I’m just in need of basically textedit with organization features. All I need scrivener for is to organize notes. Both of those aspects of scrivener leave a few things to be desired. I do plan on getting a freeware version of a textedit based note organizer made when I have time (textedit is actually open source) but until then…
-Firstly, I prefer textedit to the text editor in scrivener. For example, when I want to find something, typically a separate window appears and I have to press find next, etc… how about make it more like textedit where a non-intrusive findbar appears with a count of how many instances of that term appear, etc. and allow me to toggle it. I also like the style options in textedit which I don’t see in the scrivener text editor initially.
-Another thing is when I’m in fullsreen mode the text doesn’t wrap to the window… it’s arbitrarily limited for some reason.
-Pressing enter to create a new page seems weird… why not be consistent with OSX functions and have enter be to rename. There doesn’t seem to be a hotkey to rename a page. Command-N could be a new page… and actually command-n does make a new page… so why does enter as well? Weird.
I don’t particularly like those in-window find bars. They make it much more difficult to use keyboard navigation for things as simple as switching to find and replace, for instance, requiring a click in a “Replace” checkbox to bring up the replace field.
Scrivener’s style (formatting presets) are more powerful than TextEdit’s (and will be even more powerful when they become true styles in the future), and can be found in the very left of the formatting bar.
This behaviour (“fixed width”) is easily switched off via the “Editor” pane of the Preferences.
Hitting enter to create a new item is standard outlining behaviour across many programs, and it makes creating new items quick and easy. If you don’t like it, turn it off via the “Navigation” pane of the Preferences (deselect “Return key: creates new item in list, outline and corkboard views”. That way enter will edit selected fields. The Escape key will allow you to edit any field regardless of this option.
How would Find then differe from Find-and-Replace. I use Find all the time but rarely if ever use replace; there would have to be some subtle semantics around this to make Find with an implicit null replace be Find and Find with explicit null replace effectively deleted. Substitute null with any and all variants of words–how would it be meant to disquinish between Find with a new term but replace with a previous one still remaining from just a simple Find?
re: the find window. I just mean, it could look exactly as it is now, but have it be in-window so that it doesn’t cover the actual document I’m working on. Or allow me to change the size of the find windows to make it more of a box. Sometimes I click next and the word found is right underneath the find window. It’s annoying to have to move the find window out of the way every so often.
re: the styles. I don’t get how to use the top left button. All I see are some presets. How to I access the main styles window or whatever it is and how to I add some more styles to the presents button.
As for the Find box getting in the way, unless I need replace, I find it is easier to just hit Return when I’m ready to start searching. This automatically locates the next match and dismisses the Find dialogue, putting the search term into background mode. Now I can just hit Cmd-G to jump to the next, or Shift-Cmd-G to jump back to the previous match.
There isn’t a central management window. If you wish to create a new style, just use the editor to make a sample line, then use the Format/Formatting/ sub-menu to create a new preset from the selection. Likewise, to revise a preset, apply it to a sample line, modify it, and then update it in that same sub-menu. That is also where you would remove any provided defaults you do not anticipate ever using.