Ideas Capture Interface

Other than enabling writers to edit projects on the go, I think a mobile version of Scrivener would be most useful if it enabled easier capture and importing of project related ideas. I can think of two mechanisms that could help with this.

  1. Ideas for a piece of writing often pop into my head at random times when I’m out and about, and currently what I up do is fire up a to-do list or note taking app, type the idea in, and paste it into Scrivener later (if I remember to do so). It would be nice if there was a button available on launch that would give you one-tap access to an “ideas capture” interface. In this interface, you could add text, record a voice note, or take a photo or video. Basically this interface would allow you to record ideas as they occur to you and then append them to any Scrivener project that’s on your device. These ideas would then appear in an “ideas” folder on both the mobile and desktop apps.

  2. Sometimes when I’m reading on my iPad or iPhone with apps like Reeder or Instapaper, I read something that I would like to add to the research / reference folder on a project. It would be great if Scrivener had a URL scheme (or other mechanism) that enabled these apps to send articles into Scrivener, maybe even into that same “ideas” folder. Another solution would be allow a user to paste a website’s URL into the “ideas capture” interface discussed above so that you weren’t dependent on other developers.

Hope those ideas sound interesting and worth implementing. I think they’d make a great addition. Looking forward to seeing this app!

Yes, we’re definitely thinking about ideas for this. Some sort of easy “scratch pad” analogue that you can call up no matter what you are doing and jot down a line or two and leave the sorting for later if you wish, just like scratch pad does; project agnostic. There are some complexities with this which we have to solve, but we do recognise this as being a very important part of what people will want to be able to do.

A URL scheme for sending data: that could be interesting. I’m not sure if it is in the cards though, or at least not up front. That’s a rather core need for the two applications you mentioned, whereas Scrivener could probably get by with intelligently using a URL on the clipboard in most cases.

I’m not sure the op was suggesting they be project agnostic - that’s your main wish for the iOS version. :slight_smile:

Unless you are only working in one project, that can’t be done if notes are only project specific. Jotting down an idea you had on a project you haven’t loaded last would take at least four taps and a load screen with project specific notes only.

The op did seem to be indicating that he wanted to capture ideas for a particular piece of writing, though, in which case having it go “no place” would be annoying in the extreme.

To that I would agree, any “done with this” button that is streamlined toward the open project would be the ticket. Basically two buttons for dismissal. One files it in the project, the other files it into the “not yet figured out space that Apple may completely render useless” spot.

Sounds like a plan…

Which part? The “apple renders it useless” part would be a something I would specifically request be left out of the plan.

And that terrible english should be translated as

And the first person that says “jail break” will need to come post bail.

Glad to hear this is on the radar! When I originally posted, I was thinking that these idea-snippets should be project specific, but I can see why you might want to have a project agnostic option. I guess there are two kinds of ideas a writer has (at least in this context): ideas that relate to a specific, already-begun project, and ideas of the “this-would-be-interesting-to-explore-in-a-future-story/project” variety.

To that end, I think a “done with this” button streamlined to an open project would be a good idea. If the idea was relevant to another project, the user could file the snippet elsewhere with just a few taps.

One possible solution to the problem of where the app should store non-project specific ideas would be to create a “scrapbook” in the app. The scrapbook could be the bucket for project agnostic ideas / photos / whatever. That way, if you were ever searching for some inspiration or reminders of things that sparked your imagination, you could open the scrapbook and flip through to see if something caught your imagination. Might be a creative solution to the lack of a file system / storage, and I’ve yet to find a good writing-ideas-bucket app…

How about something like a Global Idea Inbox, similar to how DEVONthink does it? Then ideas are sorted into existing or even new projects when there is time to do that.

Yeah, that’s kind of what I was getting at above. You press a button, you type, and when you are done there is one button to file it into the project notes, and another button that just goes to a global idea space that you can get at from anywhere and sort whenever you feel like it. The main problem with that idea is technical in nature. Where and how that global stuff gets synced back to the desktop is the primary quandary. Scrivener isn’t a database program, it doesn’t, like DTP, have a universal overhead that hovers above everything. The only remotely analogous thing is the Scratch Pad, but there are issues with that considering some of the moves Apple is rumbling about with sandboxing. It is an idea, but an idea without a clear future proof top-to-bottom implementation yet. So, it may never happen. We’ll have to see. :slight_smile: