re: the inspector comments feature in windows:
- I read in another post that there isn’t a comments feature in the windows version, has that changed (am I just not seeing it somewhere obvious)?
- if not, does anyone know when this feature might be included?
- in the meantime, is there a good workaround for this? If I can’t make comments, I’d like to be able to do something similar, any ideas?
Question about opening scrivener files:
If I open the “.scrivx” file, does that activate everything in the project folder? Or do I need to open the project in a different way to make sure everything I’ve done and saved is open and activated? I’m confused as to how scrivener files work in terms of opening them, since there are many subfolders etc. listed, and the only way to get anything to happen/appear is by clicking on the .scrivx file.
Question about transferring scrivener files from computer to computer:
Okay to do this with a flash drive? My office computer bans the use of dropbox, and all the advice in these forums seems to indicate that website as a means to move a project from one computer to the next. I used a flash drive to copy a project on my home computer and bring it to work, but because of my question above about how to open scrivener files, I want to make sure this is okay, and that I’m actually getting it all transferred that way.
Thanks a bunch, and I love this software! I’ve been waiting literal years for the windows version to hit the shelves (despite loving macs, they’ve been out of my $$$ range). As such, I didn’t know the windows version existed until recently – after I referred a mac-owning friend to the software and she told me there was a windows beta. Yay!
Hi,
Thanks for the kind words. I’m glad you’re enjoying the software (even in beta stage)! To answer your questions in order:
- There isn’t an inspector comments and footnotes feature yet in the Windows version, such as there is in the Mac version 2, but this is high on the list for a post-release update. There is an inline annotation feature, however, as in the Mac, and you can use this to just add your notes directly beside the text to which they refer. When you compile, you can select whether to have your annotations included or excluded. You can also turn on Ghost Notes mode, which will fade out the annotations when your cursor isn’t in them, if you want to make them a little less prominent when you’re reading through your text.
This method is a bit different from the margin notes style that a lot of word processors use, so it may take you a little playing with to get used to, but personally I really like it. With Mac 2.0 I use both methods for different purposes, but definitely for editing notes or trying out different revisions and so on, I find it significantly easier to just have the text right in the document. The annotation/footnote feature is a toggle, like bold or italics, so you can just turn it on and type and turn it off or you can select text and switch it to an annotation or back to regular text.
Just a heads-up, there’s a display bug where toggling the annotation or footnote can make all the text in the editor disappear until you begin typing again or click again. It’s rather alarming, but it’s just a display issue–all your text is still there, just not visible. Lee’s on it, so it’ll be fixed soon.
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To open your project, you just need to click the .scrivx file; Scrivener will access all the other files in the project’s .scriv folder as necessary to open or save them. So there’s nothing additional you need to do there. However, the entire .scriv folder and its contents are necessary for the project to open, so you can’t just extract the .scrivx file and try to run it somewhere else. On the Mac, this is a little simpler in appearance because Apple allows folders with extensions to appear as a single file that the user double-clicks and opens. Since Windows doesn’t do anything like that, you see the .scriv folder as a folder full of files (which is all it really is on the Mac too, of course) and thus all the innards you don’t really need to access are more readily displayed. So although you can run the whole thing by selecting the .scrivx file, you need to copy or move the entire .scriv folder if you’re moving the project to another location on your drive or to a backup disk.
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Flash drives are fine. You’ll probably want to just copy the project there (as a zip file might be easiest) and then move it from the flash drive to your hard drive before you work on it, just for better speed. Scrivener auto-saves every two seconds of inactivity by default, so if you do have to or prefer to work straight from the flash drive you’ll probably want to bump that up a little in the Options just so you’re not hanging every time it tries to write to the external. Also, as explained above, you’ll need to save the entire .scriv folder to the flash drive, not just the .scrivx file.
This…is…awesome. Exactly everything I needed to know - especially grateful that you told me about the disappearing annotation issue, as I was indeed alarmed when my words disappeared while testing this feature.
Yes, even in beta stage, it’s a total dream come true. My biggest issue with writing has always been how to “see” all the material I’ve generated, and this finally makes that possible. Yay!