Dissapointed with Revision Mode

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

The Revision Mode is a huge downfall for Scrivener. I see no logical way to edit my documents cleanly. It should function like Microsoft Word’s revision mode. I mean, rewriting is more than half the process of good writing. How is my Editor and Alpha reader suppose to make edits without deleting the old text? How can they add in changes, and I easily accept or reject the changes. In Scrivener, it just adds text in with different color. How is that suppose to help for rewriting?

In MS Word, it adds text in with with the option of accepting or rejecting. It also uses a strikethrough of deleted text, without actually deleting the text; then I have the option of accepting or rejecting.

The revision mode is a huge disappointment :frowning: :angry: I cannot buy this product with revisions this difficult. So, what I have to do now is copy and paste each chapter, place them in MS Word or Pages, use their revision mode, copy the finish text back into scrivener, reformat everything, then compile. Then, if I find more mistakes or my editor wants to look at it again, I have to repeat the process all over again. Please guide me if I’m missing something.

2

There are many major differences between Word and Scrivener, but one not-insignificant one is that MS Word is written by a vast team of people working for a multimillion-pound corporation and Scrivener is written by… me. :slight_smile: I’m sorry you find revision mode disappointing, but it isn’t intended to be a full track changes feature, and nowhere do we claim it is. It’s a simple way of adding revisions - it is the same as Final Draft’s “revision mode”, in fact. There is also the snapshot “Compare” feature that allows you to see the differences between drafts. But Scrivener isn’t for everyone, and I wish you all the best even though it doesn’t suit you.

3

Several questions come to mind:

  1. Are Editor and Alpha reader one person, or two? You write “is” and then “they.”
  2. You write “In Scrivener, it just…” What is “it” in Scrivener which adds text?
  3. Have you noticed Format > Font > Strikethrough, which does that Word trick you so admire?
  4. Text added in a different color stands out. Is that not a convenience?

I think, if you do indeed

you are making life needlessly difficult.

But perhaps I misread your complaint.

ps

4

Here’s how I see it.

Scrivener’s revision mode is for you, when you’re writing.

Once you compile it for delivery (you do compile, don’t you, rather than copy and paste?) it stays in Word, is commented/edited in Word, those comments and edits are acted on or not in Word and Scrivener’s task is done.

It’s a writing tool. Collaborative revising and editing is a different part of the process.

But I, too, am sorry you’re disappointed. I mean that’s just awful.

5

Or you could compile to Word, send to your alpha-reader/editor/who-ever then re-import their versions with comments back into Scriv for further revision/rewriting.

Personally, I liked Scriv’s revision mode. It took me a little while to get used to the differences from Word’s track changes, but in the end I preferred it.

6

You do have to copy & paste if you want to make use of snapshots to illustrate changes in text, since there’s no automatic way to re-import the text.

It might be nice, for version 3, if there was a way to put some kind of marker (one that’s invisible to most editors, perhaps?) that can identify what scrivener document certain text came from in an imported document. It could identify internally the document 37.rtf as the source for a section of the document, and then automatically take a snapshot of 37 and then replace it’s text with the new version’s text. That would certainly aid in the round-trip that some people want to maintain when working with editors and proof-readers, even if you had to first use Word to accept suggested changes.