No Interaction with File Management System

You guys at L&L already know what Scrivener is all about, after all, you wrote the thing, so as far as a feature list is concerned, I would be surprised if your lists are any different than ours.

The big change brought forth by modern Apps is how users manage their data. Apps like iPhoto, iTunes, Evernote, require no interaction with a file management system. I no longer have to create folders and name them to save my pictures, this is done through the iPhoto App. One of my favourite ones is Evernote. All my ideas, notes and random data go into Evernote. They do not exist as hundreds of files saved somewhere on my machine.

In my mind mobile Scrivener should do something similar. Make it visual, make it easy to locate projects without needing to work through folders on some third party cloud syncing service. Put them in a UI like corkboard with large customizable icons. As a user I only think of files and folders in Dropbox because I have to, not because I want to.

Put all the projects and associated files in the App, and I would venture that it would be the first writing App to do so. Even with the world’s most popular word processing Apps we still have to save a file to some folder location that we have to remember. Put it in the App and this thing will rock!

Happy developing!!

Pwsk,

actually, they won’t have to put it in the app. iOS did that for them. iOS devices don’t allow individual apps to connect to the file system of the device. They have their own personal file space where they can store their own files/projects, and aren’t allowed to interact with the larger field.

Some apps will allow you to transfer their files from one app to another using an “Open in…” dialog, but that’s the closest you’ll get to real file management on iOS.

As for examples of other writing apps that do this? To be honest, you’d have to look pretty hard for an iOS app that doesn’t. Some handle it more gracefully than others, but they all have to handle it somehow.