Quick Reference switching?

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

First post! I used the demo for months–sipping slowly I guess-- and finally purchased it. Thanks for the great product.

Anyway, here’s a workflow suggestion. I make frequent use of the Quick Reference. But there’s just no easy way to switch the contents of the Quick Reference without leaving the manuscript page I’m on.

For example: I’m writing a novel and I’m on a specific manuscript page. The words are pouring out of my fingers and I don’t want to break stride. But I need to open up a character sheet from my Research area… or refer to my written outline. In order to get those to appear, I have to SWITCH away from my main manuscript page >> go to the item I want to launch>> press SPACEBAR >> and then switch back to my manuscript page and find where I was.

Is there an easier way to do this? Am I missing something?

Oh, and this assumes that
a) I don’t want to create a scrivener link in the text just to avoid the steps above
and
b) I don’t want to use split-screen mode because it just doesn’t appeal to me.

For what its worth, here’s a screenshot of my layout. It should give you an idea of what I want to do. How do I switch that Quick Reference without all those complicated steps?

scrivener-screen.jpg
scrivener-screen.jpg1640×1048 325 KB

2

You can’t keep your quick-reference screen on the screen, just offstage? Perhaps, if your monitor is small, this would take up too much real estate.

I stay in split-screen mode, with, say, a research sheet in one pane and the text I’m working on in the other. Then I write in full-screen. If I need something from the research sheet, I hit Escape, and there it is.

3

A few ideas:

  1. Lock the editor (cmd-opt-L). This will keep you from switching documents when you select a different doc in the binder to open in QR.

  2. Go via the menu (View>Quick Reference) to open a document directly so that it doesn’t affect the editor.

  3. For both 1 and 2, use keyboard shortcuts to make this faster. Ctrl-tab will jump you from editor to binder and back (or use specifically ctrl-opt-cmd-B/E), and you can arrow up/down in the binder (or start typing the name of the document to jump to it), then space bar to open in QR and ctrl-opt-cmd-E back to the editor. To go via the menu, ctrl-f2 will jump you to the menu and you can arrow over to your selection. Careful arrangement of the binder and judicious use of favorites will streamline this method.

  4. In your working document, create a reference to the documents you’re likely to open in QR by selecting them in the binder and dragging them to the document’s reference pane in the inspector. Replace the “[internal link]” with an asterisk in each URL field. Then in the editor, you can click the document icon in the header and these documents will show up at the top of the menu. If you set your Navigation preferences so that “open references from the main window” is set for QR, then clicking any of these documents in this menu will open it as a QR.

  5. Similar to 4, use Project References to create links to all the documents you typically open in QR (just drag and drop them from the binder and it will create the link). Set your navigation preferences to open references in the QR, as in step 4, and then when you’re working in any document, the project references will be available in the inspector and you can click the document to open in QR without affecting your editor window. Keyboard shortcuts to switch your focus will make this faster, too.

4

MimeticMouton … That’s absolutely brilliant. Thank you very much for taking the time to offer these wonderful tips. They help a lot.

Ahab: your idea is pretty good too. I’ll give that a try as I’ve been wanting to experiment with Fullscreen mode some more.

Thanks again!