Reminds me of the post from about a decade ago which demanded that Scrivener should have white characters on a blue background, as “real writers” only work in that environment.
Mark
There were a few references in root’s post to GIT, which made me curious.
Is there anyone here who has successfully and regularly used GIT to collaborate with others in Scrivener? Or does anyone here know anyone who has?
If Scrivener collaboration using GIT actually works, why aren’t all the people for whom collaboration is a requirement actively using it?
I don’t have a need for collaboration now, but I can foresee a time when I might. If GIT works with Scrivener, that’s wonderful, I’ll have a look at it if the need arises. But if GIT doesn’t work with Scrivener, then why is it being brought into the conversation?
ETA: And If Scrivener collaboration using GIT actually works, then L&L doesn’t really need to change Scrivener, right?
The challenge of using Git with Scrivener is that Scrivener relies on a series of RTF files mediated by the SCRIX project file. In theory, there’s no reason why I couldn’t save all of my Scrivener projects to a local repository and periodically commit it back to GitHub or perhaps my own GitLab CE server. But why? The value of using a version-control system for collaborative development is that the files being version controlled are intrinsically human-readable in plain text. Have you ever inspected an RTF file in a text editor? It’s exactly the opposite of human-readable. You can use Git (or Subversion, or Mercurial, or whatever) but you’re really requiring the collaborators to download the file, edit it, then recommit it. Editing source online won’t really work well. In a sense, you’re merely subbing Git for Dropbox with file-version history. Fun stuff, like diff and blame, are more complex in an RTF.
(Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but even if you write in MarkDown, the files still save as RTF. Correct?)
Let me preface the comments below with a disclaimer: I’m a fan of Scrivener and I often recommend it to emerging authors when I speak at writers’ conferences. For a long time, I’ve relied on it almost exclusively for my writing work. That said, in recent years I’ve migrated away from writing mostly solitary fiction to writing collaborative textbooks. And as others have mentioned before, the use case for Scrivener isn’t (a) multi-user or (b) technical non-fiction. (Well, at least, not without some advanced skills.) The L&L team gets mega props for developing a multi-platform authoring environment that does many things well. Of course, no application can meet all use cases simultaneously. I dread to consider the beast that might result if someone actually tried.
Right now, the killer features I need are:
- Plain-text files (not an RTF simulating a plain-text file) to make optimal use of a VCS like Git
- Support for AsciiDoc — my current work needs to convert to DocBook; MarkDown or MMD is good, but not great, for technical long-form work
- No central database file to mediate subfiles within a project — the file tree is the only mediation I require, so I need to rename files within the project at will
- A full-screen mode that works cleanly (sorry, L&L – the one thing Scrivener sucks at is full-screen writing)
- Several documents open simultaneously in non-overlapping panes, without switching
My solution has been to abandon Scrivener for my own writing. Again, Scrivener is good – but not for the particular use cases I need at this point in my writing career. I’ve instead migrated exclusively to Visual Studio Code with a few choice extensions to support long-form writing and AsciiDoc linting. And I use GitHub, creating private repositories for each of my major projects. When I’ve got something to kick to the VCS, I just commit the project.
As long as L&L doubles down on a SCRIVX-mediated collection of numbered RTF files, I cannot envision a scenario where Scrivener will be effective for multi-user collaboration.
Then again, it wasn’t intended to be.
Thank you for your thoughts, jg76, which give me a bit more insight into the practical challenges involved for using GIT with Scrivener.
No. It’s plain text.
I am surprised by this answer. I was pretty sure Scriv’s internal file format for docs was rtf all the way. Surely this does not change just because you type things into a doc that accord with markdown conventions!
You are mistaken. Scrivener’s native project format is RTF. It’s possible to export the component files as .TXT, but the files that Scrivener itself sees are always RTF.
Katherine
My mistake. I thought the question was about markdown in general, and not how Scrivener saves it.
For what it’s worth I’ll share my low-tech approach here. Sometimes an integrated, technology-dependent, automated solution is not needed (I also add citations and references to my dissertation by hand, like people did for centuries).
In collaborating with my PhD supervisor, too, I found that simple and fool-proof is best for me (a certified fool). I’ll compile my manuscript to PDF, write a note to my supervisor pointing out what parts I’ve been working on, and he will read those, adding comments using Adobe Acrobat Reader. He then sends me the edited PDF, that I will open alongside Scrivener. I’ll walk through his comments one by one, making the necessary edits in the Scrivener files as I go.
This may not work for you, but it does for me.
Hello, first post.
My collaborator and editrix actually bought this product for me with the hope I’d start writing again. I’d love to have a collaborative ability. In reading this it almost sounds like if she were to get the program as well we COULD collaborate? Is that true?
Simultaneous collaboration is not possible: only one person can edit a Scrivener project at once.
Serial collaboration is possible: either you can ensure that you aren’t working on the project at the same time, or you can use the “import and merge” feature to re-integrate a revised project with the original version.
Katherine
Katherine, thank you very much for replying.
I don’t need simultaneous collaboration. Just need her to have access and edit. I am sorry for my ignorance, but I have a couple of follow up questions based on your reply:
- Would she need the program to do this?
- I believe my projects are stored on my computer. What do I do to send her what I want her to have?
Once she has any edits, then I use the “import and merge” function.
Thanks.
To edit a Scrivener project, she needs a copy of Scrivener, yes.
Use the File -> Backup -> Backup To command, and check the box to create a ZIP backup. You can send the resulting file via email or any other convenient method.
Katherine
And to qualify that a little further, she would need Scrivener 3 for Mac. The necessary mechanism for detecting that a project is a copy of the original, and merging the changes, is only currently present in that version. The Windows beta does not yet properly protect that token and when you get the project back it will appear as a completely different project, with no merge option available.
Another thing worth mentioning is that if you don’t edit while they have the project in hand, you don’t need to merge. Just replace your copy with the one they send to you—merging will be an unnecessary complication. Where merging becomes useful is when you both edit in parallel. So while you cannot both open the same project file simultaneously off of a file share, or both be synchronishing changes to the same stored copy (like a cloud share), you can both be working at once. Just observe simple common sense practices of not working on the same exact things and you’ll avoid having to sort out conflicted edits later (i.e. you take one chapter, she takes another, and you’ll be fine).
I can confirm that. I’d just been chatting to my Windows Beta using collaborator, who told me she was on the way to the airport to catch a flight … she didn’t tell me that she was planning to work on our project, offline during the flight. So I took the opportunity to go through any comments and issues she had raised.
In the evening after she had settled in to her accommodation, she got in touch to say that she had wanted to do some more work on it, but because we had both worked separately on the same chapter, there was a conflict and that she was unable to open the project as a result.
I could open the project and do the necessary reconciliation in a couple of minutes on my Mac.
Mark
Thank you Katherine, Amber, and Mark.
Has anyone tried this option to sync with Draft yet? https://www.cultofmac.com/291161/draft-scrivener-collaborative-writing/
wietse,
Thanks for posting your question. Never even heard of Draft before, but it looks interesting! I’ll be giving it a try…
Best,
Jim