Word Processing Functions

Scrivener Wish List
1

I love Scrivener and use it a lot for plotting and organization, but I don’t write in it because of two things:

  1. No home/end function. The user can’t skip to the beginning or end of a line of script. You have to go there manually with your curser.

  2. No script drag function. The user can highlight script, but only to copy/cut/paste. Dragging it to another part of the page isn’t possible.

I use these features a lot in writing and the lack of them slows me down too much. This is why I still write in Word and then move my copy into Scrivener.

Truthfully, it works for me, so I don’t really have an axe to grind. I just thought the creators of Scrivener should know. =)

2

Hi,

I’m a little confused, as both of these things are standard behaviour in Scrivener (which uses the same text system as TextEdit). You can select text and drag it around, and the Home and End keys scrolls you to the beginning and end of the text.

All the best,
Keith

3

A couple of things to note:

  • Compact Apple keyboards do in fact have Home, End, PgUp and PgDown keys, but for whatever reason printing these alternate functions on the keyboard is beneath Apple. They are all invisibly mapped to the arrow keys in conjunction with the Fn key. That said, Home and End are not like on Windows (and probably Word for Mac, but I’m not sure): they navigate to the top or bottom of a document. It sounds like you want the Microsoft Home and End that jump to the beginning or end of the current soft line. For that the standard Mac shortcuts for line start and end are Cmd-Left and Cmd-Right arrows. You can also use Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E to navigate to the beginning or end of the current physical line (or paragraph).
  • As Keith notes, drag and drop is just a part of the Mac text editor, however it’s worth mentioning that if you are used to Word, you may find that it takes a little acclimation to get used to how a Mac handles text drag and drop. There is a slight delay before dragging is enabled, if you just start moving the mouse immediately inside of a selection, you will merely reselect. It’s a very short delay though, so like I say it is more a matter of getting used to the feel of it than anything else.