A little stopwatch for Scrivener

[jean-louis]

I needed to clock actions and characters on my opera for children which is so much indebted to Scrivener. As it is not scriptable(Scrivener, not my opera...) the idea came to me to make (with Adobe/Macromedia Director) a stopwatch in shockwave format.
Currently it is not as powerful as it could be, but who knows?
My problem is that my little baby works very well on Safari and Fireworks but poorly inside Scrivener.
Have you an idea why such a slowness?
You can try the thing here:

http://www.jeanlouisvalero.fr/ChronoForScrivener.html

It is very light (less than 20k). Load it into scrivener with

File/Import/Web page…

If you split the page and protect the stopwatch location with option/command/L you will get a good configuration.
Of course, if Scrivener had some Applescript capability it would be easy to paste times into the text part. Currently, there is only command/v…

The idea behind that is to graft little utilities like widgets to Scrivener.
But is it a good idea?

[AmberV]

Huh! Excellent idea. An idea for this clock would be a button that shrinks it down to 40 pixels tall or so. Can Flash resize itself on the fly like that? It might help with performance if there were less interface. Also, does a writer really need 1/100ths of a second granularity? Seconds are just fine for me. I bet reducing it to seconds only would help a lot. I did not actually have a heap of performance issues in Scrivener. The clock seemed to run at full speed even while I was typing in another split. However, there was definitely just a touch of typing lag while it was running. Nothing too obnoxious. I am using a dual chip 2.3ghz G5 computer, for reference.

[jean-louis]

this one is smaller and works with seconds...

http://www.jeanlouisvalero.fr/Chronomin ... vener.html

But performances seam to be similar.
Thanks a lot for the review!

[AmberV]

It must be that whatever loop is running in the background must be more CPU intensive than displaying graphics. I have the precise same amount of typing lag with the minimal one, too. Well, still an excellent idea, even if it means requiring a fast computer. Perhaps the WebKit thing is not quite as optimised for background execution as Safari. Or perhaps it does not run in its own thread, and so is borrowing cycles from the host application. All out of your control, at any rate.

[bluloo]

Hmm.. I only see a blank white rectangle both in Safari and when I import.

I'm running Safari in native mode on an Intel Mac. No shockwave love here.

[jean-louis]

Bluloo, there is a way to see shockwave into Intel macs. Go to applications/safari; Command+i and check "use Rosetta"
It's the same thing with Scrivener or whichever app. Adobe is working to make a universal version.
Don't forget to uncheck "use Rosetta" after your test because it slows things a little.
jean-louis

[accentedeuropean]

It could use an alarm. I like to work in batches of at least 30 minutes at a time and that's where these things come in handy. For equally-minded people, I use Docktimer as a program. Of course other free alternatives are always welcome.

[Inkling]

oooh, this is very nifty!

I tend to use Alarm Clock 2 for all my daily alarms, stop watches and timers. (Yes, I wake to the sounds of my 'soothing' itunes play list, and boil my eggs with the help of my laptop. Such a geek.) This is a nice alternative though, and I shall save it for use with my note taking!

cheers muchly!

[AmberV]

My favourite little timer is Minuteur. The thing I like best about it is that you can set time in an arbitrary fashion. You can grab the little time "ruler" and fling it over ten or twenty minutes. Nice if you want to do something for a somewhatAround amount of time. Also nice if it is close to going off and you want another couple of minutes to finish things up. It is easy to set a precise time too. Just start typing in a number. 3000 will get you thirty minutes. It will start as soon as you pause typing.

[tim]

My favourite little timer is Minuteur

Me too. Use it all the time. It even has a full screen mode that I sometimes use in seminars when I give a task to the group. Lovely little app.

T

[mamster]

I'm going to pull this thread back up because I've been using Minuteur recently too, in a way that hasn't been mentioned yet.

Minuteur plays very well with Scrivener's full screen mode. In Minuteur, go to Options|Visual Alarm|Black Screen (or White Screen, whichever you like). Set the timer, then switch to Scriv in full screen and start typing. When time runs down, a curtain descends over the screen telling you that time is up. You can "snooze" the alarm at this point for 5, 10, or 15 more minutes of writing, if you want. While the timer is running, you have to keep writing. It's the law. If you just have to take a peek and see how much time is left, use Expose.

This has worked great for me. Give it a try.

[flow]

I like that mamster. I use WriteRoom and that sounds like a way to make me keep typing.

I love Minuteur. I also use TinyAlarm, which sits in your menubar.

[mamster]

Yes, Minuteur would work great with any full-screen mode, not just Scrivener's.

[em]

I'm a registered Minuteur user. Though I was more of a menubar timer app person I fell in love with how I have to drag to the time I want to set it to. It's a terrific app.

[MarcustheBlacksmith]

Miniteur is fantastic. The best part about it is the way that it'll hide itself away as soon as you activate it, and only rear up again when the time is up. I love using it alongside Scriv's full screen mode, too. (It tells me when to stop writing by whiting out the whole screen and ringing loudly. Perfect counter for full-screen's black)