Scrivener 3 is on the way…

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.