How do I know which file is which?

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

I am right now doing the free trial of scrivener to see if it works for me. I love it so far, but there is one thing. I’m okay with not being able to edit the files on my (android)tablet, but I do need to be able to view them.

The problem is that all the files have numbers as file names (3.rtf, 10.rtf, 468.rft) which is completely random and confusing to me. I have a lot of texts in each folder, how can I figure out which one is the one I want to read? Is there a trick to it?
Is there a way to tell scrivener to change file name to the title it has been given in scrivener?

Also, it doesn’t seem to keep the order that I have in scrivener. That is, folders and subfolders and subsubfolders are all bunched together in Files>Docs (if I am not mistaken). With all of my folders and subfolders bunched together, I have around 500 .rtf-files completely unsorted and indistinguishable to me. Is there a way to make scrivener create folders so that the texts are sorted?

Please tell me there is a way around this!

2

This topic is a minefield, probably best avoided… but if you insist…

If you literally just want to read on the Android, you can alway compile the Scrivener project (or some portion thereof) out in Word or PDF or ePub format and read the result on the Android tablet.

Or see AmberV’s note
https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/working-on-files-outside-of-scrivener/25124/1

If you really want to get into the internals of the .rtf file naming/determination (No! Don’t! Turn away!), see Sparty’s note
https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/scrivener-for-android/17848/38

And do a search on the forums on “rtf android”, to get a feel for various folks’ experience.

The really really best/safe thing to do is get a Mac laptop and Mac version of Scrivener and use only that. Next best/safe… same with a Windows (real, not RT) laptop or tablet and the Windows version of Scrivener. Sometime, hopefully this year, the release of Scrivener for iOS (iPhone/iPad) will improve the situation somewhat… as presumably will the release of version 2 for Windows (this year or next year?). As for Android… coming… some day (next year?, year after?)…

3

Thank you for your response!

Compiling and exporting and that stuff isn’t really what I wanted to do, it isn’t practical for my needs. :frowning:

As for getting into the internals of the rtf files it seems a little complicated, like you indicate. Especially when you have so many files… I need to be able to spontaniously open the files quickly.

It seems you are right in that it is better to work on a mac. I sincerely hope they are fixing this though. A scrivener app for android shouldn’t be so hard if it is just viewing, no editing.

Do you know if this is something that’s coming soon? It’s a shame that such an awesome program becomes useless to me just for this tiny thing.

4

Not sure why compiling or exporting isn’t practical for your needs, given that “read only” is apparently sufficient. Not that hard or time consuming to do, once you’ve done it the first time. Compile or export to a format that Android apps can read, then drop into DropBox or email to yourself. But that’s your call.

A long forum thread re Scrivener for Android, as to timeframe and practicality of a “read only” Scrivener reader…
https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/scrivener-for-android/17848/1
In summary:

  • “Read only” version is not a simple brief undertaking.
  • Android is on their to do list, but no date given. If they refuse to comment at all, they catch flak. If they do comment, but refuse to discuss timeframe or date, they catch flak. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Purchase of an Android tablet (or any other currently unsupported platform) doesn’t entitle purchaser of same to anything and doesn’t make purchaser of same an expert on the market or complexity/cost/timeframe of development for same. I’m a Windows fan, but my experience with Scrivener is pushing me toward getting a Mac laptop… though I’m currently holding out for the upcoming Scrivener for iPad.

As for Scrivener becoming useless because of this tiny thing (investment in an Android device)… respectfully, you may have it wrong. Best to begin with the question of what the application and best software for that application is, then use that to drive your hardware/platform purchase, not the other way around. Android sells in large numbers, but trails as an attractive market for software developers, due to differences/incompatibilities (versions, display resolutions, etc.) and piracy. The time and money you invest in your writing is going to be far greater than the cost of the hardware and software involved. Best to select software and hardware that help rather than hinder that investment.

I could well be wrong and your mileage may well vary. Search the forums for “rtf android” and see what others experience and opinions are.

Good luck in whatever you decide.

5

With most Android devices, can’t you even just plug the device in and export straight to it like a disk? I thought only iOS people had to pull their hair out e-mailing data to themselves and hoping that their preferred editor has a hook to request loading the data out of e-mail attachments (since there is no global file system for stuff to load files out of. :slight_smile:

I know that the Kindle Fire isn’t “pure Android”, but one thing I like about it and the other Kindles is that I can compile Mobi files straight onto the device for preview.

6

@SpringfieldMH
I’m not sure, maybe I have misunderstood what compiling or exporting is so maybe it isn’t so impractical.
My problem first of all is not that I can’t view the files on my Android. I can read them just fine. The problem is that I don’t know which one is which.

Compiling is not an option as it is thousands of pages, out of order and I would find it difficult to find the part I want in one giant file.

As for exporting, I edit my files constantly, several of them, several times a day. So I assume I would have to export the files everytime I do some editing to get the latest version. It’s fine if it’s once, but doing it everyday, several times a day, seems a hassle. Perhaps there is a feature that makes scrivener automatically export all of your files everytime you save your project, with the title as file name?

There is also the problem of having thousands of files unsorted in one folder. Is it possible to ask Scrivener to create the folders and subfolders too, when you export all the files? Because the title alone isn’t enough for me to find stuff, the title just makes it slightly less difficult than a number.

I have seen that you can find the file name in the .scrivx file, except that, as I said, it’s thousands of file names mixed in with a bunch of coding, so it would take me forever to figure out which files is which.

I am sorry if you felt I was complaining in regards to why there is no android app for viewing. I just meant that it was better than trying to create a sync function for android, which seems complicated and potentially buggy. Regardless of what word processer I use, I never edit on another os, because you can never trust it (in my horrifying experience). So all I need from the app is for it to translate the information in the scriv file that tells you which file is which.

I wish that I could buy new hardware simply for the sake of scrivener, like you suggest. But I am not that rich, and scrivener is not that big part of my life. I have other things to do to and writing is not my livelihood. I have used both ios and win8 hardware, but I had to stop exactly because it would not allow me several of my most essential needs. It seems there is a downside to all of them unfortunately.

7

I’m not sure if there is a misunderstanding here. I have no problem getting the files to my android tablet. They are right there, in my Dropbox folder. Just click and open. But if I have a thousand files, all labeled with (to me) random numbers, how do I know which one is which?

I would really like someone to explain one thing to me, if it’s possible. It seems everyone thinks the issue is with Android, not with the fact that I am using a Windows version of Scrivener. So can you tell me what non-Android users do? How do people who have a Windows version of Scrivener, but an ipad, do when they want to find a file in Dropbox? Is there something an Ipad or Windows8 can do to figure out which file is which? I would really like to know. My boyfriend has an Ipad, so if the Android tablet is the only problem, perhaps I’ll just borrow his.

Thank you!

8

The problem isn’t Android or iOS… it’s their lack of the Scrivener application.

A Scrivener project is essentially a database constructed out of a structure of folders and files, whose physical details and appearance (what the operating system sees) differ from its internal logical appearance (what the user sees). There are lots of Android and iOS apps that can read an rtf file and even one or a few that can apparently edit individual rtf files in such a manner that they retain compatibility and can be synced back into Scrivener (only Textilus for iOS, only back into Scrivener for Mac, I think, and even that sounds to be a bit adventurous). But none of them, as far as I know from following the forums, are capable of dealing with the Scrivener project as a whole, so as to present the individual documents (rtf files) with meaningful names, within logically organized meaningfully named folders.

Compile gets around that by lumping them all together into a single readable file. There are various factors that may rule that out… compile times, building a table of contents to facilitate navigating the result, search times in the resulting file, etc… but it may be worth trying at least once.

WHAT MIGHT WORK for this situation is exporting, as it retains the logical structure (folder structure you see inside the project in Scrivener) and meaningful names (folder and document names you see in Scrivener). In Scrivener, I just did an export of my entire Draft folder (115,000 words in several hundred documents). The result, in the Windows file system, was a logically organized meaningfully named folder/file system that looks the same as inside Scrivener. CAUTION… depending on the length of names used for folders and documents within Scrivener, exported material may wind up with longer path/file names than Windows, Android, etc. can handle. In my case, a few items failed to export (perhaps due to that) and later I was unable to do a regular delete of them because of their overly long path/file names. (I tend to use long verbose folder and document names in Scrivener.)

Hope that’s of some assistance.

And with that, think it’s best I shut up and defer to the L&L Scrivener folks.

9

That’s interesting. I didn’t realize that was possible. I just did that with my current project. It does seem to offer another backup-like option that can be read and managed intelligibly outside of Scrivener. The one downside is actually a follow-on from the upside: The folders and files all have real names, but they can only be sorted according to the OS’s sort options, which will never be the same as their natural order in the project – UNLESS: If there was an export option to pre-pend a number to the start of each folder and file, then sorting in “alphabetical” order would give you a structure that was exactly the same as the binder at the time of export.

If I understand what the OP is looking for, then wouldn’t that solve the problem, assuming they would be able to locate the desired file within the natural order of the project.

Seeing my project distributed into numerically named files was a little disconcerting at first, mostly because it was unexpected – though I didn’t have any particular expectations at the time. In fact, it makes sense that it works that way. It lets you change the title of the file within the project while letting Scrivener continue to manage it as the same ID number. I’m not certain, but I would think that this allows Scrivener to be as UNproprietary with respect to the file format as possible, while being free to manage the files according to whatever scheme the designers find best. Once I realized that under the worst case scenario I would still have direct and easy access to readable versions of my files – no matter how many of them there might be or what order they might be in, I’d still be able to open and piece them together with relative ease – I stopped worrying about what the project folder/file structure looked like on the drive, since what mattered was the binder structure within the project. And even the largest project should still only take a matter of seconds to fully compile, once it’s set up.

It’s as though Scrivener is managing my content, yet the content itself hasn’t been “Scrivenerized” inside a proprietary file format.

Scrivener is often compared to a Photoshop program for writers, and it being a studio-like environment, it’s not hard to see why. But it reminds me more of a program like Dreamweaver, in that it’s a top-level environment for managing relationships between what are still, in essence, independent files in a common file format. It’s likewise similar to audio DAWs and video production software in the same way, being able to slice and dice and create relationships between files that are always still outside and independent of the development environment itself. There’s something reassuring about that.