I’m finally getting friendly with snapshots. They seem to be document-only. Let’s assume I want to make a global replace for an entire manuscript, such as smarten quotes. Is there a way to use snapshots (or some other technique) to make it easy if the global replace goes wrong? In case you’re wondering, this is about cleaning up older manscripts, some of which were from older word processors.
Thanks,
Bob
Hi.
If you want to snapshot the whole manuscript, in the binder select everything for which you wish a snapshot to be taken, + Documents / Snapshot – the first two options. (Snapshot of selected documents, or – same with a title.)
Otherwise, the alternative is to use a backup of the project as a “snapshot”.
You could then either revert to that earlier version, or have it side by side with your current project, as a reference, or source for copy/paste, re-import a document, … (replace whatever is now wrong).
Thank you. Super helpful.
For something like Project Replace, a whole project backup is far safer. Bear in mind snapshots only store the main text content, not everything in the inspector, the title or the synopsis—whereas Project Replace can nuke everything (even snapshots! though we leave that option off by default).
Whenever I run a broad change, a “replace all” of some scope, I use File ▸ Back Up ▸ Back Up To... and put it some place handy, with a name that clearly refers to what I’m about to do. I’ll discard them after a while, once I feel comfortable that I haven’t spotted any damage.
I definitely use snapshots too though, but for me I use that tool more like “save as” would be used in other programs, on individual things I’m editing.
By the way though, for quote fixes, if you haven’t found it already there is a tool for that in Edit ▸ Transformations. If you were thinking you’d have to use regex or something to do this, that’ll be a better option.
Right.
And now that I think of it, if for some reason you opt to use project replace with snapshots as a safety, make sure in this context that you don’t have “snapshots” checked in the range where the replacement is to occur. Else, your snapshot(s) will be affected too ; and will therefor become worthless.
Right now what I have a mix of straight and smart quotes, and I want to normalize them all to the same thing.
I do see the limitations to using snapshots if the manuscript is too long and unwieldy, but I was excited to learn about the “selected files with title option” for multiple documents at the same time because that’ll be useful in other ways, and I had not discovered it.
For “routine” switching of straight quotes for smart quotes, I set up a handy Stream Deck button that invokes Ctrl+Q. By “routine,” let’s say I’ve pasted something into a Scrivener text with straight quotes and just want to convert it then and there. Having a dedicated button is pretty handy.
Of course, it’s probably not useful for iterating through whole documents, as is the use case that started this thread. Anyway, I just thought I’d mention it, as an idea.
Interesting. So do you think it’s “better” to keep straight quotes throughout the manuscript and smarten them up later?
Assuming you work on one document at a time, simply include Ctrl+Q in your finalisation workflow. It will change all straight quotes to smart quotes in a document. It works in Scrivening mode across documents too, but I’ve never established to what depth it’s effective.
(*) Mac only.
. . . . . . . .
I tested it on the Interactive Tutorial project on Windows before posting.
I’m aware that other features don’t work across documents in Scrivening mode on Windows, but this one does. It works in both directions: Ctrl+Q for smart quotes and Ctrl+Shift+Q for straight quotes.
Ah. OK.
Then I guess it does so for selected documents. (The scrivening actually having nothing to do with it. – Other than it being a consequence of a multi-selection in the binder.)
Well, when you click in the Editor, you’re in one document of a Scrivenings mode and the Ctrl+Q affects all other documents in the Scrivenings view, irrespective of which document you click into. If you turn off Scrivenings mode and click into the Editor of a document, it doesn’t affect the neighbouring documents that were part of the Scrivenings mode before.
So, it’s 12 of one and a dozen of another, I wouldn’t know the technology of what it involves, only the effect I observe.
Given that @bobdela seems to be on a Mac, all this talk of Ctrl-Q/Steam-deck is irrelevant 
I don’t know if it’s better, but I basically have all my editors, including my word processor (NWP), set to straight quotes throughout and convert to smart quotes post-compile in NWP or at the end of writing in NWP. Mind you, for times when I know I want typographer’s quotes/apostrophes, I just use the keyboard access (Opt/Shift-Opt [ for double; Opt/Shift-Opt ] for single).
Mark
I’ve re-read the thread. I guess I don’t see an indication of which OS @bobdela is using. I’m not familiar with the Mac version, in any case. I use the Windows version and it’s news to me that the Mac version doesn’t use keyboard shortcuts the same way (albeit with “Cmd” rather than “Ctrl”).
We’re all different in how we like to do things, of course. In my case, if I didn’t have a handy Stream Deck button, I probably wouldn’t bother to convert them to smart quotes until the end of the writing project. I don’t want to memorize obscure keyboard commands, as I want to focus on writing and not looking up keyboard commands.*
*Getting quickly down to writing each morning is why I set up my One button to rule them all (which became two buttons to rule them all, as it turned out).
If you click on someone’s avatar, it will show what platform they have supplied as part of their profile information, although not everyone with older accounts will set that up (it is not optional for new accounts).
Shortcut details aside, there isn’t much difference in how any of this works, no matter what platform you use, which is why I filed it to general discussion. A Windows user coming along with the same question, in the future, could benefit from any of this.
The Mac analogue to what you’re using is BetterTouchTool, which is a general purpose device and interface management tool (including Stream Deck), with basic macro capabilities.
Yes the Mac uses shortcuts, though Cmd-Q = Quit for all Mac programs. I don’t know if there’s a shortcut already set for converting quotes (it’s not something that I use and I’m not at my computer to check) but we can set our own shortcut for any menu item if we need one.
Mark
