I am a long-time Scrivener user. I’ve used it for writing two books and many academic articles. One of my favorite features is Revision Mode, because I find it extremely useful for editing and revising long, complicated texts. Revision Mode, however, could be so much better.
First, it’s relatively hidden. The controls are buried under the Format menu item. I know where to find the controls, but when I teach grad students to use Scrivener (which I do regularly), I am aware how buried Reivsion Mode seems in the interface.
Second, turning Revision Mode on and off is more difficult than it needs to be.
Third, I wish there were keyboard shortcuts to turn it on/off and preferably show/hide a reference panel (I change the colors I use for Revising frequently).
Fourth, being in Revision Mode is something that should be indicated (and changeable?) via the Status Bar at the bottom of the editing pane.
(Please don’t take this post as complaining. I love Scrivener and appreciate the hard work that’s gone into designing it and that keeps it going. I offer this suggestion only in the spirit of improvement.)
Hi. This is already there. In the Windows version, the least.
Alt + 0 to 5 (0 being off)
Vincent the keyboard shortcut only exists for revision mode 1 (in default settings), BUT you can record the keyboard shortcuts in the options panel as you stated and they work.
Oups,
I guess I customized it long ago and forgot.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
I love Revision Mode, and use it ALL THE TIME. But it takes 3 mouse clicks to activate or change. I love keyboard shortcuts but also would like to be able to add the buttons to the toolbar at the top.
Maybe the Revision Level (1 - 5) could be sticky buttons so when you engage them, they stay pressed in. To turn off revision mode, just click it again and it’ll return to the default, popped out setting. And would definitely need the options to Remove Current Colour and All Revisions, but with the sticky button you wouldn’t need the “None” option on the toolbar I don’t think.
I don’t think I’d change how Revision Mode works, especially in regard to deleting text. I always disabled the line through option in MS Word’s Revision Mode. If I have more than a few words to delete, like a whole paragraph, I usually cut & paste it to a separate file called “deleted text” so I can refer back to it if I need too, but I don’t need to see that in the document I’m working in. But that’s just how I work. I’m not a professional editor returning a piece to the author or anything.
I love Revision Mode too – on Mac, I simply mapped the different modes to keyboard shortcuts via the MacOS system settings, works like a charm.
It is also possible to map each revision level to a keyboard shortcut on Windows. They can be found in File ▸ Options..., under the Keyboard tab, by searching for “revision”.
That’s not to say a toolbar for it wouldn’t be nice, but getting it into the interface without cluttering it would be more difficult. I don’t think it makes any sense in the main toolbar, rather more the Format Bar, but that one is already pretty loaded. A third toolbar would be… messy. We might as well sink to using the Ribbon at that point.
Since you mention your preference toward just removing the text, I mean this more for anyone else coming along, but revision mode does support inline deletion via the strikethrough shortcut. The strike line will take on the current revision colour, be recognised as such in searches, and such “soft” deletions can be cleaned out in a single click with the Edit ▸ Text Tidying ▸ Delete Struck Through Text command. For those that prefer to keep them around forever, there is also a compile checkbox for stripping out struck through text.
Myself I’ve always preferred inline annotations for soft deletions though, as it leaves the text easier to read (I set it to light grey), and are stripped out of compile by default rather than having to set things up. It’s a bit less fiddly, but if one does use revision marking search a lot, there are definite advantages to using strikethrough.
I’d love a toolbar button and status icon for Revision Mode too, but I searched the forum and people have been asking for it for 10 years 
I run a stripped-down toolbar so there’s plenty of room at the top of my screen for RM, maybe a drop-down button like the paperclip or Add buttons?