Wish Candidates: Scrivenings

[dbc183c7]

Mindful from decades of software experience of the functionality bloat that often comes with v2.x of software (aka here, v3), my wish list candidates are meant to be mostly exercises in modifying Scrivener's current functionality rather than in planting new sprouts. (Which narrow focus is also a tribute to the capabilities of the current Windows Scrivener. And in my peculiar use of it, even allowing for the large Scrivenings and similar memory issues.)

Due my Scrivener newbie limited experience, I’m posting these thoughts (and later, others) here first for ‘already can do this’ vetting.

In the spirit of the Tutorial’s Step 7:4. “Scrivenings … view or edit multiple text documents as … though they were one long document …” …
- It would be nice were something-Home/End to take me to the top/bottom of Scrivenings’ ‘one long document’.
- And to carry the one-document idea further, it would be nice were PgUp/Dn to actually navigate by SCRIVENINGS VIEW page, without respect for individual item boundaries, irrespective of how many separate items it might be skipped over.
- As I encounter empty containers moving through the composite text, their 'emptiness' is displayed between separators. Of course, they are awaiting possible input. However, until they do have text, I would find it a help were the containers' titles shown, formatted so as not to be mistaken for actual content, perhaps as the Status stamps are. (I also see reason for somehow identifying these container spaces regardless—even when they do have text of their own.)
- It would be of use were something like the Binder/Outline’s “Ctrl+Shift+Up/Down” (next container up/down) to work in Scrivenings Mode.
- And similarly, were “Previous/Next Document” Alt+Shift+Up/Down to go to the next item up/down.

[KB]

Scrivenings mode has been completely rewritten from the ground up for the next major (paid) update of Scrivener for Windows, so it is in line with the Mac version. This means that each scrivening is no longer separated at the view level, but at the data level. Or, in English: there will no longer be a separate invisible text box with its own boundaries for each scrivening. Instead, it is rewritten so that all the scrivenings are in a single text inside a single text box, so that you can select the entire document if you want, and use all the same shortcuts you do when working with single texts. (It also makes an optional page layout view possible.)

All the best,
Keith

[AmberV]

It would be of use were something like the Binder/Outline’s “Ctrl+Shift+Up/Down” (next container up/down) to work in Scrivenings Mode.

That you can already do though! There is integration between two different features here that makes it so the binder acts more like a ToC for the current Scrivenings session, instead of abandoning it and selecting the thing you clicked on by itself. To enable that capability, lock the editor with the session (Ctrl-Shift-L, or click on the header bar icon and select Lock in Place). Now when you click on items currently loaded in the Scrivenings session, the editor will just jump to that spot. That’s where you could use the already familiar shortcut to jump from one container to the next.

I do note there are some rough patches in that at the moment. Selecting items in the binder using the arrow keys shouldn’t automatically move your focus over to the editor. You should be able to browse freely and then switch to the editor when you’ve found the right place. Also for some reason the Next/Prev buttons and shortcuts are not jumping from one section to the next from within the editor. That should be working, and I thought it was before, so it might be a new bug.

[dbc183c7]

Thank you Keith, Great news!

Thank you Ioa,
Your 'how to' was precisely why I sent my candidates to Tech. Support first -- I'm not surprised that I don't know everything.
(Even after your revelation!)

And the bug you're talking about, I had thought that was merely a 'nuance' of the current scrivenings process.
Thanks for the update.