I’m confused if I am doing this right. A friend and I are working on the same scrivener project using two different windows computers. If we are sharing the project using the dropbox sharing feature then I must open the project.scrivx from dropbox.
Since Scrivener opens all subsequent projects from where the last one was saved should I put all of my projects in the dropbox folder so I don’t have to navigate back to the normal location were I keep my projects? Before I had my projects stored in a separate directory.
I have Scrivener set up to make a zip backup on program close to my dropbox. My friend does the same for her projects but, of course, to her dropbox.
If open the file and make changes it gets backed up to my dropbox, if she opens the file and makes changes it gets backed up to her dropbox. The backups no longer match.
I hope I’m making myself clear, as I’m confused. I keep thinking that there must be an easier way for the two of us to work on the same project [at separate times of course].
It doesn’t actually matter where your projects are saved, you should put them where they’re convenient for you, but if you put them all in a shared dropbox, then your friend will have access to them all, so I wouldn’t do that. And, as I believe you have a “Recently opened” list in Windows, you can always open your active projects from that, no matter where they are stored on your disk.
I actually keep all my active projects in Cubby, though I have some other currently non-active ones on my HD or archived elsewhere. Any projects I’m working on with my friend are in a shared folder, the rest are in separate folders. The automatic back-ups of projects I’m working on go to Dropbox — I have both — so there are versions on two separate cloud services as well as my HD.
As for the fact that my friend’s back-ups are in a different place from mine, that doesn’t worry me; they are there in case something goes wrong somewhere, and it would be easy to determine which is the latest and open that — we use WeChat to communicate where we need information from the other, though Skype, WhatsApp or similar would be as good*. But if you are concerned, you could set up another shared folder within Dropbox where the back-ups go, or set up a joint Cubby**.
If you don’t like that, I think it best to set to back up on opening as well as on closing, as that way, your opening back-up will be the same as your friend’s closing back-up and vice-versa. Apart from that, taking a snapshot-with-title of each document as you finish working on it each time is a good practice. I don’t know if the sort of “diff” function with snapshots has come to Windows yet, but that is another way to preserve the state of the text so that it can be referred back to easily. For my collaborative process, we simply name the snapshots with our name, as they are already dated. If my friend has forgotten to do so, I take a snapshot before I change anything, giving her name.
HTH
Mr X
My friend and collaborator is normally in China, though currently in Portland, Oregon
** To me, the advantages of Cubby are that you get 5GB of space for free***, and you can designate any folder/directory on your HD, or even an external, as a Cubby, rather than having to create a single folder with subfolders as with Dropbox.
*** If you want to try it, go to cub.by/i/01_D6dC4rvl_4B and it will give me — I don’t know if it’s us — more free space.
I have a quick question about ‘cubby.’ I recently purchased an ASUS Win 8.1 tablet and had to switch my file-syncing software from SugarSync to SpiderOak because SugarSync will not sync to external or ‘docked’ drives (including microSD cards) on the ASUS tablet. SpiderOak works fine but seems to be very slow at times (compared to SugarSync). I’m interested in giving ‘cubby’ a try but the big question for me is: does cubby allow the use of external, ‘docked’, and microSD cards as sync folder locations?
If you can enlighten me, I’d be extremely grateful.
It certainly allows the use of external drives and I wouldn’t expect a problem with microSD cards, other than the caveats of using SD cards in general for such purposes. As for ‘docked’ drives, as I use a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro, I can’t help on that one.
For a while I used SpiderOak; one year the Chinese authorities decided Dropbox was a threat to national security and blocked it. Apart from the non-Mac-like interface — which I guess would play differently for a Windows user — the biggest problem I found with it was the non-automatic purging of previous versions of files, so I was continually running out of space. I liked the security aspect of SpiderOak though.
Many thanks. I appreciate the information. Regarding SpiderOak and your comments: I agree - I like the inherent security and overall design, though it almost seems needlessly complex in some areas - setting up backups on all synced machines before you can sync, etc. The only real issue I have is that it is considerably slower than other sync software I’ve used (DropBox, Syncplicity, SugarSync, etc.). I’m going to give ‘cubby’ a thorough tryout so I’ll hope for success. So far, all indications are promising.
