Touchscreen

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

Hi. I am using Scrivener primarily on a Surface Pro 6, which has a touch screen. It’s small, but I love it.

With the touchscreen, I am used to being able, when reading a document, to reach out and scroll up and down with my finger, or zoom by pinching, just like on a phone, really.

When I try that in the scriv editor, it gets read as a new insertion point and the swipe initiates a text selection, basically a click + drag.

This is not exactly a big problem, but is there any way around that?

I know there are a lot of iPad users out there, who I would guess are also used to touch scrolling. Does it work in the Mac version?

I can use the scroll bars to scroll, but they are not always the most touch-friendly region. (Hmm is there any way to control their width?)

In Word, in Draft view, trying to touch scroll does the same thing as Scriv and selects the text. But in Page view, it lets you scroll and zoom as expected without selecting or changing the insertion point, even when touching right on the text. I can see how there would be a difference there, and how Word’s draft mode and Scriv’s editors are more like each other than Word’s wysiwyg Page view, which must shield it from reading a scroll action as a click + drag.

The box I am typing these words in actually scrolls that way too… which I did not expect… but it’s a web page, which will almost always let you touch and scroll from anywhere that isn’t a link.

2

No Mac has a touch screen, so no, touch scrolling does not work in the Mac version. :slightly_frowning_face:

3

Oh that’s right. But iPads do have touchscreens… yes? Does touch scrolling work there?

It only just registered with me that the iPad version of Scrivener is not the same as the Mac version, and that iPad users are using another version of the program. That iOS. My Surface can function as a tablet, but it is running full and regular Windows 10.

4

MS Surface really pushes the touch screen - been that way since they came out. However, ask MS what software “works” with a touch screen - not many. Word processors especially are not wired for touch screens, the entire area is the “work surface”. Same for Scrivener, that editor space is the “work surface”, so any touch (click) inside of it puts the cursor there and waits for the next “thing” you are going to do - scrolling however is not one of those things.

5

Yes, but as you say, the iPad version is very much not the same as the Mac version.

6

Yes, because that function is handled by the operating system itself, as I understand it. The touch paradigm is built into all of the controls and widgets that programmers use to build the user interface. iOS apps don’t have to do anything special to get that behavior, they just say “Use a text box here” and the iOS provided text box control already knows how to use touch scrolling.

Same reason why the results are hit-and-miss on Windows and Surface – not all of the UI controls have been updated to support the full range of touch gestures that are available, especially if they’re more of the classic “Win32” style controls that predate touch screens. The controls in the “modern” Windows development frameworks do support touch, etc., but those aren’t the same controls being used and extended by the Qt framework that Scrivener uses.

7

am sure Devin is sounding correct about all of this; just can say that the way an iPad works with its touch is simply great, and yes, in Scrivener iOS (iPadOs) there, besides other activities.

With the Magic Keyboard added, you get into a very nice type and touch alternation, much nicer than it probably sounds, in Scrivener and out. Though there are also key shortcuts, the whole iPad-way begins to make serious sense. Including the exact positioning of the screen and keyboard.

Not just my enthusiasm for a once/decade iPad upgrade recently, but surely makes it feel to have been the right thing to do, for all the work I get done on it. And there is pretty magic software to be found there for dealing with a lot of information, for design or novels, as another point.

1 Like
8

I tried a Surface Laptop 3 when I was writing the Scrivener V3 Windows book. To be honest I found it to be not that well implemented on the software I tried it with including Scrivener which wasn’t written fir touch. Apart from that keyboard and trackpad were substandard compared to Mac.

Once I confirmed everything worked as expected I sold it and went back to running Win under Mac.