I have a question, though. Maybe I’m just being naive, but given the above, wouldn’t it make a lot of sense to rewrite Scrivener’s text editor so that it still used Apple’s text system underneath, but was based on XML instead of RTF, and in the process maybe had a few improvements made to its handling of lists and tables? I know enough to know that that would be a HUGE undertaking . . . but wouldn’t it be worth it, in the final analysis? Again, maybe I’m just being naive here, but since the text editor is a central part of Scrivener’s overall functionality, why shackle it to an inferior text engine without making any improvements to how that engine works, and to a file format that is, indeed, sooo 10.4, rather than the format of the future, XML? Again … not trying to be naive, though I maybe am. Perhaps doing this would be a lot more work than it would ultimately be worth . . . though I question the latter, as it might be worth quite a lot.
So far, the best support for tables and lists I’ve seen (albeit, of course, in a dedicated word processor) has been in Apple’s own Pages, which is ironic considering that the Apple text engine exhibits such – well, let’s call it “quirky” — behavior. I know Scrivener isn’t meant to be the same type of app as Pages — it’s about structure and form, not about lavish visual design — but any way you slice it, it’s possible that the dev(s) could do worse than to emulate Page’s features in this regard.
Over the past few days, I’ve been doing some worldbuilding for my new fantasy novel — a process that works best if kept within Scrivener’s organizational methodology — and in the process, I’ve had to make quite a few ordered lists (such as outlines within documents) and create quite a few tables (some of which are nested), and I can now safely say that the Apple text system truly is a P.O.S. and a half. I almost always have to duck into Pages to do the real “work” involved, which is an atrocious distraction and a cumbersome process of cut-and-paste and back-and-forth that takes more time than it should and more effort than necessary. But the only alternative is Scrivener’s lists and tables, which, I’m sorry, are atrocious and inelegant, to say the least.
Scrivener doesn’t have to have all sorts of gimmicky bells and whistles, or anything super-fancy. Just a little more feature-parity with what’s offered in word processors, and only in certain areas. Granted, those programs have a lot of extra features (and, admittedly, much larger dev teams), and I know that those programs are not what Scrivener is supposed to be. However, I think there’s a difference between trying to go toe-to-toe with MS Word or Pages in terms of their overall feature sets . . . and simply trying to make some much-needed improvement in how tables and lists are handled. Yes, Apple’s text system offers a lot of features and is, in a lot of ways, more complete than any other OS’s text system. But it also has a lot of opportunities for improvement. And while I can certainly understand the dev not wanting to have to write an entire text system on his own, I don’t think there’s anything wrong in asking for simple improvements to what is already there. Granted, the dev may want to prioritize other things ahead of such improvements, which is completely understandable and, of course, his prerogative… I’m just making the point that they eventually ned to be made.
I’m not trying to be rude or impudent, just matter-of-fact: the Apple text system’s tables and lists suck, a lot, and desperately want for improvement. Should the dev decide that these sorts of improvements are a higher priority, then believe me, they will be most welcome in some future version, and can only make Scrivener even better than it already is, which is terrific; since adopting Scrivener, I’ve been much more productive as a writer, much better organized, and have been set free from the “linear” writing brainwashing job that years of MS Word have done on me. So, yeah, I think Scrivener is fantastic at what it does, and doesn’t need to expand its functionality much beyond that . . . but I also think that it needs to do a few things better than it does, currently. And, I think that these improvements could be done without confusing Scrivener’s core purpose, mission, or its focused role in the writing process, and without trying to make it compete in a sphere that it was never intended to occupy. It may not be a dedicated word processor, but it does include some word processing functionality . . . so shouldn’t that functionality be as good as it can possibly be?
Well, now I’m ranting, or have been for a while, maybe. I realize that the dev has a life, a wife, a family, friends, and his own writing, plus things he wants to do that have nothing to do with coding for hours on end. And, I realize that one can only do so much with the resources one has. And yes, I realize that it’s one thing for someone like me to rattle off a wish-list of ideas and future features, and another thing entirely for the dev to sit down and do the hard work of coding those things into being, some of which might not even be possible, or too complex for just one person to handle. But, nonetheless, I think that issues like this one deserve to be addressed at some point, and something should eventually be done about them. I’m not trying to gripe or bitch or be an arse or anything, and I do realize that I am probably very naive about the complexities and effort required to fix these things. But I would be remiss if I didn’t say something about them, because I think that as a member of the user community, I kind of have an obligation to raise my voice and pontificate at length about this stuff. That’s all I’m trying to do, in the end; to make it known that this stuff needs fixin’, and that if it ever is, I for one will be most grateful and appreciative. I hope Scrivener is around for years to come, and I hope that one day, I can use it almost exclusively for my writing, without having to boot into Word and Pages for tables, programs whose workflows — when compared to Scrivener’s way of doing things — are a major buzz-kill to have to use.
—Andy H.
P.S. — If you can ever sort out the visual issues with certain fonts, a sliding-scale text zoom would still be terrific!
