I would like to create a little corner for those few enlightened ones that use Scrivener and an Alphasmart together.
As we know, this combination almost only has advantages. No discussion needed whether Scrivener should support the Alphasmart (as with its opposite, the iPad) - in fact, the Alphasmart supports Scrivener! Plug in, press a key, and there you go.
Okay. Seriously: I would like to discuss the usage scenarios of the combination Alphasmart/Scrivener. How do you use each of both? And when?
I take my Alphasmart when (a) the weather is so good, I have to go sit outside and (b) I have scenes I can write without much reference material or with reference material I can take with me (books, magazines, cutouts etc.). I usually take a notepad with me as well, but this is because I can hardly write anything without jotting some notes down before, mindmapping what I am going to write on a very bottom level.
When Iām done (or the weather changes, which happens usually quite often here en Bretagne), I plug the Alphasmart in (USB-cable, the Y-cable collects dust since I left my old PC), put the cursor in the right document and press āSendā.
I have a little trouble with the transfer speed. 3 (standard) is a little too fast, sometimes characters get lost, and 2 is rather too slow. (Maybe because I have TypeIt4Me running which processes all keyboard entries - one day, Iāll check that. On the other side, this way I can use all my abbreviations I am used to.) So, what to do with the waiting time? Because I donāt really want to clean up my desk while the text is dripping into Scrivener, I came up with the idea to read out aloud what I have written while it appears on the screen - and this works really great, because doing so I usually come up with a lot of ideas how I could improve the first version. And once the text is transferred, I immediately do so. (Too sad one canāt stop the transfer, change some words and then let the transfer continue again. But on the other hand, maybe thatās not as bad as it appears at first thought, because this way, I have an over-all view on the text and can edit it from this viewpoint, which might end up in a better result. Plus it trains my memory.)
I have to emphasize that I use an Alphasmart 3000, the predecessor of the Neo thatās available meanwhile. I have no idea in which way the Neo might behave differently. Actually, for what I have read about the Neo, I believe the Alphasmart 3000 fits my needs better.
Anybody else? How are you doing it?