As I’ve mentioned during a previous feature request, a comic book writer needs to keep track of what page they are on in the final comic, in order to plan for two page spreads and page turns. The “show card numbers” feature is very useful for comic writers who assign one page of the final comic to each card (As Antony Johnston suggests people use in his guide) but it sure would be nice if there was a “show card numbers in Scrivenings mode” feature that would show card numbers in the inspector while the user is in Scrivenings mode (Or you could have them appear where titles are displayed).
This sort of auto numbering would be a lot more convenient than doing a “vertical split” in order to view the cards as Johnston suggests comic writers do in his guide.
Honestly, I’d LOVE if you could add an equivalent feature to “show card numbers” to the binder as well.
This is what my binder looks like at the moment, I’m constantly looking for a better way to get an overview of my pages when revising my script:
I find the cards are hard for me to visualize and I prefer something closer to an outline. New ways to view program generated document numbers would help.
Additionally, although I don’t feel as strongly about this, it would be nice if there was a “show card numbers” column (or whatever you would call it) in the outline view as well. I tried to use the outline view the other day to look at my script pages and plan revisions but without a “page number” column to help me track the page turns I found it was easier to export to excel and use the excel column numbers. I’m kinda surprised that feature doesn’t already exist, since auto numbers would seem to go with outlines as much as they go with cards… you could just stick an excel style column at the left most column. I imagine adding a number column would be a pretty easy feature to program.
Numbering in the outliner is something we already have slated as a potential feature down the road. We can’t make any promises about it—it’s actually more complicated than it might seem on the surface. Remember that not everyone uses Scrivener with a One Item Per Real World Thing philosophy. Some people have things broken down quite a ways below any surface topology that the reader would be aware of. So it would mean a more complicated hierarchically aware outlining label system—something like Word provides though far less complex would be nice—and then you run into problems with what, if anything, this has to do with the compile settings, which are agile and can be swapped out on the fly, causing dramatic shifts in the final topology of the document. Then you’ve got the matter of “Include in Compile” and filtration settings in the compiler itself which may omit chunks of what you see in the outliner.
You can maybe see why just relatively numbering a flat list of index cards, always starting from 1, was the implementation currently chosen. Trying to make those numbers reliably usable as a real-world utensil is rife with difficulty.
But like I say, it’s on the list for deeper thought, because nobody disagrees with you in the utility of numbering sections. That’s just universally useful to writers and thinker of all stripes.
I think I see what you mean Amber. Just to make sure I’m being clear, all I’m asking for my own use case (and presumably other comic writers would find it useful as well) is relative numbering of outline view “rows” always starting from 1.
Literally just a “dumb” list as an optional column, one for each row displayed, it doesn’t have to take into account the hierarchy or anything, it just has to refresh if you move the rows around. You’re already generating the rows, just give me a column that says:
1
2
3
4
5
6
Obviously long term improvements to the outliner would also be good, but for my use case at least, I’m just asking for the same “flat” feature you already have implemented in the card view. You’ve already got 19 types of columns the user can choose to display in outline view, you could just add one called “flat numbering” or whatever.
A dumb list, like Corkboard uses, would indeed be much easier to implement. The problem is, I think you’re the first person to date that has suggested that as workable. Most people want the fancy stuff, so the whole idea has been sidelined for 3.0 conversations. But again like I say it will almost certainly be in the Outliner, not the Binder. That’s just a design decision for keeping the binder as simple to use as possible. So either way you’d need a “sideboard” split, whether it is a single short stack of index cards or an outliner.
Well, I’d rather have outline autonumbers in 3.0 than never… though I realize you probably don’t know for sure what features will make into into 3.0 at this stage so I’m not holding you to anything
Just thought I’d try to demonstrate with pictures why I’d like page numbers in Scrivinings mode.
This is how Johnston suggests people keep track of the page numbers:
Four columns of information! I think its a bit busy looking? A little complicated?
If you added autonumbers to the cards in Scrivinings mode like so:
It would be easier for me to simplify the view a bit.
Another basic problem with the current implementation for me is I can’t click on the document in Scrivenings mode and automatically see what page I’m on in the comic script. I need to scroll through the card list to see where it corresponds to the title of the page I’m currently in. And since the card view is unconnected to the Scrivinings mode view that adds “cognitive overhead” for me at least
Trying to make those numbers reliably usable as a real-world utensil is rife with difficulty.
