliner.)
Ok, thanks, I’ve got that working via the outline screen (although I can’t pretend I fundamentally understand it) but to get it working, I still have to set separate targets for individual documents, correct? So, I can’t get the progress bar to always appear and measure the project target, is that right?
If so, my wish (for the wish list) is that I can be able to do that please.
Oh, and showing red in the progress bar (or some other proportional indication) when over the target amount of words.
The “Project Targets” panel is for project targets. The footer bar target is - by design - for individual documents (but if applied to a folder, then when you view the documents of that folder in scrivenings, because all document targets in scrivenings are added together, it has the effect of acting as a group target). So, that would be a no to that wish, sorry, because there is already a project targets feature.
I think the ‘over target’ progress bar would also work for normal targets as it also shows by how much you’ve exceeded your target, which should be very pleasing although perhaps you’d want a colour other than red to show it in that scenario.
