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SENSE Editor recent updates
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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Mar 31, 2012 at 07:19 PM
SENSE seems to be progressing very nicely. Given the interest here for this tool in the past, I thought I’d post some relevant news, with the usual disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the developer other than being a happy customer.
Of the numerous enhancements the following are particularly noteworthy:
- “Viewpoints”, provide a powerful way of cloning and reorganising parts of a document in a new view, without influencing its original structure; changes in texts in a viewpoint should be directly synced with the relevant part of the document. I note that I have not worked with this myself as yet.
- Sense can effectively be used as a one pane outliner by hiding the content browser; shortcuts to create/manipulate document elements should work normally, so you can focus on the text and build the structure as you go along, see the relevant discussion here http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3906/0/retrospective-outlining
- Sense should now be more intuitive for users of other word processing software, having implemented several standard navigation/selection shortcuts, like Ctrl+Shift+left/right to select words, and ‘extended selection’ (Steve’s favourite), i.e. double click to select word, triple click to select paragraph.
Since a few days there’s also a forum at http://forum.silvaelm.com/
Posted by Carrot
Jan 3, 2013 at 08:00 PM
There is now a QDA (qualitative data analysis) plugin available for SENSE.
This should make SENSE quite attractive to students and grad students looking for an inexpensive QDA tool.
I have yet to test it. I am really looking forward to the ongoing development of SENSE and the QDA plugin
Posted by Dr Andus
Feb 28, 2014 at 10:29 AM
Does anyone here use Sense Editor regularly? What are the main benefits? Just curious where this product fits in the marketplace.
Also, there is a sale on right now:
“Get 30% off Sense License Purchases. Simply enter the voucher code 4TVK2 while placing your order.
Sense is currently available as two versions: a 1.19 Beta Version Download with its new support for the Html Plugin and a 1.18.Production Release.
All Sense plugins (RTF, OPML, RSS, TXT, QDA and HTML) are free with information and compatible download links provided on the main Sense download webpages.
Offer is valid until 7th March 2014.”
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Feb 28, 2014 at 03:28 PM
I use SENSE quite regularly; it is my tool of choice for long and complex texts.
It is the only editor I know that can display a full hierarchy in its left pane, right down to the paragraph level (one line per paragraph). I can switch from overview to detail seamlessly. It is a two-pane outliner which can be used as one-pane too: the tree navigator can be hidden and full control of level expand/collapse etc. is available in the text pane via keyboard shortcuts.
In addition, the Viewpoints feature effectively turns it into a ‘relational’ text editor, much like Brainstorm, as you can be working on various parts of the same document in separate windows while still maintaining another with the overview.
I’m sure I’ve written more about SENSE’s benefits several times elsewhere, so I will write here a bit about its weaknesses (some of which may be strengths too from another viewpoint): it is not WYSIWYG, its handling of images and tables is quite rudimentary, it can import/export RTF but not MS Word. It is Windows-only; I would use it more often if I could make it run on Linux (I stress the _I_ part; someone more knowledgeable in Linux might be able to do it already).
Last but not least, it is licensed by PC, not by user. A license entitles you to one year of free updates and development is continuous, so you’ll probably want to pay again next year. Notwithstanding, given its functionality I find the price quite reasonable, even without the current promotional reduction.
Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 1, 2014 at 09:53 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
I use SENSE quite regularly; it is my tool of choice for long and
>complex texts.
>
>It is the only editor I know that can display a full hierarchy in its
>left pane, right down to the paragraph level (one line per paragraph). I
>can switch from overview to detail seamlessly. It is a two-pane outliner
>which can be used as one-pane too: the tree navigator can be hidden and
>full control of level expand/collapse etc. is available in the text pane
>via keyboard shortcuts.
>
>In addition, the Viewpoints feature effectively turns it into a
>‘relational’ text editor, much like Brainstorm, as you can be working on
>various parts of the same document in separate windows while still
>maintaining another with the overview.
Thanks for that, Alexander. The above features do sound interesting. Who would you say the main competitors are here? MS Word? Scrivener? I’m intrigued by Sense, but somehow I haven’t managed to figure out where I’d fit it in within my various writing processes.