I’ve just installed ver 3, and obviously it’s cute as a button, but…
Same as in ver 1, in order to manage the Outliner columns, user has to click through the menu for each removed column and each added column separately. This design is much less friendly (and prone to mis-clicks that lead to more clicking…) than used in many other tools dialog window that lists “Available” and “In Use” columns, allowing the user to manage the columnset in one place.
Is it possible that this will change at some point?
Right now, if my needs for Outliner columns are different from what I get as default, I need to go:
View → Outliner Columns → column name
ONCE for each column. So, for example, three times to remove ones I don’t like, four times to add the needed ones. Seven menu actions
If there was an Available/In Use dialog, it would be:
Open dialog; Remove 3 entries, Add 4 entries, OK.
All done in one menu operation.
Is there a possibility to NOT WRAP the scene/file titles in outliner? I needthem long and I can see the content over the current edited text, but in the outline, if I have more columns, the lines become stretched vertically and I can’t see the needed information. Could this be given as an option, to keep the behaviour the same as in the older version?
(I’m not at the Mac which has Parallels so I could check the Windows version, but…)
On the Mac there are three ways to change Columns in Outliner view.
Via the menu as you’ve been doing
Right-click on the column header bar
Click on the little > to the extreme right of the column header bar.
1 and 2 don’t persist, as you say, but the third option does — you can click as many options as you like without have to reselect the chevron.
[attachment=2]Screenshot 2021-03-25 at 17.13.57.png[/attachment]
It may be worth trying that if you haven’t already.
For the second problem, on the Mac you can select View > Outliner Options > Use Fixed Row Height and it will truncate the title. There’s an icon on the footer bar for this.
[attachment=1]Screenshot 2021-03-25 at 17.23.24.png[/attachment]
[attachment=0]Screenshot 2021-03-25 at 17.22.15.png[/attachment]
As the goal is feature parity between Windows and Mac, if they’re not in yet, they’ll be on the list.
I haven’t used the menu method in a very long time. There is another way to add/remove outliner columns here:
[attachment=1]Screenshot 2021-03-25 104754.png[/attachment]
Clicking there will bring up the column list where you can select or unselect the columns you want, when done you click outside the list.
[attachment=0]Screenshot 2021-03-25 104908.png[/attachment]
Does that help?
R-click on the column headers gives me nothing (that would have been my first choice, too), but the little > button does the work, indeed (it’s not very intuitive, though)
(still, having that monstrosity in the menu is killing my soul, just from the point of view of user experience…)
As to the row height option I can see Appearance → Outliner → Options and there is the following:
[ ] Outliner has horizontal grid lines
[ ] Only when using fixed row heights
But I can’t find the option for the fixed row heights…
I can only hope that once we reach the feature parity, I’ll find it
I’ve just checked and the Fixed Row Height is there — you’re just looking on the wrong menu :
As I said, the option is on View > Outliner Options > Use Fixed Row Heights (not in Options).
If you look at the icon I highlighted in one of my screen shots, you’ll see that it’s there in the Windows version too (bottom right). The icon changes depending on whether Fixed Row Height is on or not.
I’d add a screenshot, but I’m looking at it the Parallels version of Windows on the desktop via Screen Sharing from the Laptop and I can’t work out which combination of shortcuts I’d need…
Speaking from the point of view of someone who designs user interfaces (after a fashion), this is… kind of messy.
If there are options of Outliner appearance once in the menu, once in the Options and separately under the little “>” button (which, funny thing, doesn’t contain the same two options as the menu), it becomes more alike to an obstacle course than a piece of software users are supposed to adopt easily
@ srebrnafh
I’m glad you found it — hope it will be useful!
BTW: The same options don’t appear in both the menu and in Preferences: they’re different, and which location they’re in is based upon how often you’re likely to use each option.
Scrivener usually follows what seems a logical convention: If it’s something you don’t expect to change often, it’s in Preferences (Options on Windows). If it’s something you’re likely use to a lot, it’s in the menus.
It’s unlikely you’re going to change whether the outliner has horizontal grid marks every day, so it’s tucked away in Preferences > Appearance > Outliner — that seems as reasonable place as any.
But you do want to toggle fixed row height on and off, possibly several times a day, so it’s there on the menu system (which means on the Mac you can give it a shortcut, and you can’t easily if it’s in preferences.)
Not sure where the > comes into this, but the split between Menu and Preferences is helpful in practice, I think.
BTW the Windows version has inherited a useful feature built-in to all Mac programs: you can search all menu items in any Mac app from a search bar in the Help menu. If you put it ‘Fixed Row’ it should point you to the correct item . It’s a really useful feature, which doesn’t seem to be widely known, even on the Mac.
That might be the difference - I will most probably NEVER change this setting to the default one again. So for me, in my own view, this is something I’d like to have in the main options, as in, options for the entire program, not for a single project.
Considering the [>] contains the in/out of columns, same as the Menu AND doesn’t contain the last two options, I’d guess it was added before these two options in the menu were added? Just a wild guess. But the result seems messy.
Considering I’ve never had contact with Mac, I’d never expect something to be there. It’s the same functionality as in MS Office, but there it’s a bit more visible I’ll have to take a closer look at S3 over the next few days. It looks like there is a bunch of things done, but they seem to be sometimes just like 10 degrees off from what I’d be expecting (can’t delete target wordcount, but can set it to 0 etc)
After several restarts for unrelated reasons, I must say that the requirement to reset the “Fixed height” option each time I start working is, in fact, getting on my nerves in a major way.
Why is a setting that’s OPPOSITE to what was in the previous version a default? WHY…?!
How big a chance there is to make the Fixed Row Height an option that is remembered between sessions with one project?
Other outliner options are kept, but this one gets reset to default. Why?! I’m unlucky, because the default is the opposite to what I use, so every time I have to reopen any scrivener project, I have to set this manually in order to be able to work.
I don’t ask for this to be the default value. I can set it once per project. But please, make it stay what I marked it.
Please open a support ticket, here: literatureandlatte.com/contact-us
The setting should be remembered on a per-project basis. You may have discovered a bug.
I just want to say that it’s been three years since you posted this and I was just looking for help on the topic and here you are with the exact answer I needed.
(it’s not very intuitive, though)
:
I’ll have to take a closer look at S3 over the next few days. It looks like there is a bunch of things done, but they seem to be sometimes just like 10 degrees off from what I’d be expecting (can’t delete target wordcount, but can set it to 0 etc)