Problem: When trying to search-and-delete a text string, the Scrivener “Project Replace” dialog blocks the ‘Replace’ button unless text (at least a blank space) is entered in the Replace field. This is incorrectly limited functionality.
Example: I don’t like the phrase “- No Synopsis -” appearing on all my blank cards, so I go to delete it - replace it with the empty string. When I click ‘Replace’ I get an error ‘ding!’ and the dialog remains unsubmitted. I can however submit a single blank space.
Image:
Suggestion: Remove the safety - no other search-replace works this way - and there are cases where leaving extra spaces would be undesireable.
Okay, you have a point here, and I’ve removed the safety from the next version. I’m not sure why you would want your synopses completely blank, though - that kind of defeats one of the purposes of Scrivener.
The example I gave above wasn’t the best one - a better example would be something like a common inline notes that you wanted to strip cleanly the document later.
But regarding blank synopses - I actually don’t want synopses completely blank. I want to fill them in! I just find the corkboard more motivating with blank cards.
eg this: [ ]
vs this: [this is blank]
The second one feels more filled to me, even though I know it isn’t. Probably that is specific to my personal psychology. But I would mention one thing about the placeholder text - laziness. It got annoying triple-clicking on every card in order to highlight the “- No Synopsis -” so that I can delete it before I started writing. On the other hand, that tag makes it easy to search Scrivener for unfilled cards, so, hey. Tradeoff.
I like starting with blank cards too, because often I drag bits from the document into the synopsis card, and having it blank to start with removes the step of selecting and deleting the place-holder.
“No Synopsis” has always struck me as rather redundant and is slightly annoying to remove if you drag to fill your synopses, as I often do. It does give one something to search for; but with the safety removed, I’m also likely to search and replace it with a blank.
