"Learn Scrivener fast" now on sale at Appsumo

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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Aug 14, 2014 at 06:19 AM

In case it is of interest http://www.appsumo.com/learn-scrivener-fast/

Posted by MadaboutDana
Aug 14, 2014 at 11:55 AM

Thanks, Alexander – very tempting, as I try to decide which I prefer, Curio or Scrivener, but it’s worth mentioning that Literature&Latte have an impressively wide range of videos, support articles etc. for free on their website, and there are some good (and above all, cheap) eBooks covering Scrivener as well (just run a quick search across the Kindle Store). However, $40 for what appears to be a very comprehensive training course is, on the face of it, a bargain.

Having said that, I’ve also found that while Scrivener is a complex, many-layered product that takes considerable time to discover in full, it’s also very easy to use to a basic level without any training or research at all. What’s got me especially excited is finding out how competently Scrivener handles embedded PDFs. Curio has some wonderful PDF-handling abilities, but the search function is significantly less powerful than Scrivener’s – the speed is much the same, but Scrivener also highlights search terms within the PDF.

So does GrowlyNotes, you will cry! Yes, it does – GrowlyNotes is brilliant, and I love it, but good though it is, its search function is slo-o-o-o-ow… For sheer speed, it’s Curio or Scrivener every time. While Scrivener is undoubtedly the writer’s friend, Curio is an extraordinarily omnicompetent Jack-of-all-trades. I’m torn! Ah well, I shall just have to go on playing with both of them…

Cheers,
Bill

Posted by MadaboutDana
Aug 16, 2014 at 05:06 PM

Weirdly enough, heavy use of Curio has reawakened my interest in Scrivener (which has been sitting, sadly neglected, in my Launcher for quite a while).

It’s an impressive program. Rather than nervously skirt about the edges, I’ve created a test project and robustly explored it – I wouldn’t pretend to have examined every aspect in detail, but what I’ve found out is very useful.

For starters, you can open any document in Scrivener in multiple windows; you can have as many windows open as you like, alongside the single or dual-view windows in the main editor. What’s more, these external windows (called, for some reason, ‘Quick Reference’ windows, although you can use them to edit stuff as well) can be split in two to reveal the notes, pictures, meta-data or other stuff you’ve appended to that particular document. While that sounds complicated, it really isn’t.

You can open these ‘Quick Reference’ windows for editable text documents, but also for reference documents such as PDFs, web pages, pictures and so on. What’s more, Scrivener’s powerful ‘find’ function is quite happy to search through PDFs and web pages at lightning speed, highlighting hits as it goes. If you have enough monitors, you can have dozens of windows open all over the place, but without danger of losing your focus because it’s easy to find out, from each window, exactly where the relevant document belongs in the Organizer.

Creating your own text styles is very easy—as is deleting them (or the other preset styles) again. Many word processors could learn from this ease of use, in fact.

The only feature I still haven’t quite got a handle on is the Outline function. Oh, and I haven’t attempted to compile anything yet, either. But I shall explore these things at leisure.

It really is the monster writing tool of all time. I shall be using it to draft my next project. The comparison with Curio will be fascinating.

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