[Scriv 1.9.0 (trial); Win7 Pro, x64; 8GB.]
Here’s what it looks to me that I have to do:
As a newbie-to-be, conceptually, in order to move my current work and body of source documents into Scrivener:
- I would import the corpus of source notes/thoughts/documents to a Research folder. (Then flag them as one.)
- Then import the notes/…/documents of a work-in-progress (WIP) to the same Research folder; flag them differently.
- Then, selecting those WIP documents, drag-establish their references in the WIP’s (new) Collection.
- Then import a second WIP to Research, flag its documents uniquely, reference them into another new collection.
The source documents are variously used in neither/one/both of the WIPs: Those source documents that ARE actually used in one or both WIPs now have also one or two duplicates in the Research folder, each duplicate being referenced in one of the WIPs. At this point, there is little space or editing time saved from my working in my current outliner.
Sooo, I sort the Research folder so that the source documents and their duplications are stacked together (showing me the source documents that are used in a WIP never/once/twice).
A. Those source documents that are never (not yet) used, no duplicates, I deflag (for clarity’s sake) — done.
B. Those used only once (therefore having one duplication), I delete the source document, leaving the one WIP-referenced document as the replacement source document, deflag it — done.
(‘Simple’ so far, though potentially grunt-work of some duration.)
C. And for those SOURCE documents used in both WIPs, I drag references from them to each of the two collections as ‘indicated’ by their duplicates and then delete those duplicates (which deletion I expect will delete their earlier step 3-4 references in each of the two WIP collections).
(Throughout, I will likely use a split editor to keep the documents of both the Research folder & the collections in view, in outline. I have found in testing that working in the Binder’s view of a Research section that has a large body of individual documents will stall Scrivener. (I’ll be spending little time directly in the Binder’s Research section.))
Stated another way:
I import to a Reference folder a corpus of (source) documents A, B, then flag them as a single group.
I import to the same Reference folder the WIP1 that includes a copy of ‘A’, A1, and a new document ‘C’ that I intend for the corpus. (I flag them similarly to but separately from the imported corpus group.)
I likewise import WIP2 that has copies of both ‘A’ (A2) and ‘B’ (B2), and flag them as their own group.
Then, In order to bring each copy of each document together for assigning them to WIP-oriented collections, …
I sort the entire folder’s documents so that I get, in sequence,
A, A1, A2, B, B2, C.
I unflag the unmatched documents in the whole sorted body of documents: e.g. X, Y, Z, also in the corpus.
I unflag also the unmatched ‘C’, so it becomes processed into the corpus along with X-Z.
I drag-reference ‘A’ into the collection for WIP1 and into the WIP2-collection, then unflag it (or later, with all others) and delete A1, A2.
I ‘reference’ ‘B’ (or B2) to the WIP2-collection; delete the unreferenced ‘B’ (B2) document, unflag the referenced copy (or otherwise).
And so on until the collections are built and there are no duplicates in the corpus. (Of course, group drag-references, deletions, unflagging, will be used as often as possible.)
Why is this a ‘challenge’ for me?
A strength I see in Scrivener is that several WIPs can ‘include’ the same document, nearly entirely virtually, saving me space and much repeat editing in multiple texts — But in my ‘real’ life, my corpora number five, not one, the WIPs number about 30, not two, and the source documents I use throughout various WIPs actually number in the easily-several-hundreds (thousand+?). (The example above is a simplification for clarity’s sake.)
As noted, grunt-work of some duration.
I won’t lay out the very manual step-by-step I’ve cobbled together for actually doing this: For now, roughly enough said.
Is this the ‘easiest’ process for my setting up virtualized collections for my immigrant Scrivener source material and WIPs?