PDF files and group mode view

[Felipe_rodrigues]

Hi people, I hope everyone is fine.

Let me share with you a lit bit of the background before I come to the two reasons for my post, I believe my new use of the software can serve as inspirations to others, as I haven’t seen anyone doing it…

My main use of Scrivener has been to write my master dissertation, nonetheless, I have recently been admitted to do a second BA and I realized that I can do away with all my notepads, bits of paper and the like, all by setting up a simple Scrivener project as a collection of the classes that I’ll have to attend during the nexta 4 years.

Attached below is a screenshot of the idea for this project. It’s pretty straightforward, even though it’s in Portuguese, I think everyone can guess what’s going on…

1º Semestre is what it is, below it I have folders representing the class itself (ethics, ancient philosophy, etc), which is also the notepad for that class. After that, I have the text files representing days of the class (day one, two and so on).

The label colors became the kind of class, whether they are mandatory or not. The draft folder will be used to write essays according to the classes they pertain to…

If I’m not mistaken, I believe I can do the whole 4 years inside this project, which is pretty mindblowing!

Now, the reasons that brought me here:

1º. I recently discovered the joy of importing pdfs into a project, being able to highlight parts of it outside Scrivener and have it reflected almost instantly in the editor. But, since my machine has a small SSD storage, I worry that it can add up quickly.
My question is this. If at the end of my BA I read 1 GB of pdfs and imported it all inside Scrivener, will the project grow by 1 GB? If my plan of doing away with physical notepads and doing it all inside Scrivener goes well, I can see the size problem getting out of hand pretty fast.

2º Can the group mode view present pdf in between text containers?
Let’s say I have a class tomorrow and a pdf to read beforehand, I read it, created some annotations and tomorrow I’ll want to see the pdf and my annotations just below or above the text file of that class itself in the continuous flow of the group mode view. Does anyone know how to do it, if it’s possible at all?

Kind regards and productive writing to all

[AmberV]

Thanks for sharing a bit of how you’re using the software to track your studies!

The label colors became the kind of class, whether they are mandatory or not. The draft folder will be used to write essays according to the classes they pertain to…

You’ve perhaps already come across them, but be sure to check out the Bookmarks tab in the inspector at some point. Each item in the binder can have its own list of bookmarks, so you can reference important PDFs from the chunk of text in the essay.

My question is this. If at the end of my BA I read 1 GB of pdfs and imported it all inside Scrivener, will the project grow by 1 GB? If my plan of doing away with physical notepads and doing it all inside Scrivener goes well, I can see the size problem getting out of hand pretty fast.

There are two ways of going about it:

1. Import the PDF (and probably trash the original to avoid having twice as much storage). Yes, your project will grow by 1gb because all of the material is physically stored within it. This is a good option if you require portability, as you can just drag the whole project to another disk or machine to copy absolutely everything you need.
2. Alias the PDF (via the File ▸ Import ▸ Research Files as Aliases… command). This then only stores a Finder alias in the project, pointing to the original PDF on the disk. Your project stays lightweight, but you do need to take care to keep the original safe. In theory if you drag both the PDFs and the project together to another disk, they will transport safely, but this technique rules out stuff like cloud sync for the most part.

Can the group mode view present pdf in between text containers?

No, if I understand you correctly, you are referring to the Scrivenings view which is a single text editor that just so happens to contain all of the content from multiple files throughout the binder. Since it is a text editor, you cannot stuff random media files into it.

But again, check out Bookmarks. You shouldn’t need to have the PDFs in the text editor itself, particularly if you can use two splits—reference them on one side and work on your text in the other. With a tweak to the default setting on where to open bookmarks (I believe the default is Quick Reference), in the Behaviors: Document Links preference pane, this can be made very efficient.

[Felipe_rodrigues]

Amberv, thank you for your quick reply!

It’s always a pleasure to share new ways to use the software!

@AmberV

You’ve perhaps already come across them, but be sure to check out the Bookmarks tab in the inspector at some point. Each item in the binder can have its own list of bookmarks, so you can reference important PDFs from the chunk of text in the essay.

I’ll be sure to have a deeper look at the Bookmarks tab, it seems like an interesting feature.

@AmberV

There are two ways of going about it:

Import the PDF (and probably trash the original to avoid having twice as much storage). Yes, your project will grow by 1gb because all of the material is physically stored within it. This is a good option if you require portability, as you can just drag the whole project to another disk or machine to copy absolutely everything you need.
Alias the PDF (via the File ▸ Import ▸ Research Files as Aliases… command). This then only stores a Finder alias in the project, pointing to the original PDF on the disk. Your project stays lightweight, but you do need to take care to keep the original safe. In theory if you drag both the PDFs and the project together to another disk, they will transport safely, but this technique rules out stuff like cloud sync for the most part.

That pretty much nails it! I guess I’ll be using the aliases method as it’s the lightest of them. My whole digital library is already in the cloud, via iCloud, as are all my Scrivener projects, so as long as a bear in mind what you’ve said about the location of the originals, everything should be fine.

@AmberV

You shouldn’t need to have the PDFs in the text editor itself, particularly if you can use two splits—reference them on one side and work on your text in the other.

Yes, just realized that. I could have the alias of the pdf in a corner, the annotations related to this pdf above it and the notes of the class on the left, or some other combination.