Move "Move to Trash" lower in menu

[Lionrhod]

First off, I’d like to say that although in the course of my suggestion, I make a couple complaints, I’m really happy with Scrivener. I got it about 2 years ago and have used it on and off, but now I’m finding it super helpful in dealing with huge projects. (I suspect I’ll learn that it’s super helpful with small projects too!)

In the process of migrating from Open Office and organizing my WIP I’ve been moving chapters and scenes around quite a bit today.

Maybe it’s me, but half the time I’ve tried to just drag/drop a folder, it’ll end up INSIDE one of the other folders rather than between them. A few times the folders disappeared entirely, and the only way I could find them was by doing a search for the title. (Making this less unwieldy would be really nice.)

Then I discovered the highly tedious “Move up”/“Move down” options. (A heck of a lot of clicking that could be avoided if drag/drop didn’t lose my folders.)

And then I discovered the super wonderful “Move To” options. Nifty! Since I’d just decided to break the book into parts, this was an awesome find. Just a couple clicks and I could get my files and folders exactly where I want them. Weee!

Except for one thing that scares me. On the options dialogue, “Move to>” is way lower on the list than “Move to Trash”. I’m in terror that I’ll get distracted, choose “Move to Trash” and lose my files. For that matter, a lot of other options that I might want besides “Move to>” are way lower. There’s always the possibility that I’ll hit the wrong command.

I realize it doesn’t automatically delete trash, but from my experience with other programs, there have certainly been times when I’ve moved something to trash and didn’t notice, then deleted my trash a few days later. and then realized that I’d lost something important forever.

In my decades as a writer I’ve found that I only rarely trash my writing files. Bad writing can be edited, a phrase that doesn’t work in one place might be perfect for another, etc. In fact when I DO trash or make major changes in text, I’ll always save anything good in my “Clips to Save” file. (I always have a Scriv folder for that in each of my projects!) YMMV but I’ve found that most of my fellow writers rarely trash anything either.

So, is it possible to move “Move to Trash” wayyyyyy down low on the options menu? There’s always the hotkeys if we really want to delete something fast.

[AmberV]

This will indeed be optimised in the future. All of the menus have been extensively redesigned for the future. What you see now is kind of the result of things growing over the years without too much oversight on that. Dozens of incremental best-decisions do not always result in an optimal whole, when all is said and done.

Don’t worry too much about it though, Trash is after all just another folder. The only risk of having things in the Trash is if you accidentally trigger the command to empty the trash, and then accidentally press a button to confirm that you want to empty the trash. You can keep stuff in the Trash for years if you want—some people in fact make it a point to never empty it.

[Lionrhod]

@AmberV

This will indeed be optimised in the future. All of the menus have been extensively redesigned for the future. What you see now is kind of the result of things growing over the years without too much oversight on that. Dozens of incremental best-decisions do not always result in an optimal whole, when all is said and done.

Don’t worry too much about it though, Trash is after all just another folder. The only risk of having things in the Trash is if you accidentally trigger the command to empty the trash, and then accidentally press a button to confirm that you want to empty the trash. You can keep stuff in the Trash for years if you want—some people in fact make it a point to never empty it.

It gives me the warm fuzzies to know that this will eventually get fixed. Anything that makes me keep my writing safe in any form is a thing of wonder. (Having dealt with a house fire that destroyed decades of files and giant boxes full of printed writing, I’m paranoid about losing anything.)

I’ve done some mild programming in my day, so I get that sometimes you need to sort through and rearrange things. Glad it’s on the To Do list.