After spending several months writing intensively in Scrivener for Windows, recently I switched over to ConnectedText to give it a try. I was encouraged by Steve's blog post the other day about the freedom that ConnectedText allows the writer. Also, I've come across this blog post which showed how to mimic Scrivener for Mac in CT:
http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2008/06/connectedtext-scrivener-for-windows.html

These are just early days, as I'm still at the baby stage with CT, but here are some observations about first impressions vis-a-vis expectations, and experience with Scrivener. I needed to write up some handwritten notes about the conceptual structure of my evolving dissertation, while also developing the concepts further. After reading Steve's blog I imagined it would be a very quick process of typing things up (actually I'm dictating with Dragon), and branching out into new topics. To my surprise, the effect of CT on me was the opposite. It slowed me down and made me pay a lot of attention to what I was writing, as I was being attentive to words that may need to be turned into hyperlinks to new topics. Also, switching back and forth between the edit mode and the view mode slowed me down, as I was paying attention to the way things looked. The wiki format made me self-conscious somehow of the fact that it is a public format, and so I was looking at it with other people's eyes. Needing to use headings, so I can have a table of contents, also slowed me down, as I had to think of the structure, what would make a good heading etc. This was all very different from writing in Scrivener, which does fulfil its basic promise, namely that it withdraws as a writing tool, so you can write without distraction.

Verdict: I'm still evaluating the experience, but the upshot of using CT for writing so far has been that my paragraphs are smaller, my sentences are shorter, and in general my writing is more precise and less verbose, as I had to make sure I was staying on message, as promised by the given header subtitle, and to not digress on themes that I packed away via hyperlinks to other topics. In summary, CT seems to be forcing me to be more concise then I would have been in Scrivener, where I tend to just keep on writing. At the particular stage of writing where I am, CT's disciplining effect is very helpful at the moment, though I could see other scenarios where I might want the freedom of Scrivener again.

I see from the Taking Note blog that people also use ConnectedText with Scrivener, so this is not necessarily an "either/or" situation:
http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2011/04/connectedtext-and-scrivener.html

P.S. But the reason I started this topic is because I would be interested in other people's opinions on how the two compare and how others might be choosing between them or preferring one over the other for particular writing tasks.

I have yet to really put CT to the test of writing long, more formal works. At my office, I am not required to write such documents. In my personal life, I do, but I am not very happy running CT through VMWare Fusion on my MacBook, where the whole thing is clunky, and it slows down my computer. (I don't know what's at fault -- Fusion, CT, the fact that I'm using Windows XP, or some combination of those things.) I will say this, however, I was looking forward to working on a certain project that has been hanging over my head for the past year -- one written by someone else, but which needs massive re-writing. I haven't had luck making progress on this project with Scrivener, and CT just felt as if it would work well. But the cludginess of the whole system made me abandon that avenue. (For the record, I'm now trying it with Ulysses, which shares some attributes with CT.)

But to get back to your question, I think CT would have been a good choice for this project because I could decompose the manuscript very easily, then use the outliner to reassemble the useful pieces. It also does versioning (which I haven't tried out yet), which could have been useful.

I'm still so intrigued by the possibilities of using CT for this project that I'm almost tempted to purchase a low cost netbook just to run it. (The only thing stopping me is that I suspect my wife might actually kill me if I did this [definite smiley face].) So I'd welcome reading about other experiences with CT and writing.

Steve Z.

Steve, as an aside, would more RAM do the trick? I run Parallels on a Mac Mini, and I've been surprised (a) how much cheaper third-party RAM is than Apple's offering, dramatically so - IIRC I bought mine from Crucial (b) how effective it is in making Windows applications work better. The only snag is that it's not something you can test beforehand - it's a gamble. However, some of your Mac applications will definitely work faster.

Hugh,

That's an excellent suggestion, one of those "why didn't I think of that" solutions. Thank you for that wake up call.

Steve Z.

Hugh wrote:

Steve, as an aside, would more RAM do the trick? I run Parallels on a Mac Mini, and I've
been surprised (a) how much cheaper third-party RAM is than Apple's offering,
dramatically so - IIRC I bought mine from Crucial (b) how effective it is in making
Windows applications work better. The only snag is that it's not something you can
test beforehand - it's a gamble. However, some of your Mac applications will
definitely work faster.

Whaaat? A crimper can't get his wife to sign off on a netbook?

I have a few basic non-negotiable needs: water, food, shelter, tobacco, two pc's, broadband internet, and speakers - in that order. Women are not on the list.

Anyway, sometimes the solution isn't the software, but the hardware.

I highly recommend a dual PC solution:
mac + windows, or
linux+ windows

I use two screens, one's my laptop and the other a big monitor. I have screen integration with synergy, file integration with TeamViewer, and keyboard/mouse integration with a KVM switch.

That way, no more cross platform woes.

It's like buttah

Hi Stephen Zeoli

(For the record, I'm now trying it with Ulysses, which shares some attributes with
CT.)

No comment on that ;-)
Just: What does Ulysses do that you cannot do in Scrivener?

Thanks, Franz

Franz,

The true answer is: nothing. But I'm desperate.

The task at hand is very vexing -- reworking a 100-page manuscript that is loaded with facts (it's a history of a Revolutionary War fortification site), but is poorly written. Excessive detail in some areas. Minimal detail in others. Lots of excess words. I've got to chop it down then rebuild it. Oh, and I don't have a lot of time each day to devote to it. So I've had trouble making progress. I've tried Scrivener and Tinderbox to no avail. I thought CT might be a good option, but... see above.

However, Ulysses is a plain text environment like ConnectedText. And I like the way it handles inline comments better than Scrivener, and I think annotating the manuscript might be the best (and latest) first step. So it is, as we say in the U.S., a Hail Mary pass (reference to a desperate, late in the game play in American football when the quarterback throws a deep pass into the end zone and prays his teammate will catch it).

Steve Z.



Franz Grieser wrote:

Hi Stephen Zeoli

>(For the record, I'm now trying it with Ulysses, which shares some
attributes with
>CT.)

No comment on that ;-)
Just: What does Ulysses do that you
cannot do in Scrivener?

Thanks, Franz

Steve, you haven't asked for suggestions on this, and so it may be invidious to contribute, but anyway if it's helpful here's mine.

I'd use Word for this job. Currently there are no better tools for final editing of prose than its Comments and Track Changes features, in my view. (That's not just my view, but also the view of several other writers of my acquaintance.) I'd probably "chunk" the 100 pages up with Scrivener, get the overall structure right and then export in rtf to handle the re-write in Word. To avoid the dreaded Word crash risk (although that's probably now much-diminished or non-existent) I'd tackle only a few sections at a time. Finally I'd probably re-export in rtf to Scrivener to re-combine. (This all assumes there are few or no illustrations, or they could be added as a very late step.) Word in either its Mac or Windows manifestations would do, but I think the Windows version would be better in certain respects. (See David Hewson's blog for his reasons.) That's what I use Parallels on my Mac Mini for.

Final thought: of course this discussion may be an indication that the writing world is waiting for an editing/polishing app (as opposed to a drafting app) that isn't Word. I'm sure Scrivener will achieve that if it can. Trouble is, so Keith Blount says, Track Changes or anything that approximates to it is darned long-winded to code.

Hugh wrote:

Steve, you haven't asked for suggestions on this, and so it may be invidious to
contribute, but anyway if it's helpful here's mine.

I'd use Word for this job.
Currently there are no better tools for final editing of prose than its Comments and
Track Changes features, in my view. (That's not just my view, but also the view of
several other writers of my acquaintance.) I'd probably "chunk" the 100 pages up with
Scrivener, get the overall structure right and then export in rtf to handle the
re-write in Word. To avoid the dreaded Word crash risk (although that's probably now
much-diminished or non-existent) I'd tackle only a few sections at a time. Finally
I'd probably re-export in rtf to Scrivener to re-combine. (This all assumes there are
few or no illustrations, or they could be added as a very late step.) Word in either its
Mac or Windows manifestations would do, but I think the Windows version would be
better in certain respects. (See David Hewson's blog for his reasons.) That's what I
use Parallels on my Mac Mini for.

This reminds me of this previous thread we had on outliners for redacting text. I found Scrivener's Ctrl+K split function pretty handy for breaking down the text into paragraphs and eliminating or reducing them one-by-one.

http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3167/0/outliner-for-redacting

Steve

The true answer is: nothing. But I'm desperate.

Oh, oh.

Like Hugh and Dr. Andus I'd use Scrivener to break the manuscript into manageable chunks. And then edit in Scrivener or in Word or LibreOffice Writer (which I prefer). Though I wouldn't use Word's Track Changes feature (nor the one in LibreOffice) as I find unwieldy.

But if Ulysses gets the job done.

Franz

First of all, thank you Hugh, Franz and Dr. Andus for your helpful suggestions. I will always welcome advice from this community,* which I respect and enjoy so much.

I have already chunked the manuscript up in Scrivener, but that's as far as I got. If I could sit down with this project and concentrate on it for a couple of weeks, I think Scrivener would work great. But I don't have that kind of time to devote to it. I can squeeze in a half an hour here, and hour there. But this is a job that really can't be done in that way, because I lose track of my train of thought. That's why I think that being able to annotate the manuscript chunks would be helpful.

I may look into Word, but I do not own a copy and would have to buy one. Not sure that's in the cards.

And here's the real truth: I suspect that the actual answer to this problem -- one I've been trying to avoid -- is to scrap this manuscript and start from scratch.** (Which is the advice I got from a professional editor who took a look at it.)

Anyway, I remain open to any other suggestions, and apologize to Dr. Andus for hi-jacking his thread.

Steve Z.

*Excpetion: advice on women from JBFrom.
**(In case anyone is curious, this project is a book-length history of the historic site that the organization I volunteer with wants to get published. We paid a local historian to write the manuscript -- few people know the history of the site better than this man, but it turns out his writing skills are pretty inept. And, for the record, I questioned his writing skills before we hired him, but I was out voted by the committee.)

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I may look into Word, but I
do not own a copy and would have to buy one. Not sure that's in the cards.

My only reason for writing in Word is that everyone else seems to own it and it's the only writing software most people know. You have brought back hope to me.

Re your project, I would take Franz's argument further and note that Word's Track Changes feature would be too unwieldy for such extensive rewriting.

I think that the best would be to view your undertaking as an 'academic' writing project, where the existing manuscript is the background that you are to use for writing your own text. Within this context, I believe that some methodologies have been discussed here in the past where the work can indeed be broken down into half-hour sprints.

"Excpetion: advice on women from JBFrom."

Hahaha, touche.

Anyway, what's to tell? They all just want a guy with a huge collection of PIMs.

JBfromBrainStormWFO wrote:

"Excpetion: advice on women from JBFrom."

Hahaha, touche.

Anyway, what's to
tell? They all just want a guy with a huge collection of PIMs.

I'm sure we've all used the chat-up line: "Do you want to come in to see my PIM collection?"

Hi Steve, sorry, spending most of my time "lurking" on this forum (too much to do, too little time to do it), but saw your post and thought I'd share experiences. I'm working on precisely the same scenario - hundreds of pages of info that needs to be condensed down into four short-ish brochures. I've messed about with innumerable tools, but the best one by far is OneNote, because you can use it as a kind of giant pasteboard, chopping bits and pieces around, dropping them on different pages etc. You can also have more than one window open, meaning that if you've got multiple monitors, you can have multiple different "pages" (pasteboards) open and shunt information between them.

My only criticism of OneNote is the rather clunky search mechanism, but it's an amazingly powerful tool for rebuilding text.

I should note that I don't usually end up writing the final result in OneNote - I use either Word, LibreOffice or, if I'm presenting a structured idea to the client, TreeSheets (which generates rather nice web pages).

May be helpful!
Cheers,
Bill

Suddenly realised you may be working on a Mac - but in that case there's a wonderful free, OneNote-like tool available the name of which I've unfortunately forgotten! It's been mentioned in the forum before - can anybody else remember what it's called?

Hi, Bill,

I think you're referring to Growly Notes, which appears modeled after OneNote, though without a lot of the bells and whistles.

A question about OneNote -- how do you merge your collection of notes on a OneNote page into one document? I've never tried to do this (I use OneNote at work). I usually just output the whole page as a PDF or web page. Is there a facility to merge notes into a Word document?

Thanks for the suggestion.

Steve Z.

MadaboutDana wrote:

Suddenly realised you may be working on a Mac - but in that case there's a wonderful
free, OneNote-like tool available the name of which I've unfortunately forgotten!
It's been mentioned in the forum before - can anybody else remember what it's called?

Re Bill's comment about OneNote: Tinderbox would also be very good for this manual, visual sort.

And, as an update, I called my Apple dealer and asked about upgrading memory in my MacBook. He actually convinced me that RAM was not the problem with slow VMWare Fusion performance -- as my MacBook came with 4 gigs of RAM. He said that MacBook Pros don't have very powerful processors. He did suggest I might be able to tweak the settings for Fusion to improve things a bit.

Steve Z.

Yup, that's the one - Growly Notes! True, fewer bells and whistles, but very nice effort (and free!).

Actually, OneNote allows you to "Save as" a Word file (as well as a few other formats) - you can select either the single page, or the whole section, or the entire notebook. Which could be handy if you want to use OneNote as a pasteboard and gradually build up the structure on various pages, then output directly to Word.

As an example of my working method: for the last brochure I wrote, first I added a page for my detailed notes (followed by a series of subpages for individual headings) to a OneNote section. Then I added a second page (plus subpages) to the same section so I could write the actual draft. Instead of tabbing painfully between pages, I simply opened a second OneNote window so I could work on this second "set" of pages/subpages alongside the first set (of pages/subpages) containing my detailed notes. Surprisingly enough, OneNote is actually quite resource-efficient (something that can't be said for Word), so opening a second (or even a third and fourth) window doesn't have a significant impact on system resources.

Once I had finished my draft, I set up a template in Word and after copying bits and pieces of draft text from OneNote, pasted them (as text) into the Word template, revising and tweaking as I did so (I prefer this rather archaic process, because I use it as an editing stage). I could equally easily have generated a Word document and then worked in a second Word document alongside it, but I tend to leave fragments of text scattered around on my OneNote pages in a pattern that means something to me (and sometimes includes arrows, comments, highlights etc.), so copying and pasting actually suits me better - after using OneNote as a pasteboard, I use Word as the tidy container for the final output, as it were.

But you may find a completely different way of working that suits you. What's gradually convinced me of the merits of OneNote is its remarkable flexibility!

Cheers,
Bill

Hi, Bill,

So I just did an experiment on OneNote here at my day job to put your methodology to the test and it does work quite well. I never had the need to export OneNote documents to Word before. Thank you for the eye-opening explanation.

Sadly, I can't use this system for the project in question, since I don't have access to a PC at home and I do not have double monitors, either. (That's the way, always a dollar short and a brick shy...) Still, knowing this might prove helpful in the future. (And maybe Growly Notes can do something similar -- I'll have to try.)

Thanks!

Steve

If you can emulate it with some other program, that's your best bet for a performance boost. There's a huge difference in the comprehensiveness of various virtualizers.

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.

Let me return to the original point of this thread (to compare Scrivener for Windows and ConnectedText). I've now spent a bit more time with CT. One interesting comparison between the two concerns the different ways the breaking-up of large texts into smaller documents can be accomplished. In Scrivener there is the "Split at Selection" (Ctrl+K) and "Split with Selection as Title" (Ctrl+Shift+K), which is very handy for breaking up a text, so that it can be rearranged into a new hierarchy or worked on as smaller individual documents. In CT something similar can be accomplished by "Cut to new topic" (Ctrl+Alt+N), which moves the selected text into a new document and leaves behind a URL. The main difference is that in Scrivener the main logic remains the tree hierarchy, while in CT the wiki logic prevails.

While I like this function in both, I find that their organisational logics have some psychological effects. Because Scrivener's tree hierarchy is constantly in your face, it exerts some pressure on you to have to keep the entire structure and the hierarchical relationships constantly in mind. And naturally as the content changes, the hierarchy might become irrelevant, in which case it demands to be looked at. CT's wiki logic in this sense is more easy-going, because by packing away a document it is sunk into an invisible depth, from where it can be recalled, however the overall structure doesn't become a constant, nagging thing. So in this sense I can see how writing in CT can be a liberating experience.

My other discovery with CT is that is can be quite a powerful analytical tool. I was using it in conjunction with NVivo, which is a professional academic research analysis package. However, I realised that I can do the same type of coding using CT's table of contents and categories panes, the Navigator, and the above "Cut to new topic" feature to actually make NVivo redundant, as it is far easier and faster to achieve the same objective with CT. Could this be the start of a new love affair?

Dr Andus wrote:

...
Because Scrivener's tree hierarchy is constantly in your
face, it exerts some pressure on you to have to keep the entire structure and the
hierarchical relationships constantly in mind. And naturally as the content
changes, the hierarchy might become irrelevant, in which case it demands to be looked
at. CT's wiki logic in this sense is more easy-going, because by packing away a
document it is sunk into an invisible depth, from where it can be recalled, however the
overall structure doesn't become a constant, nagging thing. So in this sense I can see
how writing in CT can be a liberating experience.
...

We seem to have different approaches:
* I use Scrivener (or an outline in Noteliner plus Word documents, if my publisher needs Word files) for writing non-fiction (and fiction) that will be printed or published electronically and is hierarchical in nature.
* I just give ConnectedText a try as a knowledge base for 2 projects. Here hierarchy is less important for me, I hope to find connections between topics that may not be visible when using a tree structure and folders for organizing material.

Why I prefer the tree in Scrivener (or in Noteliner/Word): My writing projects usually are organized top-down. In the end, the books/textbooks/articles will be printed/presented and read in consecutional order. Having the tree visible keeps me focused. When I rearranging chapters or sections this is immediately visible in the tree (ok, in the Noteliner-Word combination I have to do the rearranging manually). This way I know what information the reader already has - and what I might need to add. And, what is important from an economical point of view: I will not start writing a chapter/section beforeI know where in the hierarchical tree it fits - this way I avoid writing stuff that might be nice and interesting but won't end up in the book/article. Off course, this does not mean that I do not throw out sections when I realize later that they do no longer fit in or that I have tool much text.

Franz