Yes, you’re right … actually all areas of software … so is it Nisus, Mellel or Pages (assuming Word, NeoOffice, etc. are not in the equation for other reasons) that works for you? Sente, BookEnds or Endnote? Safari, Firefox, Camino, Opera, or in my case OmniWeb? It comes down to: Does it do the things you want it to do? How easy is it to do those things using that particular software? How comfortable are you with it?
I seem to remember there is a post where a poster says — unless I read it completely wrong — he uses Scrivener to gather his material together but then writes in another app … presumably he needs to see the page-breaks!
I’ve tried nearly every OSX text editor known to man (including ‘kinda’ mac apps like Komodo), and finally settled on Scrivener for writn’ and TextMate for codn’. I’ve got Pages for layout (and InDesign since I have CS3, but haven’t used it in anger), for those few rare times I need it.
The working scenario I use depends on the nature of the book. My current book (in market terms) is pretty much single point of view and linear and was written entirely in Pages, where the lack of long document management didn’t matter too much (and also that was before I discovered Scrivener). On the other hand this book also involved a lot of research which I dumped into Devonthink (which I find hard to use frankly).
The two books after were written primarily in Scrivener then dumped out for final editing in Word. Though now I have W2008 I can’t face that any more until the final, final editing. But most of the final edit is being done within Pages which I find very quick and reliable. Oddly enough I switched to Pages not when the book was finished but when it was almost complete and I knew exactly what the closing chapters would be (because at this point I didn’t need Scrivener’s outlining and juggling features).
Scrivener has been my principal creative writing tool for two books now and I don’t expect that to change (though there are still features I find baffling and probably unnecessary, for me anyway).
I’ve tried everything for research from Devonthink to Notebook and Journlr. I currently use Soho Notes 7 which actually works very well as a simple research store and has the added benefit, a big one for me, that it syncs notes automatically across .Mac.
Since I write fiction that requires research I am a great believer in having just two pieces of software in the process - one for information storage, one for writing. Any more than that - extra outliners, for example - means I’m spending too much time pushing software, and too little writing.
Fancy posting more details in the Feedback section? Comments like this always pique my interest. For the next update I’m trying to provide a decent feature set but at the same time simplify certain things. Compile Draft, for instance, makes more sense (I hope) in the next update, being more contextual; the preferences are being overhauled; and I hope to make the menus less daunting for new users. So, it would be a good time to post thoughts about unnecessary and baffling features.
For the next update I’m trying to provide a decent feature set but at the same time simplify certain things. Compile Draft, for instance, makes more sense (I hope) in the next update, being more contextual; the preferences are being overhauled; and I hope to make the menus less daunting for new users. So, it would be a good time to post thoughts about unnecessary and baffling features.