Did a quick search but didn’t find anything on this subject.
I’m wondering if it’s possible to create multiple document-specific notepads the way I can create multiple project-wide notepads?
I would love, for instance, to be able to have each document contain two unique notepads: one for ideas / brainstorms and another for cuts I may want to comb through later. For my purposes, it’d be nice to keep stuff like that out of the binder.
I’ve played with converting each document into a folder and keeping my “cuts” in a sub-document so that each cut remains linked to the document it was removed from, but I’d very much prefer to work in the way I’ve outlined above.
So after doing some more digging in the user manual, it seems like this is NOT a feature. In fact, the additional project notes are a new feature in 2.0 (I’m new to Scrivener), so perhaps this is a “you give a mouse a cookie” thing…
However, I DO think it would be extremely useful to create multiple document-specific notepads. Should I drop this request in the Wishlist forum?
You’re right, this isn’t a feature, sorry! The trouble with having multiple document notes is that I think it would be overly unwieldy. You can already make notes on the document in that area, or make comments on specific parts of the text in the comments part of the inspector; having multiple notes to switch between for the same document could make finding things messy, because you’d forever be having to find things in that little popup in the inspector.
So, no plans for anything like this for the time being, but I’ll certainly give it further consideration when I come to plan features for 3.0.
Gotcha! Yeah I’ve taken to using the comments as a way to organize ideas for specific documents. Not ideal for my process, but I totally get how multiple document notepads could become “unwieldy” very quickly.
Thanks for considering the idea and getting back to me!
I’ve been doing some of this kind of thing the way you originally described, with a subdocument in the binder–basically “NOTES: [doc title]”. I don’t convert the initial document to a folder, since you can make subdocuments of regular docs, which keeps the binder and outliner looking more the way I want it (to say nothing of compile settings, but I’m not really worrying about those at the moment) and as I use lightly colored labels in the binder for all my scenes, it’s easy to distinguish the notes documents since they’re unlabeled. (You could do it the other way around of course, or give notes their own label; I just don’t bother as I don’t need it. I keep imagining that the notes documents are only temporary anyway, until I bang out enough junk that I figure out what I’m doing with the actual scene and move all the decent stuff up into that. But I’m a pack rat so I have to hang onto them after all. You never know when you might want another document to throw stuff at.) If you set the notes document to not be included in compile, you can also use the Opt-Click trick to view your Scrivenings sessions, outliner, etc. in the editor without the notes visible.
Some users who do this note style regularly create a document template for it, with the label, status, and compile-exclusion all set, so it’s easy to just create a new Notes document with the shortcut every time you want one. I haven’t done that myself, since I’m not working with that kind of speed and don’t set as many options, but it’s a nice trick if you’re doing this regularly.
Another thought is to have a notes section in the binder, not inside the Draft, and then to create your new note documents there with a Scrivener link from the original document. That keeps them easily accessible from one another (so you could have your actual scene in one editor and click the reference link to load your notes or brainstorming document in the split) but perhaps keeps your binder less cluttered looking.