Discord’s always tracked Scrivener activity, but it’s old overlay didn’t hook into it. It’s new one does, and allows you to chat and receive notifications in Scrivener’s top right corner. I’m wondering if such a thing has any effect on Scrivener itself. Is it just the graphics-level oddity it seems to be?
The way I understand it, these overlays are typically accomplished by inserting themselves into the target software’s graphics output solely. So it’s happening somewhere in the region of standardised code (like DirectX) that turns a bunch of data into the visual stuff you see on your screen. Or in other words, this is happening outside of Scrivener, within its interface with your screen, and thus can at most only modify what you see—which is how it is showing a widget.
It’s not going to mess with the underlying functioning and logic of the program, at a level that might introduce some risk. At most I suppose we could say it might impact stability, and maybe steal a shortcut (like Shift+Tab).
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Thank you. It’s good to know that it’s unlikely to cause serious issues. I’ve been observing it for myself in the meantime, and I’m going to turn it off anyway. The overlay resizes itself to fit into Scrivener’s dropdown menus, so if I receive a notification while one’s open, it blocks my vision for a while. It doesn’t take forever, but it feels like it does. Funny, but a bit frustrating.
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