Crikey, I’d be scared to post anything else here. (Only joking!)
I’ve been waiting for a while for the new version and I upgraded immediately last night. Then I opened the nov in the new version. Then I forgot I was working in the new version - and that must be the best compliment I can pay. I just got straight on with the business of working, I wasn’t distracted by all the new bells and whistles.
I’ve never been a big user of corkboards, so that reorganisation will probably go right by me, though a change of relationship between editor and outliner might be useful. Freeform corkboard stacks also might change my view of this - not sure yet.
I love the idea of Collections. I’ve always used coloured icons to delineate different parts of the novel, which gets a bit mind boggling over time, so I can see myself making collections. I did take a quick look at it last night but couldn’t work out how to make a new one on the spot (read the manual? are you crazy, I’ve got a novel to write). But I’ll get there.
One thing that stopped me plunging in to both of the above last night is the fear that somehow my entire structure will get messed up. I know, I know - but I have that internal fear anyway. Softly softly catchee monkey.
Refined outlining with custom columns! What’s not to love there. The illustration seems to show a progress bar FOR EACH CHAPTER. Which implies that each part can have its own target? I grasped the idea but it seemed much to big and scary to plunge into on the spot. Again, I’ll get there when I have a moment to noodle with it.
Comments and footnotes I don’t do. One thing I did want so much in the new version is some form of ‘marking for attention’. I don’t think this was ever going to be in here, but I would love to find a way to do that. So often as I blow through I think, ‘god, I really need to come back and sort this out.’ Then I forget where it was …
Anyway.
Love the idea of the QuickReference panels. Not sure if I’ll use them, probably will find myself doing so in time.
Compare revisions. Again, I really like the idea of this. But I find that I’m someone who regularly snapshots the work but has NEVER EVER gone back and even looked at a snapshot once I’ve moved the work on a bit. So maybe, maybe, but I somehow doubt I’ll change now. It’s like opening the doors to hell for me, the ability to look back at how it was before I started messing with it. I’m convinced that on each edit I reverse most of what I did last time, and that the nov has been flipping back and forth for the last year, but I sort of like that, it implies that I’m grinding towards some sort of nirvana (not of course, but we live and dream).
Templates and icons. I like this only on the basis that it opens up other people to do the hard work for me. I’m sure we’ll se lovely icon sets offered for import soon. As for templates, endless reading of how to properly format submissions in various countries and in various genres and to different editors etc has always implied there is a cottage industry in creating templates that ‘work’. If the word gets around the blogging-for-publishing community that Scrivener can handle the right way to do things I think your sales will take off like a rocket.
Sync with mobile apps - now you’re talking. I have an iPad that really gets no use, I am in love with my MacBook Pro. But if I can sync the nov to the iPad I might just fall in love with it for those casual readings and small edits in the coffee shop where the laptop seems a bit excessive. I don’t have an iPhone - any chance of syncing with a Symbian ^3 phone (the Nokia N8 since you ask).
As for the Name Generator. My first response was, oh, pur-lease, give me a break. Then I looked at it and though, crikey, this could be fun. So I’ll give it a go and let’s see if it takes. I guess we’ll all be ‘Scrivener-name spotting’ in the future.
Revision mode I’ll try, just for myself - I anticipate it being more useful than Snapshotting in terms of tracking what I’ve done and whether it’s making it better or worse. If I can look back at the end of a session and see simply what I changed, I may rest easy at night.
Automatic backups - why not, that’s a no brainer.
Better export - again, why not, it can only get better on that front. I always found the old settings very confusing and only through trial and error did I find what I needed. That said, once I’ve set them up, I don’t think about them again.
Yeah, tired coders take criticism poorly. No, only kidding. Many thanks for the kind words, glad you are liking 2.0 so far!
It’s as simple as this:
Make sure the Collections pane is open (click on the “Collections” button in the toolbar to open it if not).
Select some documents in the binder.
Click on the “+” button in the “Collections” bar right at the top of the binder.
To add new documents, just drag them from the binder onto the collections tab. To change the collection colour, just select the collection and double-click on the colour chip in its tab.
But inspector comments are a good way of doing this, because clicking on a comment in the inspector takes you instantly to the text it’s associated with… But you could equally use highlighting or anything else and use the Formatting Finder (Edit > Find > Find by Formatting).
Whew, for a minute there I thought you weren’t going to use any of the new features!
That’s really all it is, too - a bit of fun - although it does come up with some pretty cracking names thanks to the alliteration setting and the list of nouns-that-could-be-odd-surnames I typed in from the dictionary.
I have always thought that if I were ever to write a thriller of some sort, my villain would be a dubious specimen by the name of Portobello van Rental, with his sidekick Norbert Dentressangle …
Well Douglas Adams got away with Hotblack Desiato! So maybe I could.
I don’t suppose the name generator would come up with either of mine, but guys, they’re mine … no pinching!
Only if I can have Eddie Stobart as the hero’s faithful chauffeur and sidekick.
(On second thoughts, perhaps not: Google turns up our Eddie in connection with “The Future of Multimodal Logistics.” When did truck-driving become “multimodal logistics”? )
OK, you can have Eddie. But surely, “There’s some mishtake (ed)” … it must be “Multimodal Logistics Solutions” … I mean everything is a “solution” these days …
Mark
Marry me. I’ll quietly get rid of that other guy who lives here.
Seriously, I find that I’m using the name generator more than I thought I would. Can I put in a small feature request to get a toolbar icon for it in a future version?
That’s already been requested and denied, mainly not for any individual merit (or lack) of the feature, but that everyone has a favourite feature they want in the toolbar, and you can’t put every little menu command in the toolbar—that’s not what it’s for.
Again: I know. That’s one of my favorite things about 2.0, which is why I would also like it for the Name Generator. I disagree that having a large pool of icons is a problem.
I’ve been trying to set up a custom keyboard shortcut for it, but I keep getting inline comments instead. Off to beat my head against the brick wall some more.
I find inline annotations are perfect for this. And inline footnotes would be, too, if you are not using them for their intended purpose anyway. What could be better than being able to draw a red line around the offending material and turn its text red at the touch of a key, and then reverse it laster as easily. Inline footnotes the same way, but grey.
Check it out! Just because they are called ‘footnote’ and ‘annotation’ does not mean you should not use them in any way they are useful to you.
Going with Greg’s post, you can also then use the “find by formatting” command to hop from “flagged” section to section since you can easily search by inline annotation. You could also use just a simple highlight color (you can even easily rename one of the existing marker colors or make you own to call “Flag for Revision” or whatever you like) and then do a search by that specific highlight color.
Of course, if you could bring yourself to do it, inspector comments could also be excellent for this, since you could leave yourself a note about any specific changes you wanted to make, and you could change the color of “flag” notes to distinguish them from other types (assuming you used comments for anything else, or if you had different types of flags). Searching would work differently but you can use these in bookmark style, as has been touted all over the forums, and easily call them all up in a single document or a Scrivenings session and use them to jump to the various places that need attention.
No, only kidding. Many thanks for the kind words, glad you are liking 2.0 so far!
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