During the recent years I’ve used Scrivener nearly exclusively for technical projects. I’ve also written a long (published) essay with it, and it was the only tool that could let me complete this complex work with ease, speed and clarity.
But for narrative, new essays, casual ideas, notes from the library, workshops or conferences, I’ve used Ulysses. Two are the reasons:
- Immediate availability of the same texts on all my devices (take notes with the iPhone, revise on the Mac).
- A cleaner UI, with just the bare minimum of elements and icons, not going over my text.
There is a third element, that I considered a negative issue, but have started to appreciate:
- All my writings are always with me in the consolidated text Library.
I’m still ambivalent on this latter point. There are times when I want to check what I wrote on an older essay. At the same time, I keep with me my old university essays or resumes, that might be a useful reference, or just elements increasing entropy in my writing space.
I could clean up my space by dragging these elements out of the iCloud section in Ulysses on the Mac. These would then be only stored on a folder on my main Mac, and disappear from the iPad or iPhone. Having them back there would be just a matter of dragging them again to the iCloud section.
Scrivener is based on a single project. This increases the focus, so much that Ulysses had to add the Project section, hiding anything else but the project you are working on. As if you were working in Scrivener.
Can the Library be replicated by the operating system? In Ulysses, you accept that all your texts are in a hidden area in your drive, that is always subject to changes by the iCloud engine. With Scrivener, you could do the same by moving everything to Dropbox. It would even be clearer, since all your documents would still be accessible from the Finder or Dropbox app, instead of being buried in some system folder.
Scrivener can make backups of the current project where you want. So, in any case you will have a fresh version of the project on your main drive, in case Dropbox decided to do on its own mind and mess the things up. Replicating the Library feature of Ulysses in Scrivener can be done with this trick, and will get you both a synchronized text library and accessible backups wherever you want.
- Advantage: Scrivener files in Dropbox are more directly accessible than Ulysses files in iCloud.
- Disadvantage: If you are working with Apple devices, Dropbox is a lot more expensive and limiting than iCloud. And since you already use iCloud for most of the other things, it would be an additional subscription. And a very expensive one.
As much as I like Scrivener on the Mac, I really can’t gel with the iPad version. It is not unusable, but I just don’t like it. Two are the reasons:
- Synching is not immediate, but has to be prepared and triggered by a command.
- The UI is too full of icons, and a real full-screen mode is missing.
So, I’m on the fence, with a strong desire to only use Scrivener, but with still some doubts on how and if I can really do it. The new L&L app, in case it can easily integrate with Scrivener, is obviously an additional variable that I’ve not yet explored in depth.
Paolo
