Hello all,
Okay, here’s an official announcement about Scrivener 2.0 with an overview of some of the main new features - all we’re missing is an exact date, which we’ll announce soon, but we’re still on track for late October:
literatureandlatte.com/blog/?p=133
All the best,
Keith
Freeform corkboard!!! I can’t tell you how happy this makes me! This gets closer and closer to real index cards, the freedom of jotting down ideas on a scrap of paper, and the functionality of a basic brain-storming program. Will the position of the cards be remembered from one session to another?
Yay! Super super super…excited. I can’t wait to hand you my money Keith. You deserve it.
Oooh, shiny. I love the look of comments and footnotes in the inspector. Multiple project notes will also be quite handy and all in all it looks very polished and fun to use.
Looks really good. I can’t wait, but I guess I have to any way.
At that top of the page is a new logo. Is that the new Scrivener logo? I won’t lie, I’m partial to the old one.
I’m so excited. I want to run through the halls screaming at the top of my lungs, “2.0 is coming! 2.0 is coming!”
I just want to say I’m happy you’re putting in a way (two ways) to sync with the iPhone/Pod/Pad, even though you’ve said you wouldn’t want to write on such a device yourself. Thanks for listening to your users!
Also, many other great looking features. I’m looking forward to this.
So, when may we buy a copy of 2.0? Is the store ready to accept orders?
Freeform corkboard!
If I’m not mistaken, it looks like automatic headers are only available when exporting to Final Draft?
Is there a way for Scrivener to create headers off of your document titles during compilation? (I’ve not found that feature in 1.5.4.)
Thanks for all your hard work. I’m looking forward to this update more than updates to any other software I own.
BRAVISSIMO!
Of course, and they’ll be persistent between projects, too. If you have a carefully arranged grid of characters that you want to transfer from part one to part two of your series, there will be no need to re-arrange everything upon its arrival in the new project.
The best thing about these features is that they rely upon two technologies that are quite flexible beyond just the iPad and iPhone, even though they work well with them as well. Simplenote is supported by a number of workflows, not just Apple’s mobile devices, and using folder sync relies on nothing more than your file system. It’s a nice bonus that Dropbox also does likewise, and that there are a number of tools coming out (and already extant) that work with DB’s system in an intelligent way. Since both Simplenote and Dropbox allow sharing, it means you can more easily collaborate with non-Scrivener authors without a messy “re-import” phase.
Not quite yet, that will be a separate announcement, but late October is the target. I don’t believe we will be doing pre-sales, but I could be off on that.
Though there are a number of new tokens you can use in the header fields (including the entire compile group, ordinarily the Draft, but if you compile just a portion of the draft the token would reflect that), there won’t be a way of printing document names. Proper document level headers would take some extra work, both hacking it into the RTF, and providing an interface for controlling such a thing, since not everyone breaks down their outline to the same level of detail. Some break things down far below any visible book structure, and they wouldn’t all documents to be switching the header. To do a proper job of it, the compiler would also have to be aware of more than just the current section it is compiling, since common typesetting convention is to print the incoming section header on the page, even if the left contains the trail-end of the prior section.
But if you were also referring to the Final Draft navigator, there will be something like that as well for word processors that can handle the appropriate RTF codes—and in my testing that is most of them.
Congrats!!!
I DO hear a choir of angels singing. Not sure whether it’s Fluff’s video or early psychosis, though.
Late October is soooo far away!
First off, I’m thrilled with what I see in 2.0. 2.0 is turning an attractive woman into Helen…err…without all the death and so forth.
Regarding syncing and comments:
(1) My current need is primarily access at multiple Macs in different locations. From Keith’s description, I have the sense that using Dropbox still won’t be recommended for working with actual Scrivener files, and that the Folder Sync is the method for handling that in 2.0; but the description only mentions using plain text files via Dropbox. Would there be any problems with writing RTF files out via Folder Sync to a Dropbox folder and then accessing Dropbox and then Scrivener from other computers in order to update one’s actual Scrivener file? That would make for easier synchronization between computers; I wouldn’t have to remember to run Chronosync or similar every time I make changes, leave the office, etc.
(2) If the RTF files are possible via Folder Sync, will they contain/retain any comments that are in the files? Alternatively, when bringing files back into Scrivener via Folder Sync, will any comments generated in other applications (i.e., word processors) be brought in? I have read the threads on the issues with Apple’s text engine and various apps (esp. Pages) in this regard, but I wasn’t exactly sure I understood where things stood as of 2.0 on this matter. (I apologize if that is the result of not reading carefully enough.) I’m wondering about the possiblity of getting RTF files with comments from others, bringing them into Scrivener, and adding further collaborative comments. Alternatively (or maybe more importantly), I am curious about whether I could add comments in Scrivener, do RTF-formatted Folder Sync, and then I (or someone else) could bring the documents into Nisus Writer or some other application that supports RTF with the comments intact. What success might one have with the exported Folder Sync files when bringing them into other word processors (mostly for the sake of giving them to others (collaborators or friends who agree to comment), or if I’m on someone else’s computer and (alas!) wouldn’t have Scrivener.
I recognize that Simplenote only works (at least I think) with plain text files, so I haven’t asked about that at all. But I’m thrilled that I’ll at least be able to do basic editing via Simplenote for those times when I’m on a “foreign” computer. I’m also thrilled with the new gutter-based comments; I love the clean look and structure of non-inline comments.
On the first part you are correct. There are certain technological limitations that would be extremely difficult to overcome without a dramatic rethinking of the entire format, with implications that would likely cripple the experience for everyone working local, or carry with it strange stipulations and speed problems. That particular problem isn’t one that is going to be solved easily, and any application working with complexes of cohesive files (files which depend upon each other to remain predictable) has the same exact problem with these services.
However on the matter of file types, actually the announcement states that RTF is one of the available folder sync options—and this means comments work. When a word processor, capable of reading and writing comments and footnotes, is used, that means there will be round-trip retention. Comments added in the word processor will appear in Scrivener, as will footnotes and vice versa. This actually works very well. We’ve been testing it and using it for production work with Scrivener + Nisus. Word would do just as well. Anything else that Scrivener supports in the editor itself is golden, too. That means highlights, text colours, graphics, etc.
That would be dicey. Since Scrivener is capable of handling RTF quite well, the technical aspects of using it to read and write RTFs is no problem, however there are things you would have to watch out for and be very careful of, like the names of the files. I will say this: it is possible, we’ve tested it, but only in an import/export capacity. What you would not want to do is have two different projects configured to use the same sync folder. That would be a huge mess, and there is built-in protection against trying to do that. The stuff that makes this feature so nice to use would backfire since no two projects are identical (even if they start out that way, or continue to appear as such on the surface, they quickly get out of sync with each other at an underlying level).
This is a way of basically saying: “Share this part of my binder, and update any changes made to these shared files back into my project in-place”. It is not a way of keeping two different project files up to date with one another. That would be orders of magnitude more complicated and error prone.
That is correct, though it would be good to note that both the Simplenote workflow and the plain-text Dropbox workflow are quite intelligent about formatting in round-trip. They analyse the documents at the paragraph level, so format loss should be minimal in most cases, save for the most aggressive and widespread editing sessions.
Keith,
did you also overhaul Scrivener’s HTML export?
Thank you.
I’ve had an incredibly annoying itch for something like Scrivener 2.0 since I bought my first 128k Mac in 1984. After 25 years as a writer, I had pretty much given up on finding an app that works the way I do. Scrivener 1.0 helped ease the pain but I still had to rely on various jury-rigged solutions and bizarre links between programs and paper. It looks like 2.0 will finish the job.
Thanks for scratching that itch. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
No really, thank you.
signinstranger - the HTML export has been improved, yes, but it still relies on the OS X exporter and is really only a secondary format. There are some new “Copy as HTML” features though, too.
Thanks for everyone’s enthusiasm! I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to answer too many questions right now as my head is deep in the code that is left to do (remaining bugs and quirks, mainly), and the answers to all these questions will of course be answered in October when you get 2.0 in your hands. 
Thanks again and all the best,
Keith
My intention is to keep the Scrivener files exactly the same on 2 different computers (a desktop and a laptop), and I was hoping that I could automate the process by using Dropbox and Folder Sync. In other words, I want to have 1 Scrivener project file in 2 different locations, synchronized via Folder Sync and Dropbox. From your description, it sounds like Folder Sync isn’t set up to do that, but is focused primarily on allowing one to edit individual files in an editor other than Scrivener (esp. for those using iPads, iPhones, etc.)
In this workflow, I’m not really that worried about editing individual files outside of Scrivener, as I’ll be working in Scrivener in both locations. I’m concerned primarily with figuring out the best way to keep a particular project up-to-date on multiple computers in the simplest and fastest possible way, since I work on an iMac at home but often am working on a laptop away from home. Is continuing to use something like Chronosync still my best bet? I like the idea of using “the cloud” because one computer might not be available (whether physically or on my local network), and I like the Dropbox idea because it doesn’t require that I remember to transfer the file to a flash drive or other medium; I never get to my other computer and think “uh-oh, guess I’m playing Tetris today since I don’t have my current files”.
Ah, that’s nice. Thanks for clarifying. Is it right to assume that comments would not be preserved in those files, though?
It depends on what gets edited. Paragraphs that get edited will lose their formatting; paragraphs that are not edited externally will retain all formatting (including comments).
Regarding the rest of your post - syncing two projects via the cloud - this is a thorny issue with no simple solution, as Ioa says. I have some ideas about a possible future solution for this using an intermediary .zip file on the cloud, but it’s unlikely now that this idea will make it into the initial 2.0 release (although it may make it into a 2.1 or 2.2 update). Further discussion on this issue would be best off in a separate thread though.
Thanks,
Keith
Very exciting - it looks terrific!
cheers
william