I just found another great new Scapple use. I have been looking (Googling) everywhere for good timeline software to help planning which scenes happen when.
Reading about and testing a number of miserable programs and some good ones just frustrated me.
Even the best ones were too restrictive, imposed their way of doing things, and/or required too much detail. Worst of all, they were ‘one thing more’ – distraction instead of help.
Enter Scapple. Blindingly simple once it occurred to me. I begin each event note with the year it takes place. Since my dependent events already had arrow connections this gave me the only additional info I needed. I can drag the notes into as precise a timeline as I need to help me write.
I have the latest Scrivener and Scapple betas and try to drag Scapple notes into Scrivener - but it doesn’t work. I can’t drag one or more notes into the binder, whatever folder I try, also I cannot drag the notes into a free form cork board. I know that this was possible in earlier Betas. What do I do wrong? What is the trick?
The internal dragging formats have changed to allow for the introduction of background shapes in Scapple, so you will have to wait for the next update of Scrivener to get this working again (out later this week).
Pity if the window dressing gets in the way of core functionality. But if you can fix it within a few days, who am I to complain. Completely in love with Scapple anyhow. Keep up the good work!
I don’t follow you - what do you mean by “window dressing getting in the way of core functionality”? Background shapes are hardly “window dressing” - they have been the most-requested feature. Nothing has broken at all, and I updated Scrivener internally with the new code at the same time as updating the Scapple code; I just haven’t released that version of Scrivener yet. This is a beta, so you should expect inconveniences along the way. If you prefer to have everything running smoothly from the get-go, you should wait for the release version.
Have you tried what you recommended me? The second image from top to bottom is the outcome from doing just that in Scapple: it is rendered unusable! The ones on the left are a few authomatic layouts from yEd. I would really like to use a simpler app than yEd but it must have better automatic outputs than Scapple has now. I hope the image helps to make this point clear.
These commands do exactly what you would expect them to do (the same as in Curio), so I’m a little confused as to what you are expecting or how you are going about things. If yEd works better for your purposes, you should of course continue using it, though.
I puzzled over the screenshots and I think the expectation is that align wouldn’t actually align—but create a flowchart? Kind of like how in OmniGraffle, if you turn auto-layout on, you can quickly make flowcharts and diagrammes without having to manually place every node. Is that what you are describing? If so that is a completely different type of software, and that they can kind of look the same with a little fiddling is only a product of aesthetic efficiency. It’s worth mentioning that even in these high-powered graphing programs, align still means to take all of the objects and flush their edges accordingly, exactly how Scapple does it.
I am new to forums but not new to Scrivener. I hope I am not violating any protocol by posting to this thread. I don’t see an appropriate thread to contribute a comment.
I have used the Scapple program for a week now and love it. Like others on this forum, less is more for me so keeping it simple is a BIG plus for me.
I am a big fan of copy and paste so when I find good information out there I like to keep it a little closer than a link. I always copy the “source” for credit purposes if necessary but usually don’t want the links that go with wiki articles. That is a long-winded way to say I want to copy plain text. Is that a feature you are considering? Right now I paste it to “Text Wrangler”, remove line breaks, then cut and paste into Scapple.
Thank you for supplying the most effective, efficient and usable software on this planet!
What I was describing is perhaps better described as “multiple canvases within one file”. Recently switching from Windows to Mac I have been looking for something that can take the place of OneNote and have found nothing yet. Growly comes close, but is too annoying to use much, though I’ve tried. The author seems not very responsive.
I am happy with the simple canvas and the ability to make graphs and so on. But I need many canvases for what I am doing. Keeping track of them as individual files will be just too hard I think. In a file I would like to create a new canvas and give it a name. On the left I would like to see a list of the canvases. The hierarchy I spoke of is just the ability to create a mental hierarchy among the canvases by indenting some of the canvas names. Thus the Canvas name list can look like an outline or hierarchy. In actuality it only has to be an ordered list, with indentation. That’s enough for me to create an outline of canvases, internally it’s just an ordered list of canvases with indents associated with each name.
Growly does this. It’s simple and easy to implement, but gives me what I need. You could implement an actual tree structure of canvases with expand/collapse of the list but I would not miss that (much).
BTW, your main customer base seems to be writers. I am a software developer and want to use this to plan and document the iOS app I am developing. Most of my View Controllers are complicated enough to require a full canvas to map out what it does. I use other canvases to map out the life cycle of objects and so on.
I took a look. It seems nice but …
Too complicated almost everywhere
Too simple in places
Too expensive (pro at least)
Scapple seems so close to being just about perfect for what I want.
A custom image in the background wouldn’t work with the way Scapple draws, as any item not set to have a background colour would still have one. We’ll be including an option to have a background texture, but no a full image.
It is worth noting that this might be easier to do with Scapple’s own tools, rather than a static bitmap that forces you to work within a certain amount of space. A hint for drawing lines on the background is to make two empty notes (just tap the spacebar to keep Scapple from automatically removing it), and connect them together. So for single-space notes arranged in a Cartesian fashion like this would make your graph, which you could then label with small notes in the corners. If you need more space overall, you can just increase the size of the graph. The following is 100% created in Scapple:
If you use this sort of thing a lot, you can save the empty graph, then select the Scapple document in finder and press Cmd-I to “Get Info”. In the “General” section, set it to be a “Stationary pad”. Now whenever you load this file, it will automatically spawn a new copy, rather than opening the original, making it act as a template.
Or, if you using one of Apple’s newer operating systems, you’ll find they have broken this particular feature of the operating system. You’ll need to resort to remembering to use the “Duplicate” or “Save As” menu command after it has opened.
