Each time I request a feature I don’t think Scrivener has, someone points out that the software already does it, which constantly blows my mind. But I think I’ve finally found one thing that might not be here, and might even be too hard to do.
I’d love to have a binder snapshotting feature. I use the binder to structure my stories, and when I do new drafts, while I can easily snapshot all the docs and label them the previous draft, I can’t snapshot the structure/order of the docs in the binder.
I could use collections to create draft orders but then I loose all my file/folder nesting that I’ve used to break up chapters and parts of chapters.
I’m not even sure how you’d implement this sort of thing, but sure would be nice to not have to copy and save old binder hierarchies/structures – creates branching and sort of defeats the power of snapshotting…
We knocked around some ideas for this a long time ago, but as you point out, it’s a pretty thorny mess once you start getting into all of the implications of how an outline tree can evolve over time. Items can split, merge, be deleted, moved in and out of the snapshot area, etc. Because data is stored separately from the structure, the identifiers which tell the structure where the data goes must remain integral, and a number of forms of outline editing can disturb that in ways which would cause data to lose sync with the outline and “disappear” into recovered files. At any rate, there already is a sort of “feature” for this, and that is File/Back Up/Back Up To... which sets aside a complete copy of the project as it currently appears. I use this often enough that I changed Shift-Cmd-S to it from Save As, since I rarely use that. The main drawback is that it backs up everything, and so isn’t convenient for massive projects—but like I say, a snapshot that doesn’t capture both the data and outline together as a cohesive unit is subject to corruption.
With collections, try thinking smaller, because this is one of the reasons behind their design (in fact collections grew out of the original ruminations on how to “snapshot” bits of the binder): to allow for localised experimentation. Say you feel chapter 12 is weak. You can start dropping sections into a “Ch. 12” collection, and then re-organise them as you see fit. This could include bringing in sections from other chapters. Once you find an order you like, you can drag them all back into the binder tab (hold for a second to flip over to it) and drop them back into the chapter 12 container in the binder to collect all of the items in the order you provided.
I figured it was going to be a bit ugly, this particular feature request.
Your workaround is good, although the only issue is that collections don’t maintain file hierarchies or include file/folder structures, something I use a lot to breakdown chapters and scenes, so each time I move to and from collections I’d have to rebuild that structure back in the binder.
I suppose then my feature request would be to maintain hierarchies in the collections. Not sure of the ramifications of this.
Another workaround is to use the screen grab function in Scrivener to take a picture of the binder and store that somewhere (ie, literally take a snapshot and save it as a picture).
Lo tech? yup
Painful to restore? possibly
What it would do, though, is remind you where things used to be, and allow you to restore files to a previous order without having to lose all the lovely typing you have done in those files since the back-up save.