Folder-wide document references & total targets

[captaintrips]

Hello there, new user here trying to decide whether to purchase or not. I tried finding the answers to these questions in the FAQ and forums, but wasn’t successful:

1. As I understand it, it is possible to add references via the inspector’s references pane for either the current document or the entire project, but is it possible to add references for a folder such that (only) the texts in that folder have ‘access’ to them?

2. Is it possible to manually set a total character target for a folder and have the progress shown be based on the sum of characters of that folder’s texts (without needing to set targets for each)?

Some background (in case I’m going about this in the wrong way entirely): I know how approximately how long each chapter of my master’s thesis should be, and which references I will use for each, but am not at the point where I can create all the texts I’ll end up needing. Currently, I have one folder for each chapter and several preliminary texts in each. It would be nice to have easy access to the references I’ll need for that entire chapter from each text without having to re-add them every time I create a new one. Similarly, because I know about how many characters I need to write for each chapter, it would be nice if I could easily see my total progress for each one without needing to first decide what percentage of the whole each text in the chapter should make up. Thanks!

[AmberV]

On the first question: there isn’t a way of displaying another item’s References in the panel for the item you are viewing. It’s pretty easy to get that info if you need it though. The View/Go To/Enclosing Group command (Ctrl-Cmd-R) directly selects the parent folder (or chapter folder as it sounds, in your case). When you are done, just click the “back” button in the editor, or use Cmd-[ like in a web browser. For cases where your chapters are more involved, and may have multiple levels of indent (Enclosing Group only walks up the hierarchy one at a time), if you click on the editor bar icon you’ll see a Path menu that lets you jump directly to any level of hiearachy “above” the current item. As before, a simple single “Back” will return you to where you were once you’re done.

Another trick: keep the current chapter you are working on loaded, perhaps as a corkboard or outline view, in the secondary split. Now you can just click over there (so long as no cards or rows are selected) to view the chapter meta-data.

Is it possible to manually set a total character target for a folder and have the progress shown be based on the sum of characters of that folder’s texts (without needing to set targets for each)?

You’ll find the answer to that in §21.3, Goals and Statistics Tracking Tools, pg. 307 of the user manual PDF:

@User Manual

Tracking a group of documents together as a cohesive unit, like say a sequence of sections and sub-sections within a chapter folder, tracking the latter folder as what you want to have a goal on, you can use the Outliner to view the Total Progress and Total Goal columns, to aggregate statistics for group of documents. Setting a target on the chapter folder will, even if it has no text itself, work as an aggregate since it will be included in the totals. Thus all words written to any subdocuments of it will count toward that aggregate goal, even if they themselves do not have goals. Targets for folders can be easily set by using the Target column.

There may be some concepts in there you haven’t come across yet, let me know if you have any questions.

[captaintrips]

Thanks to your insights and more experience using the program, I’ve found a workflow that’s working quite well for me. Unless I run into any unexpected dealbreakers, I’ll definitely be purchasing at the end of my trial period. Many thanks!