Nothing stops you from following KB’s lead and writing your own program that works the way that you want it to. He wasn’t trying to create the Best Cross-Platform Most Spectacular Configurable Writing Tool Evar!!!™, he was simply trying to create a tool that worked in the way he thought he would like and use.
Thankfully, he shared it. And here we are today.
I am currently looking for partners in my writing venture. After that, maybe KB might like to rip it up and start again with me and do something spectacular! Using a Mac meant he skirted a problem that I feel now presents a major failing in what he wrote, and as he started off as a “writer”, I am sure he appreciates my concerns. The problems many software projects have is building on a shaky foundation that then never really allows them to fix the initial problem as it becomes so integral to the design of what they created. I am a fan of the Orange Juice song - Rip It Up and Start Again! But I appreciate that this isn’t always that easy…
Why on earth would Keith want to rip up a successful program and start again?
Scrivener works just fine for the vast majority of users as it is. Throwing away all that investment in time and money to develop a new program that may well turn into a bloated ‘itunes do everything’ type of mess might well drive current happy users away, all to address a limited market.
Contrary to your claim, the fact Scrivener was developed on Mac may well have been one of the keys to getting it written, and its success. The fact that MacOS has so much built in may well have enabled Keith to achieve what he wanted. Remember, Keith was a writer, not a programmer. The built in tools meant he didn’t have to invent everything from scratch (just look at V3 Win dev for a comparison)
As previously posted, think you have a better concept, go for it!
Keith has been pretty open on this point: if it weren’t for the tools that Apple provides, Scrivener wouldn’t exist.
That’s probably not what Scrivener is intended for.
Would something like WikidPad be more suitable?
Because the OP is attempting to fit a round peg into a square hole.
ग्रुएनबल जुविता नॉन-हीसपजस चिवेरिसंमोब्लिक. रोवेनेर्री सेछा वोर्बिटल हेन्सजेल्लिन फोकेमाडवित.
A wiki would be perfect in all respects except the most important - it is very difficult to monetise digitised media in the public domain! You can attach advertising to it and you can put it behind a paywall and sell subscriptions, but you cannot push units.
When I was a kid I loved encyclopedias. I was a latchkey kid and spent a lot of time in my local library waiting for my parents to finish work. I loved reading things like the Britannica and now I read things like the LSJ English-Greek Lexicon. They have both amazing content AND are amazing achievements in themselves, so I am looking for the sort of software that can cope with encyclopedic undertakings.
I have created a huge body of work some of which I would like to monetise by turning it into texts, and some of it I would probably release gratis on webpages.
I have struggled with Word because it has arbitrary limitations imposed by its developers, and is specifically designed to corner and claim certain copyrightable elements inherent in such programs. Texts over a certain size wobble and fall over very quickly and so it is useless for what I am trying to do. Scrivener is the next step, but it too has design flaws that have come from both its Mac origins and conservative, unambitious design reservations by its creator.
I said why, because his fundamental design is flawed, and that is in part because he wrote it on a Mac.
I think the design is fundamentally wrong because Macs have a built in Dictionary, so he skirted that issue and focused on the easy of rejigging the Binder layouts and the word-count tools. The Dictionaries plural should be central to the design and completely open for adjustments. Then the rest of the architecture can be built on top, with a view to the professional requirements of various writing sectors like Science & Academia, Legal, Industry & Technical, and so on.
The custom lists in the dictionary are hidden in a .ini file that really is just a simple list when you open it with a text editor. These files are small and easy to access - there is no excuse hiding them away. Every writer needs to add to this list and be able to quickly edit it. Scrivener botches it badly, so yes I would love to write new software instead, but I have just spent 10 years writing my book and now I want to spend the next 2-3 years publishing it all!!!
The better the tool I use, the more I can get done.
Scrivener is great for writing novels and small technical manuals, but certain arbitrary design reservations have made it unsuitable for larger projects. I would liken it to building a big warehouse and only giving it two bays for both Goods In and Despatch! It creates bottlenecks that really shouldn’t be there. If you are reading these Keith, 6/10, promising start strangled by inherent faults and missed opportunities. I am desperately seeking an better alternative before I fully commit to the writing process. Thanks!
จูบของการล่าอาณานิคมไม่เคยสัมผัสตูดของคนไทย
A design is not “fundamentally flawed” just because you disagree with it.
It may, however, not be suitable for your purposes. Based on your description, I would be inclined to suggest you look at web authoring tools: wikis, content management systems, and the like.
Given a large HTML-based construct, there are lots of ways to sell single-user units: that’s essentially what an ePub is. But there’s also a reason why many such creators have gone with paywalled (or not) web sites instead. It’s a lot easier to update a central server than individual copies.
I have written two technical books (Scrivener 3 for Windows and Scrivener 3 For Mac), both over 400 pages, heavy on graphics etc, and Scrivener was the perfect tool. I have also written two fiction works, and again, Scrivener was the perfect tool. I have looked at most of the alternatives and each time came to the conclusion that Scrivener was by far the best tool for the task.
Just because you have a use case (or your interpretation of the use case) it does not suit does not make if ‘fundamentally flawed’. It could well be your logic is ‘fundamentally flawed’, but we won’t get into that discussion.
As L&L staff have said, Scrivener might not be for you - in which case, go forth and prosper with some other tool (web authoring?), or write your own, but don’t expect Keith to burn down his carefully crafted program, loved and used by thousands, and start again just to placate you.
As some of the discussion has drifted toward talk of design flaws and statements such as “(Scrivener) has no database capabilities”, as well as requests for custom and/or customer dictionaries, I was curious about what exists out there in the LaTeX domain.
My one and only Scrivener project (~147k words, ~370 pages) uses LaTeX extensively, which I need to admit up front for all those considering a move, has a TALL learning curve. That said, I thought it might be time to point out an avenue to accommodate custom dictionaries, databases, tables, and so much else that so many, in their opinion, have suggested that Scrivener does not address or accommodate.
To the point of custom dictionaries, my own project has 20 pages of definitions, symbols, nomenclature, abbreviations, terminology, that prompted me to search for a possible way to use LaTeX to accommodate them all into a single point of reference. A search for LaTeX dictionaries yielded a few possibilities for LaTeX templates that I thought others might find interesting for their Scrivener projects:
Dictionary Template I made in LaTeX Overleaf, Online LaTeX Editor
Dictionary template Dictionary template - Overleaf, Online LaTeX Editor
LaTeX Templates LaTeX Templates » Dictionary
The links include samples of what the LaTeX dictionaries would look like in PDF format, along with the LaTeX template source code to incorporate into your Scrivener project. Like most of the LaTeX world, there is no charge for the source code.
For those looking for tables and databases to use with Scrivener (and determined enough to make the leap) a simple search for “LaTeX databases” and “LaTeX tables” yields a long list of LaTeX packages as part of the CTAN collection (CTAN: Comprehensive TeX Archive Network) that contains 6040 LaTeX packages from 2782 contributors.
A sample dictionary page using the above LaTeX code is provided below.
HTH,
scrive
Ευχαριστώ τον Λίντελ Σκοτ, αυτό ήταν ένα αρκετά επίτευγμα ακόμη και για τη σύγχρονη εποχή τι να μιλήσουμε τότε.
ಕೀತ್ ತೃಪ್ತಿ ಹೊಂದಿಲ್ಲ ಆದ್ದರಿಂದ ಅವನು ತನ್ನದೇ ಆದ ಸಾಫ್ಟ್ವೇರ್ ಅಪ್ಲಿಕೇಶನ್ ಅನ್ನು ರಚಿಸಿದನು. ನಿಮ್ಮ ಸ್ವಂತ ಅಗತ್ಯಗಳನ್ನು ಪೂರೈಸಲು ನೀವು ಅದೇ ರೀತಿ ಮಾಡಬಹುದು.
@scrive - thank you for your helpful answer and not being a tedious Fanboy like the others on here! I have 1/3 million words as NOTES! and the final text may well be into the millions. But I want to mix some as books and some as webpages. I also need to keep everything in one place so that I can search everything and keep the dictionary central, faulty as it is.
The problem with some more “technical” software that requires various set ups is not just the steep learning curve, it is really just getting to grips with what is out there and what it is truly capable of. I love using GIMP for my simple artwork, but that has a ton of technical tweeks for it too.
I looked at LaTex and similar before I bought Scrivener. I think I will give it a go at some point and if it is ok port everything over from Scrivener. I have written to various publishers to try and get advice from them, I just want to hear from people who can say, yes, that is capable or not it is not. Instead, I get rabid Fanboys frothing at the mouth because I dare to criticise a very simple and unambitious bit of software that has some serious flaws that it would do well to address.
I think I need to do a deep-dive on LaTex and the like for a few months.
Thanks again!
133 / 5000
ಕೀತ್ ಒಬ್ಬ ಬರಹಗಾರನಿಗಿಂತ ಉತ್ತಮ ಪ್ರೋಗ್ರಾಮರ್ ಆಗಿದ್ದನು, ಏಕೆಂದರೆ ಅವನು ತನ್ನ ಸ್ಥಾನವನ್ನು ಕಂಡುಕೊಂಡನು. ನಾನು ಬರೆಯಲು ಬಯಸುತ್ತೇನೆ, ನಾನು ಪ್ರೋಗ್ರಾಮರ್ ಆಗಲು ಬಯಸುವುದಿಲ್ಲ, ಧನ್ಯವಾದಗಳು.
I have written 400-page technical manuals on Word and that does not make that piece of crap software any less crap.
It is fundamentally flawed because it is WRITING software with ropey spelling and grammar checking capabilities, two things I would consider FUNDAMENTAL to writing software.
I don’t “disagree” with it, I bought it and I am using it and I think it is infinitely better than Word. I like a lot of things about it. I had several hundress Word documents and a huge load of data on dozens of Excel spreadsheets previously that I ported over in a few days, I thought it would take months! I love bits of it and think it is very natty and a complete bargain. I would quite happily pay ten times the price for all the functionality I am looking for and STILL think it is a bargain!
I have two major problems with it that I think L&L would do well to fix:
I also would like to see Search capabilities for NOT things, so I can find pages lacking certain text.
Okay, you’d like improvements in spelling and grammar. That doesn’t make the writing program (Scrivener) ‘fundamentally flawed’. Also seems your definition of ‘fundamentally flawed’ is constantly moving.
Complex spelling and grammar checkers are FUNDAMENTAL to dedicated spelling and grammar checker applications (many times the price of Scrivener ). WRITING is fundamental to a writing program, and at that Scrivener excels.
I might point out that even very expensive dedicated spelling and grammar applications themselves regularly give incorrect suggestions. (fundamentally flawed?) In the Mac version Scrivener makes use of the built in tools.
One final point, satisfied users of Scrivener are not Fanboys, they are just satisfied users calling you out.
You can open two Editor panes – either or both of which can be an Outline View – one Copyholder for each, and as many Quick Reference panes as you want. (Each of which can show a sidebar for Project Bookmarks.) You can also open Bookmarked documents in the Inspector pane.
For NOT search results, choose the “Invert results” search option.