I have my doubts that Edward would like Scrivener. He wants a typewriter-like interface: " The programmers did not think about writing as a sequence of words set down on a page, but instead dreamed up a new idea about what they called a “document.” "
Scrivener can certainly approximate that view, but it won’t be a precise preview of what ends up on paper, and besides, if the WYSIWYG view in Word doesn’t make him happy in this regard, then Scrivener would drive him batty.
His explanation of how a document “…is a container for other ideal forms” like sections/chapters, and how those sections are styled, are complaints (judging by the title of his article). Imagine how frustrating it would be for him to deal with the compile dialogue, how it can erase formatting, or how the synopsis can’t contain formatted text. No, he wouldn’t welcome the break-down of “documents” into “containers”, nor would compiler “levels” make any sense to him.
While I love Scrivener, and think more people should certainly give it a look, I’m doubtful that a person like Edward Mendelson would find it anything short of frustrating. I’ve talked to a number of people who just don’t get Scrivener, and they’re almost all quite set in their ways, sticking to ancient tech that they were forced to learn once the world moved away from typewriters and hard copy. They just don’t want to learn new tech; for many people who don’t enjoy interacting with computers, it’s just another layer of complexity in an already complex task of writing.
Though they complain bitterly about the short-comings of Word, they’re not going to be enticed to learn some other program that would make the process of writing on a computer less frustrating in the long-run. For some of them, “the long run” started with cursive on paper and note cards, with the final phase sitting at a typewriter. They didn’t learn to write on the typewriter directly for many years. For others, the long-run did start on a typewriter, but they resisted each advance that required them to learn something new, or which changed the experience of a slug impacting ribbon, paper and platen to immediately create a tangible letter; there was enough new stuff to learn the first time they wanted to compose on a machine, what with changing the ribbon, or learning to reverse and re-use it, getting ribbons re-inked, cleaning the levers and type-hammers, adjusting tab stops, and so on. Learning new tech just gets in the way of the creative process. These people felt forced to move to computers, and now feel forced to use MS Word, because it provides the least friction between writing and submitting their work.
For me, tech has become second nature from an early age. I’ve learned to quickly adapt as my toolbox both improved and radically changed (though I wonder how much better my writing might be if that adaptability had been focused on writing instead). There are a lot of people, even young people today, who do not relish changing what happens between their fingers and the page. For them, I nod sympathetically at their complaints, wish them better luck next time, and happily create virtual index cards, outlines, scene files, research documents… I just try to remember that my writing Heaven is another person’s writing Hell.