Now that I’ve settled into Scriv 2.0 I’m really appreciating the amazing flexibility and power of the new upgrade. One of the things I’m doing more of as my project grows in scope is categorising my various documents and folders using:
- The ‘image’ setting (colour tint)
- Status
- Custom Icon
As the documents evolve, I’m updating these settings to reflect the maturity of the document. Here’s a simple example: scenes
A scene in my project has the following lifecycle:
Initial creation
At this point the scene may have just a title, or a title and a synopsis.
It has a light green tint (‘Image’ setting)
It has a status of ‘To Do’
It has a custom icon which is the default binder icon for a document with no bodytext
Work in progress
I have started to add bodytext to the scene, this may or may not be draft but it’s got text content.
It has a slightly darker green tint (‘Image’ setting)
It has a status of ‘In Progress’
It has a custom icon which is the blackboard
Sketched to completion
The bodytext now covers the whole length of the scene. It may need fleshing out, but it’s sketched
It has a yet slightly darker green tint
It has a status of ‘Sketched Out’
It has a custom icon which is the clapper board
… I’ll stop here, you get the idea. I actually have a half dozen possible steps in the lifecycle of a scene. As each scene progresses I can use the abovementioned settings to change all the ‘at a glance’ features of the document. Great stuff!
Now, at a glance at the binder I get a visual map of the state of any given folder, both in terms of the shades of green and the grouping of icons etc. I can see immediately how one chapter, or research folder is progressing in relation to others because I’m using a consistent method across all the folders of the same type.
I have similar setups for my research documents (pending, reviewed, need more data, archived etc) and also for my to do list (red, amber and green for tasks pending, in progress and done, and also I’m going to add a custom icon which is a non-checked checkbox for pending/in progress items)
Over the months and years of organising a large project, there must be thousands of clicks required to maintain the status/image/icon/whateverelse of each document and although it’s not exactly hard work, it is sometimes easy to overlook one, or accidentally miss just one of the settings, click a slightly wrong shade of green etc.
May I just also add at this point how amazingly powerful Collections become when you have a well maintained set of status settings? I can? Thanks!
And now to my wish 
I would really love to see some kind of template management for these stages. If there was a ‘Metadata Templates’ feature where I could set up combinations of Image, Status and Custom Icon (at a minimum) then whenever one of my scenes changes I could just right click it in the binder, and select the appropriate named combination from the list.
This would also work really well for ‘to do’ lists, as you could easily set up a ‘To do: Done!’ setting in such a set of custom templates which sets the icon to a checked box, the image to green and the status to ‘Done’, for example. Using the existing templates feature to create new documents with the default settings is great. For subsquent stages in the document lifecycle, having the ability to change the settings with a couple of clicks, and select from a predefined set of combinations would be amazing.
- Start sketching out a new scene
- Right click on it, select MetaTemplates -> Scene in progress
- Icon/Status/Image all update together. Done.
Additional possibilities related to this might be an optional extra associated with a metadata template selection, which would automatically move the file into a specified binder folder. Or perhaps you could apply a template to a binder folder such that if you move a file into that folder, the file automatically gets set with the image, status and icon of the parent folder. All optional extras, of course.
So, there you have it, that is my wish. I know that wishlist items are a ways down the priority ladder, but I wanted to park it here for later reference. it’s not so much a request for something new as much as a request for a slicker way to manage the settings we already have, thus streamlining the workflow.
Once again, thanks Keith and all at L&L for a truly incredible piece of software, with or without my wish granted
Eddy