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Becoming obsessed with the idea of a mac
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Posted by Stephen R. Diamond
Nov 24, 2007 at 12:47 AM
Hugh Pile wrote:
>
>
>
>In my experience, Ecco and Zoot are as close to unique as you can get;
>only Tinderbox on the Mac comes anywhere near as a “text-sippet manipulator/notes
>outliner”, and of course Tbx is not a PIM. But Scrivener is also unique; there is no
>drafting tool on Windows to compete with it. I know - I’ve probably tried them
>all!
I don’t know about the usability of statements like the last sentence above. It seems to me that if a program is that great, it is easy enough to say why. Harder in some instances than others but never a formidable expository task.
It isn’t hard to make an a priori case that Scrivener cannot be so great. First, it tries to manage a writing project from start to finish in a single application. It is not, by pretension, a mere drafting tool. Generally you cannot get the best of all worlds using a jack of all trades tool. It is rather what someone who knows nothing about stereo systems (like me) might do when buying a pre-assembled set of components. Those in the know always buy separate components and I think the same goes for work tools. To get a competent all in one program for $39 is literally too good to be true.
From its web site, Scrivener has two main writing/organization tools: 1) an outliner; and 2) a corkboard. I’ll stick for the moment with the outliner. What outlining features does it have? That nobody is too interested in spelling such features out should lead to suspicion that there is really something there besides the fluff.
If the outliner is not well-featured, who wants to use it as part of a writing project. Some will settle for an outliner less that the best in exchange for the integration, but not a truly puny or sub-modern outliner. This goes back to the matter concerning packages intended to cover all phases of work.
I have a speculation as to why programming on the Mac seems more fertile than on Windows. Apple has never had any concern with backward compatibility. Mac OS X left OS 9 programs completely unusable. The huge waste concerned Apple not in the least. Windows, on the other hand, carries the burden of maintaining backward compatibility with Windows 98 - or is it 95? Anyway, it goes back through a number of major revisions. I imagine backward compatibility imposes a considerable burden on programmers, who must incorporate all the workarounds that allow the program to work on earlier versions of Windows.
Posted by Graham Smith
Nov 24, 2007 at 09:29 AM
Stephen,
prompted out my period of lurking (I’ve been ill and moved house, and not really had the time for a while)
>It isn’t hard to make an a priori case that Scrivener cannot be so great.
As a great fan of Brainstorm and Zoot (and Ecco in the past) Scrivener is doing something very different, and I haven’t come across anything on the Mac that is as good as Brainstorm and Zoot in terms of manipulating outlines or managing data.
For users into the sophisticated use of Outliners (as I presume many in this forum are) then Scrivener would be a disappointment. Nor is it much use as data repository, hence the many discussions on the Scrivener forum about DevonThink and TinderBox plus other programs such as EagleFiler. And again from the forum content there is an assumption that the Scrivener content will be moved to a word processor for finishing off.
I am not a sophisticated user of outlines, finding that I tend to spend time with a mindmap to get the key ideas sorted out, then move to an outline to expand some of the text. The structure by that time is fairly fixed in my mind and I then tend to expand the document in a linear manner.
The cork board in Scrivener woks well for me as I can fill in the 3x5 cards in a random fashion with each card representing a key idea then shuffle them around to change the order. These are then linked to each outline heading and I can add notes, and use them as reference while writing. i can add body text and and move the outline around either via the cards or the outline view. There are also some tools to tag parts of the outline so you pull all the outline that refers to the same topic together to check for duplication or inconsistencies. Plus several tools of this sort which I am still learning.
Scrivener also handles graphics well and this is important to me as so much of my writing tends to centre around graphs from statistical analysis.
For me, it seems to have struck the right balance of capabilities to make it one of my favourite programs and I have added it to my small list (Brainstorm, Zoot and Ecco) of the best programs I have ever used. Certainly in terms of a “writing” tool its the best I have ever used.
DevonThink, which I also bought when I acquired my first Mac a few months ago, is proving potentially useful, but I am finding it clunky and complicated. Hopefully this will improve as I find the time to learn it. As with Windows where I never managed to find anything as good as Zoot, I fear the same is true for the Mac.
From my explorations so far, anyone using Brainstorm or/and Zoot will not find full replacements on the Mac. Of course it is always possible to run these on the Mac using Parallels, and I am running a few Windows only programs using Parallels.
>I have a
>speculation as to why programming on the Mac seems more fertile than on Windows. Apple
>has never had any concern with backward compatibility. Mac OS X left OS 9 programs
>completely unusable. The huge waste concerned Apple not in the least. Windows, on the
>other hand, carries the burden of maintaining backward compatibility with Windows
>98 - or is it 95? Anyway, it goes back through a number of major revisions. I imagine
>backward compatibility imposes a considerable burden on programmers, who must
>incorporate all the workarounds that allow the program to work on earlier versions of
>Windows.
I am not sure about this burden, I was forced to upgrade from Windows 98SE, to Windows 2000, and then to Windows XP, simply because several programs I use could not be run on the earlier versions. It is also reasonably common to see an older version of a Windows program still being available for download (but no longer supported) for people using older versions of Windows. Indeed something I have also seen with the Mac, where the OS9 version is still available but no longer being developed or supported.
Graham
Posted by Hugh Pile
Nov 24, 2007 at 12:30 PM
Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>
>
>Hugh Pile wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>In my experience, Ecco and Zoot are as close to unique as
>you can get;
>>only Tinderbox on the Mac comes anywhere near as a “text-sippet
>manipulator/notes
>>outliner”, and of course Tbx is not a PIM. But Scrivener is also
>unique; there is no
>>drafting tool on Windows to compete with it. I know - I’ve
>probably tried them
>>all!
>
>I don’t know about the usability of statements like the
>last sentence above. It seems to me that if a program is that great, it is easy enough to
>say why. Harder in some instances than others but never a formidable expository task.
>
Fair enough, Stephen. My comment was insufficiently expository (and analytical) - though I felt in writing it that I’d already written enough about what I see as the virtues of Scrivener in previous threads here.
Almost needless to say, I do endorse all that Graham has to say about this application, both negative and positive. In addition, here are a couple of other positive points:
- the integration and useability of its Quicktime interface, split-screen and full-screen modes (respectively of use to transcribers, translators and procrastinators…)
- its import and export capabilities, into and out of MS Word, for example, preserving annotations and footnotes, which make “round-tripping” between Scr. and a word-processor possible (when dealing with editors, for example)
- little touches, like its semi-translucent scratch-pad, its snap-shot function (a simple type of versioning), its “heads-up display” of project and document notes and other meta-data, and its annotations in “ghost” mode (which dims the brightness of in-line annotations until your cursor hovers over them)
- the extent of the functionality of its user-interface - it’s quite common on its forums for someone to come up with a suggestion for change, only to discover the improvement is already embodied - this is particularly common with keyboard shortcuts, of which there’s an abundance
- the extent and detail of its documentation, which IME is very unusual for such a tool (help files, tutorial, large FAQ, video, forums) - compare, say, Zoot’s documentation, especially at a similar stage of maturity - the challenge for users is often not in finding that a particular function that they need doesn’t exist, but in finding the time to learn about it…
- the clarity of vision and responsiveness of its developer, who usually answers any issue within a few hours
No Windows drafting tool has all these features (plus those Graham has listed), and is at the same time stable to the point of trustworthiness for long-form documents. Even MS Word, which IME is very good for short-form writing and day-to-day document layout, has well-discussed question-marks over its stability when handling long documents. Scrivener does not have such question-marks.
A point about DevonThink. I agree with Chris: there are other ways of managing OCR’d PDFs on either the Windows or Mac platform that might be at least as useable and value-for-money as DevonThink. Nor are DT’s outlining functions, other than as a database manager, or its writing functions anything to write home about. I believe that DT’s main pluses lie with its stability, speed, capacity and classification algorithms when storing, indexing and searching large numbers of files, OCR’d or not. But if you do go down the DT route, and have a lot of paper that needs to be digitised on a frequent basis, IME a Fujitsu ScanSnap for Windows or Macintosh (I think 510 is the lastest model) is a worthwhile investment, and pairs well with DT Pro Office.
Posted by Hugh Pile
Nov 24, 2007 at 02:40 PM
Did you see these threads on the Scrivener forum, Matty? They were kicked off by historians:
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1795&highlight=historian
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1317&highlight=historian
P.S. In the litany of Scrivener attributes above, I forgot to include two of the most useful: the ability to merge very easily one or more chunks of text, temporarily or permanently, and the ability to split a longer passage into numerous pieces, again very simply.
Posted by Hugh Pile
Nov 24, 2007 at 02:51 PM
Meant “... two or more… “.
Of course. : - )