My Scrivener 2.0 review

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Dec 11, 2010 at 12:07 PM

Thanks for the nice comments, Hugh, Franz and Derek. Also, thanks for confirming my 10 out of 10 rating… I was worried I might just come across as a fan boy.

Derek Cornish wrote:
>Have you found that
>Scrivener and Zoot make a sensible workflow duo? I haven’t really come to grips with
>Zoot v.6 yet, since it does not add much to my way of working, which is mainly with plain
>text. But for books and articles Zoot v5 has been excellent for everything connected
>with information collection and management. It also provides a surprising amount of
>support for planning and organizing writing projects. I’ve been using its folder
>tree for years as a way of gradually sorting information and developing detailed
>outlines, and sequencing arguments and supporting materials; and its floating
>editor panes are also useful for bringing up reference material when I am drafting. As
>I tend to use other programs (e.g. Word or Notetab) for drafting, however, Scrivener
>looks to be a very appealing alternative.

Derek, I’ve only just started using Zoot 6.0. I live in a bi-operating world, with a Windows PC at work and a MacBook for personal use. Most of my writing is on the MacBook, so I haven’t incorporated it into a writing work flow. At the office I mostly use Zoot for information management—tracking invoices and such. I’m only just warming up to version 6, and miss the relative simplicity of plain text. I don’t think I’ll truly like version 6 until there is enough help material to actually learn to use its many features properly.

Nevertheless, I think it could easily be an exceptional asset for writing and researching for the reasons you state. And I’ve always been a fan of the way you can set up folders with rules and actions. I still haven’t found anything on the Mac that matches it—even Tinderbox, though Tinderbox does a lot of other things.

Finally, I downloaded the beta version of Scrivener for Windows, but it seemed too unfinished yet to really use for my work-related writing. I’m eager to give the real thing a go when it is ready.

Steve
>