If the app would have worked with outside programs (i.e. Scrivener), I would have bought it, but sadly it doesn’t. It did make me think how powerful such word tools would make Scrivener. Even if the functionality was an add/on, or external app that worked with scrivener, I would buy it in a second. Has anyone seen software that might do this? If Scrivener would eventually add some tools like this I would gladly pay a hefty price for it .
Well, I have had WordWeb on Taskbar and it has worked with almost every program I use. I just tried with Scrivener .23 and yep, it works. When I highlight the word in Scrivener and then click on my WordWeb icon, WordWeb pops up with the highlighted word already in it, giving me a definition and thesarus at my finger tips.
Dan, come over to the MAC side.
It has system-wide Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Wikipedia.
Works in every single app you have installed.
And…our Scrivener is not in beta!
It’s not that the program just has a dictionary and a thesaurus, I already have a great free app that works in all my programs to give me that, it’s the ‘Word Histories’ feature I’m talking about that left me in awe. If you haven’t done so, go watch the demo video I posted a link to and see what I mean. It’s amazing. It’s the powerful searching tools I’d like to see somehow work/integrated with Scrivener, not just a simple dictionary/thesaurus which I already have. If the company produced a standalone version of those tools that worked with other programs I’d buy it in a heartbeat. As it is. I may still but it anyway and just use it separately as I write.
I want to be impressed, but I’m still struggling over “Arc Dee Triumph” and how “bureaucratize” is a rhyme for “night”…“You will notice some unusual entries that you will not find in other writing dictionaries”–I certainly agree with that statement! Also I haven’t actually figured out what the program does. I gather that it’s more than all the reference material, but I suppose I have to watch a different demo for that.
Anyway, aside from double-clicking to bring the word/phrase directly into your current project, it seems completely plausible to use it as a stand-alone application alongside Scrivener. Presumably when you’re doing all that word-refining work you’re in more of an editing mode, so moving back and forth wouldn’t really break a flow. (At any rate, for myself, I would lose momentum just as much by looking all that up within the same program as without; I usually don’t use even a basic dictionary during a good drafting session because experience has shown me that breaking mid-stride to check a word will completely make me forget the next sentence I had in mind. If I know when I’m writing that the word I really want isn’t coming, I just mark it up with a highlight or annotation so I can easily find it later and fix it.) I imagine if there’s a lot more to it beyond the references, it might be hefty to have around just for that, but it really seems to tout that over the word processor aspects, so I don’t think it’d be too unreasonable if you want to have access to those sort of tools.
I believe the purpose of the software is for songwriting/poetry. Many of the functions would be useless for me as well (rhyme, phrases, etc…), and as a writing program, it’s barely a step above notepad. But the ability to easily filter detailed dictionary search results such as close, near, far adjectives, verbs etc is pretty cool.
I also don’t use such tools when writing out my first draft, but on later revisions, I would sometimes like to be able to get some fresh ideas on word choices and it would be nice to do that within Scrivener (through an external app or built in tools). MW is way too expensive for just the limited features I would probably use of it, but I would like to see some similar options in other dictionary/thesearus programs.
Oh, absolutely, I didn’t mean to suggest the tools wouldn’t be useful, just that for myself I’d envision them coming during a slower-paced phase, if you will, rather than the mad first draft, so working with an external program like that wouldn’t really interfere with my process–I guess having it integrated could be nice, but I don’t really see what you gain by that other than the ability to double-click and insert the phrase, and copy/paste doesn’t seem that hard (assuming you can copy/paste). So if the tools were valuable, not having “integration” with Scrivener didn’t seem like a huge deterrent to me.
However, I just looked at the licensing page and wow. I see what you’re saying.
Along these same lines, one of the features that I love in Word is the Autocorrect and the user’s ability to program in words the way the user mispells them. I find this very useful when I am trying to get words on the page as I have not mastered the art of letting mispelled words reside in my document. Also, it helps with names that I have to repeatedly type (i.e., Rachel, my current main character… comes out Rahcel constantly) or names that are made up (fantasy writers know what I mean). As I am in the stoneage (i.e. Windows user) and have not seen the Mac version, I do not know if this is already a feature… or if I missed it on the Windows version. Thanks.
thanks. Still finding out all of the cool features and these forums make it easier to learn about them. I can once again go back to my lazy ways of not capitalizing and gross mispelling.
I have just started using Scrivener in the past two weeks. I am absolutely loving it, even if it is in Beta version. The dictionary and thesaurus tool would be wonderful, the thesaurus particularly. However, it is not ruining my fun. I had downloaded your product and then went to a librarian’s conference. One of the first writer’s workshops I went to had a writer that mentioned Scrivener. What a coincidence! He loved it as well, although he used the Mac version. Thanks for all your hard work!
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