I wanted to mention a very small issue that may, in the end be just a matter of preference. But I was wondering if any other users had the same thought.
In the Mac finder, you can rename a file by selecting it and hitting “Return.” I use this feature so often it’s in my muscle memory. But in Scrivener, in the Binder, when I selected a file and hit “Return,” it creates a new document instead. For a program that fits so well on a Mac, this behavior seems a little inconsistent to me (and I end up with a trash can full of empty, untitled docs). I can’t train myself out of it.
My vote would be to bring the Binder in line with the Finder on this one. What do others think?
P.S. I didn’t really know how to effectively search the boards too see if this had been addressed before. Forgive any redundancy!
You an turn this behaviour off via the Navigation preferences - if “Return creates new item” is turned off, then return can be used to rename items. In 2.0 there will be a distinction between return and enter - return will create new items, enter will allow you to rename (although there will still be the preference to turn the return-makes-new-document behaviour off).
Ok, at the risk of asking the obvious (or seeming oblivious or OCD) I’ll ask a related question.
As we know, when you delete e-mails in MAIL, they go into Trash. Then if you go into Trash you can select a group and delete them for good, while leaving others (usually more recent) that you think you might have deleted too soon. (I have “empty trash set” for 1x month, but sometimes like to empty trash sooner for security or other reasons).
As far as I can tell, you can’t do a partial “empty trash” in Scrivener. Like the person who raised this question, I end up with a lot of empty or duplicate docs/folders in the trash. Every time I go to empty trash I hesitate because I want to double check some of them—which takes some time.* If I could just empty the ones I know I don’t need (like in Mail), it would keep things cleaner. Am I missing a simple way to do this?
The only effective way of doing this that I can think of off-hand is to make a temporary second-trash folder, and move everything in the Trash to that and go through using the delete key to move stuff back into the main trash if you know you are done with it. Once you are finished sorting, you can just empty it and then trash the entire temporary “to sort” folder. Next time you need to organise things, if you still haven’t gone through that entire folder, you can just pull it out along with everything else into another temp folder (maybe, or just one would be good)—and repeat as you slowly get organised.
Personally, I would just try to stay on top of the organisational aspect of things as they go into the trash in the first place. Otherwise it gets to be a big mess. In my experience, a date-based culling system doesn’t really help, because if I’ve left stuff in there “to figure out later”, later might end up being quite a long time down the road. Also consider the scenario where you find yourself taken away from your ordinary routine for a few months. You fire up your application again and poof it does all of these date based assumptions. Me, I try to never intentionally put anything in the trash unless I know for a fact I’m done with it. I don’t actually use the trash can for anything except a fail-safe undo in those cases of “oops, wrong key”. When things are actually getting deleted, they are moved straight the trash can and then obliterated in the next second.
That’s just the way I work; that doesn’t mean it is right for everyone. To me it seems if you are using the trash for something other than an actual trash can, you might as well just use a dumping folder—but I was never a big fan of trash cans to start with (Cmd-Del/Cmd-Opt-Shift-Del is what I press whenever I want to delete a file in Finder and in Path Finder I just use its straight delete function). I much prefer mark-and-expunge out of all the “safe systems” though. Thankfully Mail lets you use that mode.
and in Path Finder I just use its straight delete function). I much prefer mark-and-expunge out of all the “safe systems” though. Thankfully Mail lets you use that mode.