I love Scrivener. It’s a great tool for composition and organizing. BUT…for those of us who write anything that requires sources and citations, Scrivener falls short…very! The manual, Section 21.6 in Chapter 17 vaguely addresses the issue. Seems recommendation is to incorporate another program to enable use of sources and citations - expensive and another learning curve!
Scrivener is so powerful and grand in many ways, will a sources and citation function be added soon?
Thanks, BLSamuel
BibDesk is open source and available from http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net/. I use it in conjunction with Scrivener for my academic projects. I created a template to support drag-and-drop into Scrivener. BibDesk > Preferences > Templates. The drag-and-drop is into a document at the end of Draft folder for my project. On those occasions when I do need excellent control of citations I put LaTeX/bibtex reference strings into the documents and then File > Compile > Compile for: > MultiMarkDown → LaTeX (.tex) and then post-process the final form of the project with the conventional LaTeX workflow.
Works well enough for me but I agree the lack of real citation support is a problem with Scrivener.
To be fair… most writing programs don’t provide citation support out of the box (and the few that do, do a bad job at it).
The problem with scrivener is that it doesn’t work adequately with any citation manager out there. They all employ the same strategy (scan an rtf file), and that is fine if you’ve finished writing - just send the compiled work to the citation app. But if want to scan while you’re writing, or before you compile… than you’re out of luck. This is an area where TSS should employ its wisdom, so that it becomes more compatible with all other citation managers (after all… why should they change? They work with every other app…). As a side note… solving this issue would probably also solve a few others (I’m thinking of syncing stuff, etc…).
joao.
I think that incorporating bibliography and citation management into Scrivener would not really solve the problem of expense and learning curve … Lit&Lat would undoubtedly have to charge more for Scrivener, and the bibliography side of it would impose not only another learning curve on the user equal to that posed by using an external program, it would cause bloat, extra complexity and I would suspect a huge increase in support requests. This is essentially the same issue as that posed by those who want mind-mapping to be incorporated, and if you incorporate that and bibliography management, then there is image creation and manipulation, submission management and so on.
So I doubt if any such extension will be added any time … you might find if you trawled through the forum that it has already been discounted. As for using a dedicated third-party program, that has advantages: it stays out of the way until you want it; it is developed and maintained by people who concentrate on bibliographic functions and management, rather than by a small team who are fundamentally working on software for composing text; and there aren’t enough (handy) keyboard shortcuts available to provide those needed by Scrivener (people already find multi-selector, ctrl-opt-cmd+whatever a keypress too far) and for good bibliographic management. I use Bookends by Sonny Software: setting up and adding to the bibliography is very straightforward, and Cmd-Y, select entry, Shift-Cmd-Y to enter the necessary temporary citation is hardly onerous, nor is scanning the exported compiled manuscript either with Bookends itself, or directly in Nisus Writer Pro (my WP of choice) to put in the full citations and create the bibliography any burden.
And when it comes to cost, yes, Bookends, Sente and Papers are far from given away, but there are other choices:
Zotero — free;
Endnote — very expensive if you buy it yourself, but if you’re an academic, your institution may well have a global licence — or whatever it’s called — for members;
BibDesk — free, though I don’t know how well that would work if you’re not using the MMD >LaTeX route like @reepicheep;
there may be others I don’t know about.
I also cannot comment about cite-as-you-write using any of the above, as Bookends doesn’t use it, nor can I comment about the (apparent) iniquities of Endnote, which seems to engender a love-hate relationship. Others will, I hope, chip in on those subjects.
Finally, as a disclaimer; I am nothing to do with Literature & Latte, nor Sonny Software, except as a grateful and happy user of their software; my bibliographic database is rather small; my need for bibliographic software has diminshed since my retirement. So the opinions of others will be of more value to you.
HTH
Mr X
I’m not a fan of cite-as-you-write. Find it pointless. But I do like the idea of scanning and re-scanning during the writing stages (before compilation), which scrivener does not allow.
As a side note, although Bookends does not offer cite-while-you-write, it does offer something much more useful: live bibliography (or bibliography-as-you-write if you will). Both Bookends and Sente offer this if you use Mellel (again, not really useful if you’re using Scrivener).
Be aware that there is another thread on references in this forum that is being discussed right now. You should check it instead. Also, be aware that if you don’t feel like spending too much time learning a new tool, you should use Sente instead of Bookends (otherwise I would recommend Bookends).
I would suspect that providing in-Scrivener scanning would throw up all sorts of issues. Scrivener differs fundamentally from NWP, Mellel, Word, OpenOffice/clones, in that they all keep the manuscript as a single long document. You can do that in Scrivener, of course, but it defeats one of the main strengths of Scrivener … splitting your manuscript up into a myriad of short documents that (a) are only loaded into memory when required, keeping the program nimble, and (b) can be moved round as necessary, then brought together at the end through Compile.
So if you have a thesis, consisting, say, of a thousand separate Scrivenings, what would the scanning process scan … just the document you are working on at that moment, or the whole manuscript? And where would the resultant bibliography go in the structure? I can’t answer that; you’ll have to argue it out with Keith if it’s to happen.
I looked at Sente when I was looking for Bibliographic software; I just couldn’t get it, though I immediately knew where I was with Bookends. Same for Mellel in a way. It was the first wp I got when OSX came out, but until very recently, it had the problem that it couldn’t open .doc files in Chinese, so to work on them, I had to open them in TextEdit, export them as .rtf then open that in Mellel. Then I found Opito Composer, which sold out to Nisus, and so I’ve been an NWP user ever since. I still have a licence for the updated version of Mellel, but as NWP does everything I want …
It’s all “horses for courses” really, and Scrivener, NWP and Bookends are the horses that suit my course. I sometimes think of teaching myself the MMD > LaTeX route (I used to use LaTeX before I got my first Mac about 25 years ago, and really liked the output) but my needs are simple now and there are other things to employ my time, so I doubt if I’ll ever take the plunge.
Mr X
Since you mention Bookends and Mellel which are well integrated, how would you like to see better integration between NWP and Bookends? I was wondering what those with experience of Mellel would see as improvements in BE/NWP intergration.
I’ve used BE and NWP since way back and as a legacy of the classic version of Nisus have developed my own idiosyncratic way of working, so my experience doesn’t really count in this case. “Bibliography while you write” does sound useful.
Must say I too would be wary of having Scrivener take on too much, in this regard. BE can drop in a temporary citation-holder, and does that easily enough. As long as it’s there, I (for one?) don’t need to “see” what the end product will look like (if I do need to – I can compile to Word, or use BE’s preview function)…
I used the inline-footnote option, since my style sees plenty happening inside the footnote text, along with the usual citations - this allows me to follow the flow of my arguments in a far more coherent manner, than would have been the case inside Word etc.
I guess the main point though, would be that I prefer dedicated tools for dedicated purposes.
Devonthink for Information Management. Scrivener for creating material. Word for processing it, right at the end. Bookends for storing and manipulating my citations, and producing the final scanned product (alongside the bibliography) inside Word.
I cannot really see the beenift of trying to integrate what is being done by a reference manager, into Scrivener. Nor could I ever see Scrivener replacing Devonthink.
That all being said, were some features that ‘mimic’ what happens in Word to be introduced, I’d certainly welcome them. Top of my list would be “numbered” footnotes >> it’s sometimes tedious when I notice a mistake in the compiled Word document, to go and figure out precisely which “footnote” that was, over in Scrivener. A numbered system would make things far easier - but it’s no deal-breaker.
Well… the thing is, I can see two reason why I would like to have an idea of how it looks like.
The number one reason is, if you’re working on very long documents (thesis and the like), you really want to make sure certain things will come out the way you think they should (footnote/endnote numbering is correct, citations are pointing to the correct bibliography entry, etc…). These are not stylistic issues (what formatting they’re given is irrelevant), but semantic, they hold meanings that would change if not properly compiled / scanned. In long documents, leaving these check-ups to the end (and finding out you have a lot of corrections to do), can be quite frustrating. Hence, the better option of, preview frequently to make sure everything works.
For short documents, well… bibliographies can sometimes account for 1/4 or 1/3 of the word length of a papers, and too many confs /journals are including the bibliography in the word limit count (this is less of an issue, as they really shouldn’t).
Personally, I’ve given up on doing the Scrivener → WP → Reference manager → WP route. Too many hurdles / apps in the way. I’ve decided to go for a Scrivener w/ markdown → Latex w/ bibtex. In this department I really only wished there was more documentation on the scrivener side (especially, updated documentation). I still do Scrivener → WP → Reference manager → WP for small stuff (papers and the like).
Just a note though…
If you’re working with references, you really should use a reference manager (any). Whether you use it to cite in scrivener or a WP or not.
Format → Options → Show Compiled Footnote Numbers in Inspector.
Until you compile, Scrivener doesn’t “know” what documents will actually be included in the draft, and so it can’t know how to number footnotes. But once you’ve compiled the project, it has that information.
Katherine
Which is what the Compile function is for. Indeed, I highly recommend doing test compiles on a regular basis starting very early in the process. Even aside from the footnote question, the Compile function is complex enough that trying to figure it out “cold” a week before a major deadline is a recipe for frustration.
Katherine
Having started this discussion with a lament about Scrivener not seeming to have a system for citing sources in non-fiction work, I find that actually there is a way. I’ve tested a small sample and find it satisfactory. I should have read more carefully, but terminology threw me.
You can find the explanation and process under “linked footnotes” in the Scrivener Manual. If you have Scrivener for Dummies by Gwen Hernandez, the explanation begins on page 171.
This will work for my particular type of genealogical sourcing ala Elizabeth Shown Mills. Mills developed this format as genealogists are citing original documents quite often, not the writings or docs of others. I’ve done a sample and compiled and found it came out as I hoped. I suspect others will find it will work for them as well.
Great discussion, though, and lots of ideas. Thanks!
Many thanks Katherine – this will help!
there is also a new integration between Scrivener and Zotero that makes the workflow more streamlined and includes the citations and bibliography in the Scrivener document.
You can find more information at
zotplus.github.io/better-bibtex/cayw.html
and at https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/scrivener-and-zotero-integration/30996/1
Papers 3 has it’s “magic citations”, and it works quite okay with Scrivener. The only problem is that you have to export your final text to a rtf editor, and NOT to Word or Pages, to translate the reference “book arks” to the correct format. But that’s not really a problem for most scientific writing because the journals usually want the text without formatting, as plain text.
Scrivener is a fabulous program at what it does. I am writing a 135,000 word work of nonfiction and can say that without Scrivener I would not have been able to undertake the project. I cannot speak to works that have light citation requirements. For works with heavy citation requirements EndNotes is the industry standard piece of software. Scrivener is seamlessly integrated with EndNotes. At this point in my book I have 745 bibliographic references. It is not possible for Scrivener to provide the level of bibliographic control that is provided by EndNotes. Inevitably, those of us requiring extensive bibliographic material will have to use the programs that Scrivener integrates with.
I have installed Scrivener for Mac and also installed Zotero (standalone). What I do not see is how combining those 2 tools in order to manage a bibliography (APA style).
Is there someone able helping me out?
Thanks a lot.
René
PS: RTF/ODF-Scan for Zotero seems to be the add-on. But also here the question “how installing it properly” - not clear to me