Am I right in thinking that there is no way of changing the relative sizes of the panels in the Inspector? I have looked through the documentation, but can’t find any reference to how this might be done.
Also, is there no way of making the Inspector show both the General Meta-Data and the Custom Meta-Data at the same time?
Ideally, I would like to be able to resize the panels so that the Synopsis part is bigger, the Document Notes part smaller, and make both General and Custom Meta-Data visible at the same time. I can’t find a way of doing any of these things.
(By the way, I personally think that the term Meta-Data is too technical for many users. Wouldn’t the term ‘attributes’ be a better alternative?)
We haven’t had a single complaint about the term “meta-data” before, and we have users young and old.
You are right that there is no way to change the relative sizes, and no way to view custom meta-data and general meta-data at the same time. There are no plans to change this, either, as it would need a fully customisable, swap-in-swap-out palette rather than a set list of views to achieve something like this, which is a non-trivial undertaking and we get very few complaints about the inspector. I think it works well, but then I designed it, so I would!
Yes, there’s no way to resize parts of the inspector, and no way in the inspector to show general and meta-data simultaneously, though you can use cmd-7 to switch between them easily while viewing the document. When in full screen, the inspector panel is a bit different, so you can do some resizing of elements there, which might help you if you want to work with a larger synopsis area while writing. You can also view all the meta-data in the outliner.
Re: meta-data, I like it. But then I’m a geek. “Attributes” makes me think of an RPG…
The reason I added the point about meta-data is that I asked a question on a writers’ forum (WriteWords), to see who understood what meta-data meant. Given that Scrivener is aimed at writers, I thought it would be useful to see who among a group of them would understand the term. Only one person said they did, and even then I had to slightly correct the understanding.
Writers tend to be good at learning new words, though. As I say, I haven’t had one complaint about the term - not a single one - and we have users young and old, novices, best-sellers, memoirists and more, so it’s hardly an issue. It’s self-explanatory in the context of its appearance in the interface anyway. If we balloted writers’ forums for our everything we do, we’d end up with a faster horse. Wait, no, that was cars.
“Attributes” makes me think of an RPG…