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Hi Maria,
I can’t reproduce this at all. Could you give me more details? I have tried doing this in your old project, but everything seems fine. This is what I am doing:
- Hitting Cmd-K do split a document. Now the new document is in the binder ready to edit.
- I click on any other document in the binder. According to your report, at this point, the newly created document’s name should change. Is that right? I am not seeing it.
If you could give me more help tracking this down I would be grateful.
Thanks!
Keith
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This seems to be an odd situation, rather than the intended behaviour. It is true that pressing will create a new document (something I actually like), but after entering a name for it, or even leaving it as ‘Untitled,’ pressing again simply confirms the name change and nothing else. No new documents are created unless I press a third time (total). I would emphatically agree with you if it did create a new document upon name confirmation. Mori acts this way, or did, and it drove me insane. This would be normal behaviour for an outliner, and that was idea behind Mori, as it is a bit of a hybrid outliner/document notebook.
I have not been able to reproduce the focus bug you are experiencing either. Have you tried doing this in a fresh project, by any chance? Perhaps you are running into one of the upgraded project woes. I gave it a try in one of the ones I upgraded from SG, but had no lucking find the bug there either – however you might have had some condition in your project that was not in mine.
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I still cannot recreate this bug at all… Actually, I am still a little confused about what I can see. 
I added the “return creates new document” behaviour so that you can create new documents quickly. You can create a document, hit return to confirm rename, and hit return again to create another document. It keeps things snappy. I don’t like the confirm-name-change-and-create-new-document-as-one-action thing either, so this was intended to be the “best of both worlds”. But hey, there’s just no pleasing some people. Maybe I’ll make it a Preference.
Anyway, I would really like to track this bug. Could you please break it down into steps (1, 2, 3 etc) exactly what you do, what you EXPECT to see, and what ACTUALLY happens?
Thanks!
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If you catch it, could you post a screenshot as well? Thanks!
Hi Keith,
Montage does this with a single click at the cursor - SNAP - two documents. The first document keeps the header you gave it at the beginning, before it got too big, ie Chapter 1. The second document presents a blank header that you just have to click, and then enter whatever you want, ie Chapter 2. Now you have two chapters with individual names, that were derived from one chapter simply by clicking at the cursor.
In Montage, the command is INSERT >‘Shift-Command-K’ or Split Current Scene.
Lord Lightning, I’m confused: how is this any different to Scrivener? In Scrivener, you hit cmd-k or go to Edit > Split Document at Selection and you now have a new document, split at the cursor, waiting to be named - with the focus in the name field so that you can rename it. Or you can select a title within the document and select “Split Document with Selection as Title”. Scrivener had this feature before Montage was even in beta! (Interesting that Montage uses a similar keyboard shortcut to Scrivener and Scrivener Gold. ) Incidentally, the developer of Montage is the same guy who created Avenir. Very cool guy and a very helpful Cocoa programmer.
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Hi Maria,
Well, I won’t consider it solved just yet, as deleting SG off disk should have no effect over this - it seems like a rare and isolated incident, so I’ll just have to add it to my (fortunately very small) list of “untracked bugs” to keep an eye out for. Hopefully as more people use Scrivener and for longer, we will be able to track this one.
As for the enter thing - I already heard you - and did something. In beta 2 you can turn off this behaviour via the Preferences.
All the best,
Keith
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I have been happily exploring the new version Scrivener since the beta was released and am thrilled with the program (subject for another post).
Unfortunately I have encountered the exact same bug that Maria did. This is not a matter of not being used to confirming names and creating new documents with the return key. I am a Mori user and Keith indeeed created the best of both worlds with the two click step. This is an important improvement over SG as it allows for much quicker document creation, brainstorming, outlining etc. It makes a huge difference in the work flow. One of the many small details that make this the best writing tool I have found in Mac world.
But three separate times I encountered the same very confusing and frustrating bug:
After hitting enter to create a new doc, then naming it, I hit enter again, but the field is locked into the naming state (blue frame highlighted). When I mouse to another document and click on it to try jump out of that blue-framed naming field, the title of this other doc then switches to Untitled and now this name is locked into the blue-framed naming state. The program seems to be stuck there and any attempts to navigate out of it just mess things up worse - clicking on another document erases the name, replaces it with the name of the previous document you were in, and then locks up this new name/document. Hitting return again does the same, just sending you down your list of documents - erasing names and renaming with the name of the document you had just been in. So things can happen very quickly: taking 2 seconds to hit enter a few times to try to jump out of the naming dialogue box suddenly leads to several of your documents being renamed. All attempts to escape from this, except for quitting the program, only leads to more of your document titles being erased. Your whole binder can be messed up in 30 seconds.
This is the kind of thing that makes me very worried about doing anything but play with Scrivener until Beta 2 comes out.
The problem is, that, as with Maria, the behavior seems to be random. I can’t reproduce the problem when I try and I can never remember what triggers it. Not very helpful, I know. The first time it happened was when I was following the tutorial - and as I navigated in the binder as some point I suddenly lost all the titles of your docs and couldn’t get out of the blue-framed naming trap. The second time it happened was when I experimented by highlighting several documents and then clicking on Add (Group) from the toolbar (I wanted to see whether the docs would automatically be placed in the foler as in Devonthink or whether one always had to manually add docs. to folders as in Mori). Then I spent an evening trying to get it to happen again, couldn’t do it. But when I was doing some other writing, navigating, playing in Scrivener - suddenly it was happening again. But this time, instead of trying to navigate my way out of it by clicking on other documents or hitting return I just quit the program. Things seem to work fine at restart.
The problem is that this happens randomly. So I’m not sure what actions to avoid in order to avoid falling into the naming trap/loop. I also fear that this report is not helpful since you don’t know how to look for it. But I wanted to let you know that Maria is not alone and this is not an isolated incident. Something strange is happening.
I am an academic writer and love this program and would like to help and would like to feel more confident about using it. So please let me know how I might translate this experience into useful information for you.
Gary
gmw, this is already a very helpful bug report as it adds to Maria’s and helps me understand what to look for. I will start testing for this - it also helps as I now know a little more about which areas of code to look at.
You are right not to trust Scrivener with your valuable work just yet, as this is the first beta. I imagine it will take two or three betas until we get to a stable release in which users can feel more confident - this is just natural with beta software, and I certainly recommend you either use the “Backup To” feature very regularly at this time, or postpone importing important work until we are at a more stable release. I have every confidence that Scrivener is very stable at its core, but given the amount of code, there are bound to be untracked bugs that will only be caught with real-world use by users over a period of time.
Did you know that you can group a bunch of documents by selecting them and then choosing Group from the Reorganize menu (Alt-Cmd-G)? This way, you get both behaviours.
Many thanks again for the bug report. I will report back here as soon as I have more news on this one.
All the best,
Keith
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I really want to track this one down but cannot reproduce it yet. Next time it happens, could you stop and really think about everything you have done leading up to that point and let me know? Tell me what you tried to name the documents to, the last things you did leading up to that etc. That would really help. I don’t like random bugs - I want to squash them.
Thanks!
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That is odd. For me, when I press Cmd-K to split a document, the focus goes to the Binder, and I can start typing the new name immediately. Pressing at that point confirms the new name. No mouse required.
That is the expected behaviour; I had assumed that Maria, working from memory, just forgot that part - I hope that is the case. Maria, focus does shift to the binder at this point automatically, doesn’t it?
Thanks!