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Posted by Donovan
Jul 7, 2012 at 04:29 AM
Me again, Wish there was a way to edit a post so I wouldn’t have to make a new one - sorry.
Scrivener is really good with a BIG ‘except for’ .... it won’t accept cutting and pasting of a page with links as clickable links(!) According to their forum it’s something they “want to do.” You can drag a link from the browser to a Scrivener page and its clickable, but not if you copy/paste. That makes it a complete no-go for me. Just thought I would let you know about this inexplicable missing feature.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jul 7, 2012 at 07:32 AM
Donovan wrote:
>To me, if you don’t know your competition, something is wrong.
>I really don’t think they don’t know - I think they were being dishonest.
The developers wrote that they are “unfamiliar” with the program http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/mybase-desktop-addons-pack/ which can be interpreted in several ways. The number of two-pane outliners out there is incredible, and InfoSelect may not be considered the most relevant competitor to MyBase. In any case, I find that a question to a developer about how their product compares to others has no easy answer, and whatever the answer may be, it has to be taken with a grain of salt on the part of the user.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jul 7, 2012 at 09:28 AM
Donovan wrote:
>Scrivener is really good with a BIG ‘except for’ .... it won’t accept cutting
>and pasting of a page with links as clickable links(!) According to their forum it’s
>something they “want to do.” You can drag a link from the browser to a Scrivener page and
>its clickable, but not if you copy/paste. That makes it a complete no-go for me. Just
>thought I would let you know about this inexplicable missing feature.
Not inexplicable at all. Scrivener is targeted to writers and all its features are focused around that goal. It is not a general content organiser.
As you will read in several discussions here, it is often the features a developer leaves out that constitute a software’s competitive advantage in terms of usability by its prospected customers.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jul 7, 2012 at 10:49 AM
I’ve been using RightNote for a few days. What I like about it is its overall functional feel. That is, it just feels natural and easy to use. It is far from the most powerful PIM on the market—I’m sure that myBase is more powerful. But I for one never really got used to how myBase functions (and, yes, I did have a license for myBase, but I stopped upgrading many years ago). In RightNote a file holds several pages (or tabs) of outlined information. This seems like a nice design to me… all your information in one file, but parsed by tabs and then by outlines. Meta data in RN is limited to a clunky, but workable tagging system. The web page archiving works well in my short-term experience. So far I’m pleased with it, but the true test comes when it becomes crammed with information. That’s the point at which I usually find myself getting frustrated with PIMs… which is just as likely to be a reflection on me than on the applications themselves.
As for Scrivener as a research manager, I think it could work, but is probably not optimal. The Mac version would be better. In the Mac version you can create custom data fields for the outline. In the PC version you’re stuck with the ones they give you, although those are somewhat extensive. Nevertheless, I would not use either version for storing and organizing my notes, except on a very project-oriented basis. There are just too many better options.
On a side note, I do think Scrivener could be an excellent tool for managing a large project, however. Especially if you will need to make a report to your supervisor at the end of the project. I wrote a “theory” of using Scrivener for project management on the Literature and Latte Forum, here:
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=16169#p113401
Of course, with good intentions of trying this out, I didn’t actually get that far!!!
Steve Z.
Posted by Dr Andus
Jul 7, 2012 at 01:47 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Not inexplicable at all. Scrivener is targeted to writers and all
>its features are focused around that goal. It is not a general content organiser.
I agree with Alexander. Scrivener is a unique and specialist writing tool first and foremost. I wouldn’t recommend it (at least the Win version) as a general database for content and files. I tried to use it for that and found that 1) I had hard time finding stuff (even text) once hierarchy grew too large and complex; 2) even managing images was a hassle (for example resized images kept changing their size); and it slowed down once there was a lot of data (e.g. file backup took too long every time I closed the application). In fact this experience was what made me switch to a wiki solution (but you said you don’t want to use markup).