(no subject)

[roadrunnertwice]

Man, I have been trying to love Scrivener, and just have not found the trick yet. I like the idea of it, I think. I mean, an IDE for prose! Down with file management! What a great idea! But I've been using the extended NaNoWriMo trial edition, and its theoretical charms continue to outweigh its day-to-day appeal.

For one thing, it's WYSIWYG, which I've been kind of down on ever since I discovered HTML; doing formatting inline tends to bite me on the ass later. (Which is to say, I understand why people used to get all het up about WordPerfect's "reveal codes" thingummy and everyone else's lack thereof.) The export functionality is pretty impressive, but still requires a bunch of cleanup before it's ready to hit the web. Also, it seems like there're too many fidgety places to enter text? Which of these am I supposed to treat like I'll ever read them again, and which are write-only?

Well, anyway: I actually really like the texture on the corkboard. And how easy it is to split and re-arrange files. (Like Fission for prose!) And the way it'll do what can only be called a "build." And that it has some metadata about each snippet. (Not sure whether it needs THAT much, but.) Basically, I think I like the idea of editing with it, but that part isn't quite where I want it to be yet, and I can't stand composing in it.

If anyone here uses it, I'd love to hear what you dig about it.

Comments

[kiplet]

Also: NEVER HAVING TO SAVE.

[foxfirefey]

I hate how difficult it is to just copy paste the text as HTML, so I could do some kind of web serial project. I think I'd use it more if it wasn't such a pain in the ass to do that.

Also, you might consider posting this to macapps, since it's the kind of audience that might have good information for you.

[roadrunnertwice]

Yeah, that: I'm finding the export functionality brilliant in concept and slightly lacking in execution. I'd like to get elbow-deep in the guts and define whole new build types, and what kills me is that it totally looks like the pieces are all in place, because it's clearly capable of doing trickyshit re-jiggering of footnotes and keeping semantically-used bolds/itals separate from other font/page formatting (then stripping the other while keeping the one) and other stuff; it should be totally possible to make new templates, right? But anyway.

I dunno if this helps you, but I found a menu command for switching bolds/itals to Markdown format, so if you also mark your headers and stuff with Markdown and then export the chapters you want as plaintext, you could just run it through the normal Markdown script and get clean HTML without having to strip out all the generator style detritus. But that emphasis formatter is per-snippet and one-way, when it should actually be an export option. Grumble. Maybe I'll go hassle the devs about it.

Thanks for the tip about macapps!

[kiplet.livejournal.com]

Would have been much harder writing no. 7 without it. —One can dummy up a file-rearrangement system to be sure with spit and baling wire, but Scrivener made it painless.

I haven't played enough with the export functions; too much of my workflow depends on formatting elsewhere. (Final text lives in, ack, three places? [Technically (counts) six, Christ.] Which makes post-export edits FUN.) Mostly it's the notecard organizing function, the ability to write notes in lots of fiddly places to remind myself what's up with this bit, the research dump, and the word-count goad. Nothing nobody else does, just all done with enough panache in one place to make it darned necessary.

[roadrunnertwice]

Well, hey: A ringing endorsement from you means a lot, so I'll keep prodding at it for a while.

Part of my problem is that I crave a master formatting scheme that won't bite me on the ass later. I may simply need to accept that something will always bite me on the ass later, and just spend my effort on getting to "later" without worrying so much.

[gyladia.livejournal.com]

...So you're getting a lot of writing done, during NaNo?

[roadrunnertwice]

Ahahaha oh HELL no. NaNo doesn't suit my constitution. (i.e. I'm not man enough or something.) Been working on a thing, but the pedal is nooooot exactly to the metal.