The bigger my project file grows and the more novels and documents it contains, the more I think a simple relational database integrated in Scrivener would be helpful to manage and link texts and content (glossary). What do you think about this?
Most users seem to have a project file per book, rather than having multiple novels in one project. But some some do have a single project with multiple books in.
We do provide lots of features like collections, metadata, labels, project bookmarks, document links, etc that allow users to link and manage data in multiple ways already, so I’m not sure that full database functionality is needed.
Isn’t “simple relational database” kind of an oxymoron?
DevonThink is probably the best full text database available on the Mac. I love it and use it constantly, but I wouldn’t call it “simple.”
Katherine
Hi Thomas,
First off, congrats on being so prolific! (I looked up your writing.) Most won’t reach the amount of work you have out there. And in German, English, and French no less. Awesome!
I would second this. Especially considering the breadth of your work.
Yes, I understand that a series writer is an exception to that. For me, Scrivener is the only authoring tool on the market that lets me keep track of everything, see references from other novels, and manage the entire series project in one project file. That alone is incredibly fantastic.
Of course, I use all the options Scrivener offers, like bookmarks, keywords, comments, etc.
But these are always just single references that can’t be queried further, for example in a simple report.
Nevertheless, I don’t want to complain, because Scrivener is actually by far the best and most stable authoring program on the market, especially for my kind of writing.
Thanks for that and keep up the good development work.
I’ve been using Devonthink on the Mac for a few years now, mostly for managing my business documents and accounting. I also use “Ninox” a database which can also be used to map a database. But those are other apps that need to be opened and maintained in parallel with Scrivener, which has kept me from including them for manuscript content. The dream (wish) would of course be to integrate everything in Scrivener, but I also understand that this is not an easy to implement feature request.
Thank you for your comment, that was very kind.
Yes, the project has grown over the years and without Scrivener, plotting, writing and producing the eBook series and managing the manuscripts would be almost impossible.
The bottom line is that I am very happy and excited that L&L has developed such a fantastic program to make my life as a writer easier.
Thomas
FWIW, I use Scrivener side by side with DevonThink on both the desktop and my iPad (DevonThink To Go), and find that they complement each other very well.
My writing, primarily non-fiction, involves a lot of research materials that tend to get re-used across multiple Scrivener projects. I find DevonThink handles the volume of material – millions of words – without a glitch, and I don’t need to worry about project bloat or keeping track of what article is stored in which project. Among other things, DevonThink allows you to link to individual documents or to pages within them, so I can pull an entire book into DT and link to individual pages from within Scrivener. Comes in very handy when it’s time to do my final citation check.
Katherine
Hi,
I also use Devonthink on the Mac and iPad, and will check again tonight to see how bede apps complement each other. Thanks for the tips.
Thomas