The date in the date entry field is presented as mm/dd/yy, no matter what format we selected in the Custom date formatting field. And… editing the date manually is somewhat difficult. I right-click, get the edit field – then I have to select each piece of the date separately; I cannot enter 01/01/01 and get Jan 01, 2001; I have to double-click the month, type it in, the same for the day, and the same for the year. So six separate operations (double-click, then type, double-click, then type, double-click, then type). This is less than optimal.
The Calendar only goes back to September 14, 1752; for epochs prior to that it is useless. If I want to write about 1000 A.D., I have to use a different method for calendaring the story. I realize the date algorithm would have to account for places (because Spain adopted the new calendar in 1582 (along with some other countries)), and others adopted it at various times after.
I think these have been reported, but some behavior has changed in the Date field; the “edit” dialog does not now fall off the screen, no matter where you click the date field. Progress!
In the process of setting up the DateTime metadata field, I found that the only way to actually edit the data was to be in outliner mode. You cannot do anything with a date format metadata label in the inspector other than to view what the data is.
I realize that having a date algorithm such as what rwfranz suggests above would be problematic at best, having one that allows events well before 09/14/1752 would be very beneficial to those working with historical data. Not having any luck with Scrivener’s metadata date functionality, I turned to Aeon Timeline. Once I figured out how to do syncs with Scrivener and setting up the Aeon Timeline metadata fields in Scrivener, I was able to successfully add dates well before Scrivener’s 09/14/1752 limit. However, the date formating issue comes into play especially when years are no longer AD but are BC - you can’t tell the difference as seen here:
Where both Scene-4 and Scene-5 are BC dates. And of course, bug number LH1877 comes into play here - no way to sort the dates (there are other sorting issues as well, but that deserves its own report).
True, as long as you are working in outliner mode. It should be noted that Mac Scrivener has a calendar icon to click in both outliner mode and the inspector pane for the document. Additionally, none of the metadata will show unless you have multiple documents selected when in outliner mode. Also, there is no way to remove the metadata date - you can only change it. Using Aeon Timeline I can both change and remove the date metadata from a document with ease.
Spoke too soon. Still can’t remove the metadata date field from Scrivener once it has been set - only change it - even when unlinking the event in Aeon Timeline. The only way seems to be to delete the metadata fields in Scrivener and trash/unsync the timeline in Aeon.
I gave up on trying to set up a date using custom metadata ‘date’ field. I end up using a text field and input it as YYYY/MM/DD. In my novels the dates are all around 100 AE (after empire) and this was the easiest way of doing it. Editing is a lot easier this way, and I suspect may be easier for me even after the bugs are addressed.
In the inspector pane, in the lower part of the date field, right click. This should show a dialog of Edit or Clear.
Right click in the lower line of the date field in the inspector. Click Clear in the resulting dialog box. This should clear the field for that one document/scene.
I created a multi-field enumerated list date model.
One field has an enumerated list of the years the novel runs through; I choose from them for each scene.
One field has a list of months (which aren’t the same names we use, or, in some worlds, even the same number of months), same procedure.
One field has list of days (01-31).
Fairly tedious, but it works for me. By choosing enumerated lists, I prevent the possibility of a tired fumble-fingered me at the keys typing in 29999/99/99 or some such.
And if I need a BC year, well, I can add another field: AD/BC (or whatever other eras are used in the world), defaulting to the most likely in the novel.
Ah, found it. The lack of any visual cues is still an issue. FWIW, I could have sworn I had tried that before and got nothing. Since I went all the way to the lower right and right-clicked there, I can now right-click in almost the entire blank space and get the dropdown for edit and clear.
