Hello, I’m a new user, and I worked my way through the tutorial. It wasn’t easy. However, if Scrivener does what I think it might, I believe the steep learning curve might be worth it.
Here is my first knuckle buster: I thought I learned that in Scrivener mode, you could see figures and images in-line with the text copy. My writing helps people visualize things, so seen the drawings is important, and helps me “hold the context” in the writing.
I have imported the images successfully (mostly just small PNG image files). You can see them when you open the media item in the binder.
I sequenced an image between text items in the binder (e.g., after the words “Figure 1” and before the paragraph describing the point I’m trying to make).
Then, I view the sequence in “Scrivener mode.” Unfortunately the image does not appear.
That is disappointing. What is the point of having and including image files in Scrivener if you can’t actually see them in the material you are working on. I’ve got to be missing something. I looked up in the PDF help manual, but found nothing useful. Can you tell me what am I missing?
Pardon if I’m not following what your intention is for these images, but the terminology you are using to describe them sounds to me as though these are draft images—they are meant to be a part of the end product itself in the way that one might flip pages through a book and see an illustration with “Figure 1: This it the caption” beneath it, and so forth.
If that is the case, then you should be dragging the graphics into the text where you want them to appear, and there should be no problem viewing them in Scrivenings view. It almost sounds to me as though you have a part of the section of text up to the figure, then a cut, a PNG file in the binder, and then another text file beneath that that starts off “Figure 1…”. You can do that if you want. If you want to put a different label to your figures so that they are easy to find later on, that’s perfectly valid and some people do cut tables and other such elements into their own documents like that. However since you can’t have bare pictures in the Draft folder anyway, you would need to put the PNG into a text document in the Draft area, sandwiched between the two other documents that make up this section, around the figure.
Like I say, most people will just drop the figure into the text file where it should appear, though. I’d really only encourage these other workflows in very specific cases where someone needs to be able to have rapid access to all figures in the book and so on.
So, the secondary problem with what it sounds like you are describing, then, is that your draft isn’t actually in the Draft folder! That will cause you problems later on when you try and compile the book together into single word processor file (or whatever you are making). The Draft folder is what Scrivener uses to compile, so if your book is all located outside of it (presumably, so as to allow bare images to be inserted in the Binder) then nothing will compile.
OK, that is very helpful. You are right on both counts.
I will correct my ways
… and also I’ll hope you guys are collecting data that says your tutorials (and lack of Windows videos) are kind of getting in the way of customers being able to enjoy the coolness of Scrivener.
The lack of videos featuring the Windows version is something we are well aware of and working to fix. These things take a lot of effort to put together and given we don’t have time to have someone work exclusively on them, it takes a while. But we’re working on it.
Was the interactive tutorial found in the software not to your liking, then?
I have found a LOT (really a lot) of windows Scrivener tutorials from links on the Scrivener Facebook page. Though they are done by users and not literature & latte, they are generally excellent. I found David Hewson via the Scrivener Facebook. He has several tutorials on Vimeo for both WIN and MAC
There are many others.
No, I did not enjoy going through it. I would not call it interactive at all. It was just laborious reading, follow the instructions, come back to the same place, go on to the next section. Not fun.
I recognize a certain amount of work will be required. But I missed some barn doors.
For example, I was told I should be doing everything in “the draft folder.” Now that I’m back working on my book project, I see that my project doesn’t have a draft folder for some reason. Don’t know how that happened. I guess I’ll have to start over or try to add one and see if that works.
It is impossible for a project to not have a draft folder, what you might have done is started the new project with a template that has renamed the draft folder to something else. You can rename “Draft” to whatever you want.
I’m confused, the “follow the instructions” part is the interactive part. When it asks you to do something, like click on a folder and switch of corkboard view, that is interacting with the software. But I suppose if the writing style was “laborious” to read that might sour the whole thing for you. Most of the feedback we get on the tutorial is quite positive. People often go out of their way to praise it and wish other software had as nice an exhaustive a starting resource. Of course we’re all different, so I’m sorry it didn’t work out well for you, but there are lots of blogs out there these days, lots of video casts, so hopefully you can find something that works good for you.
Yes, I think that is what happened. I opened up a non-fiction template, and it had a “Manuscript” folder, which I had no way of knowing was actually a “Draft” folder. It looks the same as all the other folders, after all. And, there was no index in the help files, so … Being a newbie, I had little choice but to follow exactly the words you said, and so got (slightly) confused. I figured it out with some experimentation.
As far as “interactive” - to me that meant the system would present some kind of audio-visual media. I expected a recording. perhaps of someone reading the tutorial, and then moving what looks like a mouse pointer to the element they wanted me to click on or something. I managed the development of a software product for a sales training company I worked for once. The entire budget had to go to the developers for the code, so I had to create all the documentation, help files, and a training manual myself. I came up with something akin to the training I experienced with Scrivener. So, since I expected scrivener to be a more professional product than the one I worked on, I expected higher production values in the introductory materials. Scrivener didn’t completely fail, it just was more of “done on a shoestring” than I expected.
Also, maybe I’m just old fashioned, but it is a foreign idea to me that the developer of the software would put less effort in to show people how to use their software than would strangers on YouTube. So that was not the first place I looked for help. I guess I should give it a try.
Any way, I’m knuckling my way through. The software is working OK, it is helping me with my project. If you want an example of a good software learning experience, I’d say the one I remember most was “Roller-coaster Tycoon” a game that was fairly complex, but sucked you right in with interesting and entertaining interactivity right off the bat. Not sure if it is even still made, but that was a very good example of doing software training expertly for the user.
This is a pretty shoe-string outfit. The developer writes the main tutorial and the scripts for the video tutorials. I write the documentation, and David makes and narrates the videos. I know it is bad form to point at others and say, “But look at everyone else…”, but in an age when you’re lucky to get a double-sided glossy pamphlet with your software purchase, I think we’re doing okay with a 500 page manual, several hours of interactive tutorial and an hour and a half of video presentations.
