ConnectedText vs. Scrivener

Posted by IAP
Mar 10, 2012 at 08:27 PM

A few software suggestions: ConnectedText on the Mac is most like VoodooPad Pro. In fact, I have used both quite a bit, and I would say the latter is the superior implementation on this personal wiki idea, mainly because it feels less like using a wiki and more like using a huge network of rich text files.

Closest thing to OneNote on the Mac is Curio, hands down. It’s a great piece of software, especially if you at a visual thinker, which OneNote is strong for as well since everything is on a spatial canvas.

Tinderbox is a fantastic piece of software. I use it for all kinds of things. Be prepared for a learning curve though.

While Scrivener doesn’t have a change tracking system like Word, it does indeed have comments. Three types of them really. Inline comments for direct in your face notes, sidebar comments which act a lot like Word’s margin notes, except without the spatial disadvantage of linking them to the pixels beside the paragraph. They will be stacked vertically all together so that you can in glance see all comments in a section, even if they are several pages away. Third are links, which give one the ability to work in the personal wiki mindset, except without the wiki feel, if you get what I mean. You can hyperlink phrases to documents at will, or easily make new notation documents with Cmd-L.

Meanwhile for change tracking, use Snapshots, that is the easiest way. You can compare the current version with a snapshot which will show all changed text. You may also prefer to use the revision mode pens in the format menu. They will force the text editor to always use a particular colour, corresponding to the revision level. Subtractions can be done with over strike, which will be coloured likewise.