When I show the binder then hide it, the vertical split resets to 50/50 from the 60/40 I had previously.
This is not a bug. Proportions are not maintained. Cocoa split views are notoriously difficult to get working properly and they are very buggy in and of themselves. Scrivener cannot remember every iteration of your set up. It just looks at the current set up and tries to make sensible adjustments. So, Scrivener has no memory of the binder being visible. When you go to show it again, Scrivener has to resize the split views and it does so with 50/50 settings which is safest.
So, like I say, this is not a bug. Though please to feel free to log a request at bugreport.apple.com to enhance the state saving of NSSplitView.
All the best,
Keith
Will do.
Thanks. I’m really hoping they improve this in Leopard. Every Cocoa developer who uses NSSplitView bemoans how awkward it is - it hasn’t really been improved since the days of NeXTStep… Given that there have been a lot of changes to splitters in Apple apps since Tiger and in the new iApps, and given that they seem to be dropping drawers in favour of splits, I am really hoping that this is a hint that they have added improved support for these views in Leopard, and made it a lot easier for developers to use them without corrupting the contained views (which can happen if you don’t constrain their proportions properly, which gets very complicated when you have as many nested split views as you do in Scrivener).
Well, that was more than you need to know. 
But please, anyone who reads this, do leave an enhancement request with bugreport.apple.com to improve the state-saving and proportion constraining features of NSSplitView - I believe they prioritise on number of requests.
All the best,
Keith
Will add my voice, since I too use split view constantly! Thanks for explaining. I actually appreciate greatly when you explain things.
Alexandria
I sent them a message, but I fear I might’ve opened a can of worms…They wrote back (something I was hoping to avoid).
So…Any quick a dirty thing I should write back that will get what we want without my having an ongoing relationship with the too inquisitive Maurice? (Hey, the reason I became a writer is that I don’t like interacting with people!)
–rob
edited to remove quote from apple
Lol! I’ve noticed they’ve been writing back a bit more recently, actually - they used to just ignore you, and I liked it that way.
It’s good that they actually sound interested in improving NSSplitView - enough to ask more, anyway. It really is a nightmare at the moment… Anyway, if they ask anything else, just hide.
Thanks for taking the time to help put this on Apple’s radar, a lot of developers are after this.
All the best,
Keith
Hope that works.
(When I went to reply to the message, I scrolled down to read the whole thing, and found the disconcerting all caps message that the information in that message is under non-disclosure. Oops. So I edited my above post.)
–rob
Edited mine, too.
Ha. I didn’t realise non-disclosure was binding without a signed contract. Smells of EULA “pseudo-law” to me. Oh well, not as if I recommend anyone test the theory against Apple’s trigger-happy legal department.
You are right, but on the other hand, you have to create an account to log bugs, which means you agree to certain terms and conditions. I can’t remember what they are (obviously), but I wouldn’t mind betting that not disclosing anything marked NDA in correspondence is one of them…
And, as if the follow-up email were not enough, I got an automated phone call from Applecare informing me that they’d received my message and I need do nothing. I’m beginning to feel a little like Josef K. in The Trial. Soon enough my relatives will be telling me, “Maurice has told me your complaint is doing very, very poorly,” and I’ll be advised to make a trip to Cupertino…
–rob
Lol!
Funny until it happens to you! And don’t think I’ve forgotten who put me on their list!
–rob
Hopefully the end to my little Trial: Apple now says this is a known issue. Of course, no ETA on the fix…
–rob