How can I integrate Scapple to Scrivener?

Scapple
,
1

It would be very useful to me.
I use Scrivener and love it, I thought I’d integrate it if possible.
Tnx

2

I would love to have this be able to integrate. It is a fun and useful tool. I hope it comes in the future

3

What do you mean by ‘integrate’?

It’s just like any other mind mapping tool - export as a png and simply drag and drop into Scrivener ¯_(ツ)_/¯

4

Here’s how I wish to see it integrates.

  1. When I finished my diagramming/mindmapping in scrapple, I could “send it to project” of my choosing in scrivener the same way I do with Scrivener’s Scratch Pad note function.
  2. When the scapple project got updated ie. revised with new objects and/ or connections, the imported scapple file in Scrivener gets updated there as well without needing to re-import into the project again.
  3. In the scapple note object, I wish there’s an ability to create note within the note. (see the same idea from MindNode (User Guide<!-- --> - MindNode) - and when you export this or drag this over to Scrivener, your scapple note becomes a title and the new “nested note” becomes a body of a note in scrivener’s object.

This way you make deeper and more meaningful integration between the two apps.

A.

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5

Hi, old thread… Anyway, for (1) and (2), Open Inspector of the text you are working with and which you want link to a Scapple mind map. In Bookmarks, select Document Bookmarks (click on down arrow). Click on the three dots to open a drop-down menu and select “Add External File Bookmark…”. Find and select your Scapple file (.scap extension). When you select the bookmark, the three-dot menu provides now you new functions to open the file’s location or, better still, to “Open in External Editor” = Scapple. The same would happen if you click on the link, which is below the Scapple icon on the display area below the bookmark items. I hope this allows you to have the integration as required in (1) and (2) albeit not exactly as you described it. For requirement (3) I have no clue, sorry.

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6

Hi Canne,

Appreciate your response.
Thanks for your time.

A.

7

And if you aren’t using bookmarks (as you speak of importing again to update), there is a Navigate ▸ Open ▸ in External Editor menu command and keyboard shortcut, for resources stored in the binder. That of course works for anything you import into a project, that Scrivener itself cannot edit, not just Scapple files.

As for the MindNode bit, I don’t fully understand that one. If Scapple was a hierarchical outliner like MindNode, and you put notes nested beneath other notes, then the correct way to import that into Scrivener would be to preserve that outline precisely, and have one text item nested beneath the other text item. Importing an outline into a dedicated outliner as something other than an outline would be very strange to me.[1]

But I might be misunderstanding, and you are thinking of this as something other than outlining, something more like notes having a notes field of some sort.

Hi, old thread…

Yeah, but better than starting a new one for the same exact thing, resulting in issues like the second linked thread above, where you have bits of the same conversation spread out over many multiple threads.

  1. Which incidentally is what will happen if you use Background Shapes in Scapple, to organise groups of notes together, and then export the board as an OPML file and drop that into Scrivener. That’s the closest Scapple gets to hierarchy right there; an assumption in an export format that naturally works with hierarchy. Some mind-mapping programs, like FreePlane, have a way of adding extended notes to a headline in the tree—and that definitely would make sense to import as text content to the titled item, in Scrivener. ↩︎

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