I am currently finding my way round Scrivener. I wonder whether this is possible, I want my research notes (pdf files) to appear in one pane of the full screen mode with the possibility of working on my drafts. However, I can’t find any way of achieving that. Is doing this possible in Scrivener?
Thanks!!
Not really. There are no panes in full screen in the first place, just the one writing view. It’s a tool mean for focusing on one single resource and pushing everything else aside. It’s probably of less use to someone relying heavily on research than say, a novelist which is going to spend the vast majority of their time just weaving stuff straight out of their head. You could try minimising the Scrivener interface itself. Everything except for the editor can be turned off. Cmd-Opt-B will toggle the Binder, Cmd-Opt-I the Inspector pane, and Cmd-Opt-T will get rid of the toolbar. The resulting window is hardly more intense than TextEdit, and you could even go further and wipe out the Header and Footer bar. Split that view in half with your PDF on one side and your text on the other, hide all of the other apps, and you are quite close to having a full screen environment. Combine this with an application like “Think” which lets you focus on only one application, and the only thing missing is the background colour swap.
What I’d do first is access View/Layout/Show Layouts… (Cmd-Shift-zero) and save your current setup. Then experiment with getting the interface as minimal as possible and once you get things the way you like it, save that as a view as well. Now you can double-click on these saved views to rapidly switch between full and minimal Scrivener states.
Thanks, Amber, for your explanation and help, it is really helpful.