Just want to say thanks

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I’m in law school and I’ve been using Scrivener as my base of operations for class notes/response papers and a fairly decent sized research paper. While the program was worthwhile for the ease of managing PDFs, class notes, and quick 5 page responses, I wouldn’t have created an account on this forum just for that functionality.

Rather, I just ran the search function on my research project and found every reference I needed instantly. Not particularly novel, maybe, but as someone who has written dozens of papers using handwritten notes this bordered on an epiphany. I’ve been diligently plugging in research notes and PDF files of articles, and this is the first time that my niggling suspicion that Scrivener would radically change the way work was confirmed. I’ve spent so much time trying to figure out my handwriting and digging through stacks of paper–forgetting my ideas–that this is night and day.

Not to mention that having notecards open with ideas, sources, etc. has allowed me to keep a macro view of project even as I dig into the details; that I can use notecards to really develop a skeleton of the project while developing detailed outlines within the files, etc. etc.

Again, none of this stuff is revolutionary. But, I’ve tried to find progs like Scrivener for windows for my friends and I can’t. I think about it, and this is best organic work environment I’ve had and pulling that together really is something…

So, now that I’ve boosted your ego a little, anyway you could add separate footnotes to Scriv :stuck_out_tongue: They could be in a separate window, they don’t need to be WYSIWYG like Word. But, with the way law articles have 5-10 footnotes a page, all generally quite lengthy, my clean full screen view will be a sea of grey and pulling together coherent thoughts might be tough. I’ll try this paper in Scriv, but I might have to run over to a different app with footnotes outside the body of the text.

Any rate, awesome work and now that I’ve shown my appreciation for Scriv (which as I told my ex, is the sexiest thing I’ve seen since I left her), back to work.

2

Thanks for your kind words! :slight_smile: Glad it is helping you with your law degree.

As for footnotes… I can’t promise anything about what is going to happen with them, I’m afraid. They are a very tricky feature…

All the best,
Keith

3

I had a big laugh on this one! :slight_smile:

– MJ

4

Footnotes are a tough one. I know they’ve been discussed ad infinum, but I tried working on this essay today and I just can’t organize my thoughts with all the grey bubbles. My paragraphs just end up being complete disjointed :confused:

So, for right now, I’m doing all of my outlining/note-taking/etc. in Scrivener and then using Nisus Writer Pro for my actual writing. Nisus is odd because it doesn’t support footnotes in it’s fullscreen view, so I basically pop in and out of full screen to add footnotes (Mellel’s fullscreen footnotes were a little more workable, but that interface scared me…). Still, it’s been pretty workable.

Again, I absolutely love Scriv and I’m excited to see the amount of acclaim the recent Macweek review has brought the prog. Keep up the good work and I’ll cross my fingers that Leopard will bring some easy footnote/endnote implementation and save you the trouble of programming it/kindly writing an apology to all the people who keep demanding footnotes;)

sm