Has anyone dared to try to use Scrivener over DropBox, cross platform Mac to Windows OR Mac to Mac OR Windows to Windows, working with a collaborator also on Scrivener? Anyone with experience knowing this can be done? Or is this an act of utter insanity at this point to try?
I ran a workflow once before running a project with Scrivener just sharing out RTF files that a collaborator would edit, and I’d sync back into the project, and this can work, even far better than I expected at the time, but it takes some setup to execute.
But before I even think of plunging into a trial and error on using Scrivener for collaboration, with both collaborators using Scrivener and accessing the project directly through DropBox, I thought I’d put the thought out there and see what the group thinks. Thanks for whatever input you can provide, if you’re either from Lit & Lat or a bold user who’s thought about this.
To date, I’ve been sending zipped files to my collaborators and we’ve just worked serially, passing control of a project back and forth. So up-to-speed on that alternative and don’t particularly need suggestions about that alternative.
Thanks to anyone with insights to share.
If you’re using Mac Scrivener 3, you’ll find that the “Import and Merge” functionality was designed for exactly this situation. It allows edits to a copy of the project to be merged into the “master” copy relatively seamlessly. (See the manual for details and caveats.)
In theory, collaborating over Dropbox is no different from using Dropbox to share a project between your own devices. The biggest issue is that you can’t allow two people/devices to edit the same project at the same time. That’s relatively easy to manage if you and your collaborator are in such different time zones that you’re awake while they’re asleep, harder to manage if you both have the same “normal” working hours.
Katherine
As many people on here know, I’ve been using Scrivener collaborating with a friend in China for a number of years. Rather than type out thoughts once again, can I point you to this post:
literatureandlatte.com/forum … =4&t=28339
That was written when the Windows version of Scrivener had just come out, and there was a coding problem between Windows and Mac versions in Chinese, so I was using the Windows version under Crossover (WINE). The problem was soon fixed and I could go back to using my own Mac version.
Also, at that time, we were using Cubby, which we had to abandon as they closed their non-business version, and have since been using Sync. I’d be happy to use Dropbox but it is blocked in China, and she doesn’t want to be bothered with having to find VPNs which aren’t blocked—I do have another friend in China with whom I work through Dropbox, and who is happy to find and pay for a VPN. The developers of Sync don’t recommend it for Scrivener, but we have had no problems with it, and I also use it for some of my own projects.
We are 8 hours apart, which means it’s extremely rare that I try to open a project while Shirley is working on it. If you’re in the same time zone, that is going to be your biggest problem. The other thing that I’ve found important is taking snapshots at the beginning and end of any session.
