Linking INTO Scrivener (Windows)

I’m writing a visualization tool for Scrivener, because the one I was trying to use annoyed me with some sync issues.

I’d like to go beyond what it was doing anyhow and allow the user to click on an element in my app to navigate into the Scrivener project. Basically I want to open a scrivlnk://{Document ID} hyperlink, in Scrivener, from outside of Scrivener.

Even under Navigation, I don’t see the ability to go to a specific document directly; the closest is by navigating a tree.

Is there a more elegant approach?

Be aware that Scrivener 3 (now in beta on the Windows platform) uses a different project format. It’s more robust for this sort of thing – assigns each Binder item a unique identifier – but will definitely break a visualization tool that assumes the older format. You can download the Win Scrivener 3 public beta here:
https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/scrivener-3-0-beta-release-candidate-10-download-links-change-list/38228/1

If you are using Scrivener 3, try
Edit → Copy Special → Copy Document as External Link.

(I know it works on the Mac, haven’t tested with Windows.)

Programmatically, you could automate this by parsing the .scrivx file, which is the master index used to build the Binder. Probably best to do so as a read-only task: editing the .scrivx file outside of Scrivener is quite likely to break the project.

Katherine

Thank you, Katherine. I am using the V3 Windows Beta. The project format is nice for this. I’m already parsing the scrivx file, and not writing back to it; the point of the deep-links is to nudge users (e.g. me) to update the data using the Scrivener Inspector, from which my program grabs what it needs.

Perfect! Thank you!

It has an odd characteristic of opening the referenced link into a new pane, but good enough.

On the Mac at least, where inbound links open is configurable, via the Behaviors/Document Links preferences pane.

Katherine