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Scrivener 3 is on the way…
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Posted by Graham Rhind
Dec 1, 2017 at 02:15 PM
Is anybody familiar both with Scrivener (Windows version) and Writing Outliner (a Word plugin)? If so, does anybody know how well Scrivener might replace Writing Outliner?
Writing Outliner, as a Word plug in, enables me to chop up enormous Word documents (>3000 pages), edit those smaller chunks, then bring the whole lot together into one document for publication. Very nice, but it’s not being actively developed and not working well (or at all) on Word versions later than 2007.
A very quick look at Scrivener suggests I can edit chunks of documents then bring them together into a single document for publication. My concern is whether the editor within Scrivener has Word-like strength and features. As the native format appears to be RTF, I’m unsure about that. I can cut and paste from Word to Scrivener, but I do notice that the layout does get altered. The original Word documents are, of necessity, somewhat complex.
If anybody could enlighten me or share their experiences .... thanks in advance.
Posted by Chris Thompson
Dec 1, 2017 at 02:44 PM
If you just want to split up Word documents into chunks that you edit separately, you can do that with no Word plugins using the “subdocuments” feature of Word. It’s also integrated with the outlining features of Word—on recent Word versions the outlining and subdocuments features are even exposed on the same ribbon.
>My concern is whether the editor within Scrivener has Word-like strength and features. As the native format appears to be RTF, I’m unsure about that. I can cut and paste from Word to Scrivener, but I do notice that the layout does get altered. The original Word documents are, of necessity, somewhat complex.
Scrivener and Word are in some sense apples and oranges. You could just as easily ask if Word had Scrivener-like strength and features. Formatting in Scriv is basic and actually isn’t even necessarily the same as what gets exported. The software is designed so you can highlight and use different font sizes while you’re working, if you choose to, and not have that affect the final export, if that’s your intention. Scriv3 finally gets proper named style support, but that’s mainly to facilitate consistent formatting on export. Scriv has inline footnotes and notes (as well as non-inline versions of the same), which Word doesn’t have, but it doesn’t have a concept of endnotes because that’s something for export. You can simulate endnotes though if that’s how you prefer to think while you write. Scriv3 has improved change visualization and has a few more minor collaboration features, like folder sync, but it’s primarily designed for a single author and doesn’t have an equivalent multi-user track changes mode. It’s industrial strength in the sense that you can find authors of lengthy nonfiction with significant numbers of citations (James Fallows, Michael Baywater, etc.) who use it, but it’s not an enterprise-type corporate tool.
Posted by Franz Grieser
Dec 1, 2017 at 02:52 PM
Graham Rhind wrote:
>Is anybody familiar both with Scrivener (Windows version) and Writing
>Outliner (a Word plugin)? If so, does anybody know how well Scrivener
>might replace Writing Outliner?
I looked at it 10 years ago, or so. It was not very stable in Word 2007, neither was Word then.
In the meantime, Word got a decent outliner features, so the plugin is no longer needed.
>A very quick look at Scrivener suggests I can edit chunks of documents
>then bring them together into a single document for publication.
Right. Either through a menu command or via a shortcut key.
>My concern is whether the editor within Scrivener has Word-like strength
>and features.
No, it hasn’t. Scrivener is a writer’s tool, Word is a tool for office workers. So, Scrivener has no mail-merge feature, for example.
You can, of course, format text, spellcheck, print and export to a number of file formats. However, Scrivener for Word 1.x lacks the paragraph styles Word has - Scrivener 3 will have them. You can insert images and tables (though tables are less flexible in Scrivener).
All in all, Scrivener for Windows 1 is for structuring, for writing and exporting your text eg. to Word.
>As the native format appears to be RTF, I’m unsure about
>that. I can cut and paste from Word to Scrivener, but I do notice that
>the layout does get altered. The original Word documents are, of
>necessity, somewhat complex.
Well, that might be the dealbreaker. Lit&Latte offers a fully functional 30-day trial. I’d import one of your Word files and look how well Scrivener does.
Posted by washere
Dec 1, 2017 at 03:17 PM
Scriv 3 is indeed a great leap forward. The interface is even more logical and clean yet with deep layers. Search and research is improved in the right inspector pane with project global span for use within multi documents, new bookmarking and deeper meta data features. More multi windows, onto texts as copyholders or even floating windows. Sort of Timeline feature by labeling and several other new features.
Click and expand a top comment (Read More) to see timestamps TOC made for this long video review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeYbSdIwwTY
Impressive.
Posted by Graham Rhind
Dec 1, 2017 at 03:43 PM
Thanks Frank and Chris. I wasn’t aware of the sub-documents feature of Word, but I don’t think that works the same way as Writing Outliner. I don’t want to bring any documents together (in outline view or any other way, and certainly not manually, one by one!) until it’s time to export, then I want to export to a Word file which requires little or not further editing because whilst I can edit a 3000 page plus document in Word, it is slooooowwwww. Writing Outliner keeps the chunks separate but links them in a “project” and it provides an interface to access and edit each chunk as a separate Word document, in a similar way to Scrivener’s interface. A quick look suggests that the sub-document feature of Word doesn’t even get close to that sort of functionality or look and feel (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong - I suppose it would only be obvious if you’d worked with Writing Outliner).
Thanks also for confirming my suspicions about the Scrivener text editor’s limitations - I had already seen how table layout and manipulation differ, which is important as the document contains thousands of tables. I suspected that its not intended to create final layout within the program, but I wanted to be sure. I’m always on the lookout for a Writing Outliner replacement, but it seems to be unique in its field. Which is strange ...