Frequently are the titles of my Scrivenings very long forcing me to have to stretch the binder an ugly length. I know, I know just make titles shorter would be one argument . But I think aesthetically, it would be very much an improvement if each scrivening title in the binder were ‘word wrapped’, a feature found in most spreadsheet software, in lieu of simply being cut off with an ellipsis…
This way a binder scrivening would look like this:
The binder is a source list and it’s not really standard to have them wrap - it would look pretty ugly and unwieldy with different-sized rows in there. This is what the outliner is for - to get a full overview - and remember that you can use the outliner to navigate through the other editor, too.
‘word-wrap’ doesn’t change the size of the letters; it changes the size of the cell so that all the letters can fit within it, with their respective sizes untouched. at least, that’s how it is in excel.
this is why I think it’d be appropriate in Scrivener. Instead of having a binder looking like this:
The Quick…
Jerry had a…
It would look like this:
The Quick Brown
Fox jumped over the
Lazy dog
Jerry had a little
lamb
I’m no programmer, but I get the vibe this wouldn’t be too difficult to implement.
A difference between Scrivener and Ulysses III is how they use the “binder”. While Ulysses shows the first lines of the document (that might contain a title, if you want), Scrivener shows the document’s title, reserving the Synopsis area of the Inspector to the document’s synopsis.
I would suggest to use document titles to write a concise description of its content. This is often useful to stay on topic, and check your document’s coherence against that topic.
Titles aren’t supposed to be long synopsis are they? put long junk in the inspector and keep it open and use short titles. I know a method which scriv isn’t supposed to dictate but …
There isn’t a single way of writing titles. Some of us may prefer writing something like “Chapter 1” or “Scene 2”. Some other, for example myself while developing a draft, would put there something meaningful like: “Sofia looking after her cat”, or “Paolo debating with Jaysen - Jaysen bitterly loses”.
That’s concise enough to fit the Binder column – maybe a bit larger than usual – but useful enough to help outlining and restructuring.
Ah. See, here’s where differing structures between us show the flexibility of scriv. I would have a binder like
Chapter 1
Paolo bebating with Jaysen
Paolo provides well reasoned argument
Jaysen attempts a counter
Universal anticipation
of Jaysen losing bitterly
of Paolo graciously winning
of Jaysen laughing at the whole thing
The reason is that my titles are so long that half my screen would become the binder, something that feels strange to write in
I’m talking about a word wrapping feature that works in tandem with the vertical divider in the binder. That is, after a certain point, the words don’t get cut-off, they just get shimmied to the next line, in the same way if a cell in Excel is word wrapped, the words adjust themselves (and never get hidden) in accordance to the size of the cell. If the cell is short (horizontally), the words stack up on each other so that all the words are seen; if the cell is long, the words stretch into a horizontal line, as much as the size of the cell allows.
I understand exactly what you are asking for, but that’s what I’m saying wouldn’t work well in the binder, the binder being a source list.
The outliner is where you do this sort of thing (and that is what would be comparable to Ulysses’ list that shows the first words of text). You could have the binder on the left, the outliner as a column in the middle, and then the editor on the right, if you wanted, for instance. You can certainly have long titles, but the outliner is where you see your overview more fully. I definitely suggest looking at different uses of the outliner.
don’t mean to butt heads, but I think the Outliner kind of defeats the purpose of what I am getting at, that is maximize screen space to write while simultaneously seeing everything about my document on the screen and having none of it cut off (as is the current case with title headings in the binder). I use the outliner and it is useful in that it allows me to see the whole title of my scrivening along with a synopsis but that comes with a cost: i have to view my main document within the confines of two boxes: the binder and the outliner. I thus, can’t look at two documents at once with split-screen feature.
I think just having the binder itself word wrap titles would be a small but beneficial aspect of your app that would make the whole experience of using scrivener a bit better.
Why don’t you just close the Binder, split your window with Outline view locked in the left split, narrowed to a useful degree, and the editor on the right?
I’m happy using the Binder or Outliner as is. But if the Binder could wrap as an option, I would use it, irrespective of how ugly, unwieldy, or non-standard it might look.
Personally, I think Scrivener’s beauty in its functionality, not in its skin-deep aesthetics. Function, not façade.
Indeed - outlines and tables on OS X aren’t designed to wrap at all, and there’s a lot of code dealing with it in the outliner (whenever a line wraps, behind the scene, editing is ended, the edit location recorded, a complete outliner refresh and line height recalculation done, then the affected row is re-selected and editing restarted at the saved location…).
It’s not that I don’t understand the desire for wrapping rows, but there are no plans to add this in the near (or mid-term) future, sorry.
The outliner is handy but I don’t use it for every one of my scrivenings; hence, having the binder open to constantly switch between files is kinda essential. And having things word wrapped would be nice, but I guess it’s something I can live without.
