Quicky/dirty solution for iDevice sharing?

Scrivener Wish List
1

I know this horse has been beaten to death, but still. I’ve never actually wanted to really edit anything on my iPhone; the keyboard is simply too painful. However, I’ve been copying my .scriv files onto my MobileMe iDisk so I can browse the updated .rtf files inside it as chapters and see where I left off.

Having my scenes and chapters on the go sometimes allows me to make edits in my mind and I can then simply open up a Note app on the iPhone and jot down new ideas. But the file structure (.rtf chapters) within a .scriv file is pretty hard to follow.

So anyways, today I happened on Storyist 2.2’s new webpage and, while I still dislike the app immensely, they now have sharing options that can send a copy of your document to the free Stanza reading app.

From the website:

It’s probably exporting to ePub and somehow sharing over the local network. Now I’m thinking, damn. That would be awesome for Scrivener. :wink:

2

ePub support was probably one of the first things announced as being included in Scrivener 2.0, way back when. It’s definitely coming, works quite well, and looks good in iBooks, Stanza, e-ink readers, and so on.

So yes, you aren’t the only one to think so! :slight_smile:

3

Yes, epub export has actually been ready for over a year, so it’s slightly annoying that everything else wasn’t ready so that I ended up not being one of the first to get it out there. :slight_smile: I think it works very well rather than “quite well”, though. :slight_smile: You just import your epub into iTunes and you can view it on your iPad or wherever.

Another option for sharing your work on iDevices in 2.0 will be a new Simplenote sync, and hopefully a way of editing work in Hog Bay’s upcoming PlainText, too.

All the best,
Keith

4

You just made my day. :smiley:

Now I really can’t wait for 2.0 to finally show its nose.

5

Well, I think it works extremely well, rather than “very well”.

6

Well, iTunes sync is all well and good, but it requires actually importing the updated ePub doc into iTunes itself (I suppose, never tried it…) then manually syncing through USB. You can correct me if I’m wrong there, but that’s what I understand of the procedure.

I googled for a few more automatic solutions and finally discovered that the new Automator is 1) really simple to use and 2) absolutely perfect for this if you already have a cloud service that you can access over iPhone/iPod/iPad (ie, MobileMe, Dropbox and the others).

This little automator action -> http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/automator/backupfolder.html allows you, with a bit of tweaking, to backup the changed contents of one folder into another of your choice. Set this up to run as an iCal alarm (From Automator -> New iCal Alarm -> Build your workflow with the above action -> Save -> Schedule in iCal). Set up your original folder as the folder that contains your .scriv projects and your backup as a cloud sync service folder of your choice and you’re done. Automator will copy, at your scheduled date, the changed contents of your folder into, say, your Dropbox. All you need to do now is simply make sure you publish your ePub into the same folder every time you want it updated. Don’t know yet if any of the cloud sync apps will allow you to read the ePub formats, but I know for a fact you can at least browse your .scriv file and read/take notes on your .rtf chapters/scenes.

Voilà. Real cloud sync, no danger of corrupting your original .scriv file, no more need to manually BackupTo or copy your files into your Dropbox/iDisk. :slight_smile:

EDIT: I just googled (again) and it seems ReaddleDocs (for iPod/iPhone and now for iPad, apparently) can connect to your MobileMe iDisk (as well as some other online file dumps) and display ePub docs. So there’s at least one confirmed OTA automatic sync for easy viewing of your current work in progress. :wink:

7

It’s simple, really. No more difficult than importing an MP3 into iTunes: you just drag the file into the library and that is that, as they say. You don’t have to manually sync it later, it will handle that automatically the next time it is plugged in.

Does this application do exportable annotations, though? For me, that is far more important than saving a step or two or trying to eliminate the cable. I need something that lets me jot down ideas on the draft, and potentially also underlines/highlights.

8

I’m pretty sure ReaddleDocs doesn’t have an “edit” feature of any kind; it’s really just a reader for different types of files (by the way, I went and installed it, and it seems to work well, although the GUI is truly horrendous…). With semi-automatic ePub access using Dropbox and/or MobileMe, the iPhone serves me fine as a reading tool for my .scriv projects. Like I mentionned earlier, I already use another app for note taking, and I’ve never really jotted down anything wordy enough that I felt the need to import them later into Scrivener.

By the time I get home, I just plop down in front of the MacBook, fire up Scriv and occasionnally refer to the iPhone’s note taking app to make sure I’m not forgetting anything. I’m not actually using the iPhone to edit or review; it’s just a way for me to keep the story in my mind when I’m on the go, and brainstorm on previous scenes and future chapters. When I have to get down to some real editing/reviewing, I need Scrivener’s screen real estate there to help me concentrate anyway. :wink:

The setup I mentionned above satisfies me as far as an iPhone companion app/solution, so you won’t hear any more “iPod/iPad/iPhone version of Scrivener pleeeeease!” from my side. :smiley:

9

Ah, okay. I like to “couch edit” sometimes—not heavy duty editing mind you, but just sitting back with a different form factor and looking for awkward phrases and such. With the iPad, it’s not too different from printing things out and going through on paper—except you don’t have to waste the ink and paper to do it. There are some reader style applications that let you jot down notes in the application itself, kind of like sticking post-its to a page, which is very nice for this type of review.

But yes, for what you are doing, it sounds like you’ve found an ideal setup!

10

Would you mind sharing, if you know the names of those apps? :wink:

11

Note, this is iPad centric, but I prefer iAnnotate for this sort of thing. I’ve never tried Aji’s iPhone version, so I don’t know how much of this translates over, but with the iPad version, you can send PDFs to yourself via e-mail (or use their cloud service, or iTunes). Once the PDF is on the device, you can access its built-in table of contents to navigate around in large texts, if it has one, or otherwise zoom way out and scroll rapidly. Annotations come in the form of highlights, notes, strikeouts, underscores, and free-form drawing. It is possible to save all annotations as a text document by e-mailing it back to yourself, or you can export the full PDF to iTunes, and all of the annotations will be viewable in any PDF reader that can handle annotations. The plain text version is about as good as it gets. For example you’ll get a list of things like:

[code]Page 35 Note (Yellow)
Content of the note…

Page 83, Strike-out (Red)
Content: “Blah blah blah bad prose that needs to be deleted blah”

So one way to work with Scrivener is to use the Compile print feature, and save as a PDF. I myself use MultiMarkdown, which produces a PDF with a table of contents so that is much easier to navigate around in. In my experience, iAnnotate handles huge PDFs just fine. I’ve got one right now that is several hundred pages long, and navigation is instantaneous.

It’s not full two-way syncing with Scrivener, but then neither is paper, and when I set out to find a way to reproduce that “stack of a paper on a couch with a red pen” experience, I wasn’t really expecting or looking for something that would automatically update my Scrivener document for me. I actually prefer a degree of separation and manual handling here, and I can think twice about what I did, or expand/subtract even further as I work down the list.

The best software for using eBooks instead of PDFs though, is probably Kindle. It’s free, and takes a number of formats (though unfortunately, not ePub). Annotations are more simple: just highlight and notation, but you can gather your notes later on with that application too. Great for reading research material and taking notes.

12

There’s also iAnnotate PDF, discussed briefly in the thread “iPad as writing/research tool.”

13

That’s the one I was just talking about, druid. :slight_smile: I think, anyway. If not, there is another iAnnotate application that’s really great, too!