I value Scrivener. I spend a great deal of my time using Scrivener. As it exists, it works well for me.
To understand the tool I will be proposing, it might be useful for me to convey how I use Scrivener. My delivery
is my final Binder. The text portion of Scrivener, where most writers deliver their works, is only a scratch pad for
me as I struggle to understand new concepts my mind is grappling with. As soon as I understand what my mind
is conveying in the text scratch pad, I place an entry in the Binder that represents the essence of what I have
discovered
Needless to say, my Binder has a great deal of information, and at the beginning, the hierarchical structure is constantly changing. I am uncertain where I want to place a given concept within my outline of understanding.
A tool that might help me is what I call a Mask. it is similar to a photographer’s mask when printing an image. The mask
does not change anything under it. It does not change formatting. Word position. font. The mask is merely a viewing
port for the document.
I envision it having the following features.
It has arbitrarily positioned viewing ports which have zero opacity.
the opacity of the mask can be adjusted from none to total opacity…
the mask can be just for the binder and or just text or any viewed information within Scrivener.
theoretically one mask can consist of multiple masks.
To recap the usefulness of the mask concept to me: As an inventor, my mind is jumping everywhere.
At any given instant of time (at the beginning) I have no idea what is important. i put info in the binder
in the best guess of the organization of thought I can come up with. i make use of the hierarchy feature
of the binder. It does not take long for a very large amount of information to accumulate in the binder.
Sifting through large amounts of information in order to make sense out of it is difficult. The hierarchical
feature of the binder does help me limit the amount of viewed information at any given time. That would be
enough if the information was properly organized. But the problem is that it is not until I get to the very end.
A mask would help me block out information at my choosing. The degree that I can see what I might think is
unwanted information could be helpful and as i hone in on an understanding I could make the background increasingly
opaque so i can focus on just a few thoughts as I attempt to make sense out of them.
Since the mask for me (not for a photographer), are only there to help me capture thought, They must be easy to initiate, make changes and delete.
If you, the developer, do not find this feature of value, I defer to your judgement. As it is now, I am just grateful to have
Scrivener.