Paragraph-based scrivenings?

Scrivener Wish List
1

Hi Jenny,

I have just found out about a newish app called Phraseology, which has one extremely useful feature and I wonder if iScrivener can have it? It’s their “arrange” view that breaks up the text of a file by paragraphs and allows the user to rearrange (move, delete) the paragraphs in a much more intuitive way than the cumbersome “select, cut, select, paste” procedure.

I assume compiling into one editable screen card-based (file-based) screenings will be part of iScrivener? Adding this paragraph-based ability to rearrange would make it even more fantastic!

Thanks, Dee

2

I think you want a cmd-k “split” feature. The full version of scrivener allows you to split a document arbitrarily by using cmd-k. Not being an iAnything user I am not sure what hooks would be needed, but I woudl expect this to be a core/basic function that will port.

Now watch her disparage my parentage as she explains just why she can’t/won’t/shouldn’t do such a thing.

3

For the purposes of viewing separate paragraphs-as-documents in a Scrivenings sessions, it would be nice if it was capable of displaying adjacent text documents without any vertical separators. The the default in the Mac and Windows versions has a thin line and a few vertical spaces, which would be visually annoying in this usage case. If I recall correctly, that’s why the Mac version has an alternative setting that only shows some tiny brackets in the margins to distinguish the end of one document from the beginning of the next.

4

Jaysen,

I think we are talking about different things. Splitting a doc is not the same as re-arranging its parts. Take a draft of 20 paragraphs. Do you want to position the cursor 19 times, at the end of each para, then hit Command+K 19 times and end up with 20 new docs?

Actually the standard ios interface for “Edit” (which now is used mostly to delete a file) would be an excellent way to improve the current rather painful “select and cut and paste” procedure. Suppose you want to move a para or a sentence or any chunk of text. Currently you need to:
Tap and hold
Tap on Select
Carefully drag to select a chunk of text
Tap on Cut
Navigate to where you want to paste
Tap and hold
Tap on Paste
(and you are likely to have to add or delete extra spaces as well)
This is seven steps to move a single chunk of text.

Using the Edit window of ios with this Arrange feature:
Tap on Edit
Drag the item to the desired place
Tap Done (Edit window closes)

A much simpler, easier, more intuitive, method, requires less “fingerwork”, visually clear, allows multiple actions, etc.

Attach image of arrange window

Ideally, iScrivener would implement it for both sentences and paragraphs, meaning that the user would have a choice to command the app to break the text into either as many parts as there are sentences or as many as there are paragraphs in it, then rearrange them, then with one tap get back to the text as it is newly re-arranged.

This is essentially the same as what Scrivener famously and uniquely allows us to do with files (turning them into combined “scrivenings”), except in this case the rearrangement happens within a single file, and therefore there is of course no hierarchy (each sentence/paragraph is on the same level).

Jenny, don’t you think this would be a great help to writers, and a very natural way of reorganizing text in a single file with fingers and dragging?

I completely agree with robertguthrie that choice would be a good thing, as always: some people like to see the separator lines, others are bothered by them…

Dee

5

I do actually, and before I became involved here at L&L I had spent time designing (not implementing) various interfaces for editing, including a paragraph based drag to move approach.

But…

It’s something further down the line to look at, along with lots of other possibilities. We’ll focus on the core features first.