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Scrivener 3 is on the way…
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Posted by Graham Rhind
Dec 1, 2017 at 03:43 PM
Graham Rhind wrote:
> Thanks Frank
Sorry, Franz :-(
Posted by Chris Thompson
Dec 1, 2017 at 04:28 PM
Graham Rhind wrote:
>I wasn’t aware of the sub-documents feature of
>Word, but I don’t think that works the same way as Writing Outliner. I
>don’t want to bring any documents together (in outline view or any other
>way, and certainly not manually, one by one!) until it’s time to export,
>then I want to export to a Word file which requires little or not
>further editing because whilst I can edit a 3000 page plus document in
>Word, it is slooooowwwww. Writing Outliner keeps the chunks separate but
>links them in a “project” and it provides an interface to access and
>edit each chunk as a separate Word document, in a similar way to
>Scrivener’s interface.
You may want to look into the subdocuments feature some more—I don’t really understand how what you’re describing is different from what Word offers.
In Word, each subdocument is its own separate “chunk”. These are separate Word documents—you can open them separately, save them separately, e-mail them to other people, etc. Or you can open the master document, which consolidates all the chunks into one single document. When you’ve opened a master document, the outline view allows individual chunks to be collapsed or expanded, which allows you to move from document to document, or edit two documents at the same time, without having to open them directly. But you can open them directly if you want.
I believe in the last two versions of Word this is also integrated with the document structure sidebar, which would give you a two-pane outliner view rather than the Word outliner’s traditional one-pane outliner view. But I haven’t personally experimented with how the sidebar interacts with subdocuments.
Posted by Graham Rhind
Dec 1, 2017 at 05:09 PM
Indeed, and since you suggested it I have been looking into it. There are lots of reports online from users about instability and crashes when the master file gets too large, even in Word 2016, and it did crash on me already today when trying just with smaller files. As far as I can see, every time I want to create/insert/merge or split I have to expand all the sub-documents. So that means having to open (wait wait wait) then edit (in a horrible view - Outline view is not exactly user-friendly) a 3000 plus page 110 plus mB document, which is exactly what I want to avoid. I can’t see an easy way to nest sub-documents. There’s no drag and drop should I need to re-order the documents as far as I can see. There’s no way to add flags or tags to, for example, show which files have certain changes made to them. There’s no way to assign for each sub-document how the link to the next document is to be created (page break, return, line break ...); and so on.
It just seems to me to be a way to catalogue files and bring them together in a single file, but without any added features or user-friendliness. This could be down to my ignorance, and I really do appreciate the heads up that Word has this option because it may provide a solution should Writing Outliner stop working, and I shall continue checking it out. But unless one has worked with Writing Outliner it’s hard to really appreciate its user friendliness and flexibility, dated though it is ....
Chris Thompson wrote:
>You may want to look into the subdocuments feature some more—I don’t
>really understand how what you’re describing is different from what Word
>offers.
>
>In Word, each subdocument is its own separate “chunk”. These are
>separate Word documents—you can open them separately, save them
>separately, e-mail them to other people, etc. Or you can open the master
>document, which consolidates all the chunks into one single document.
>When you’ve opened a master document, the outline view allows individual
>chunks to be collapsed or expanded, which allows you to move from
>document to document, or edit two documents at the same time, without
>having to open them directly. But you can open them directly if you
>want.
>
>I believe in the last two versions of Word this is also integrated with
>the document structure sidebar, which would give you a two-pane outliner
>view rather than the Word outliner’s traditional one-pane outliner view.
>But I haven’t personally experimented with how the sidebar interacts
>with subdocuments.
Posted by Amontillado
Dec 1, 2017 at 07:37 PM
In my experience, Word’s master document feature has always had fatal problems. In a few drag-and-drops, across several versions of Word, I’ve always been able to get subdocuments entangled without a means to recover them, other than cust-and-paste.
I mean “cut and paste.” Sorry. Freudian. Cussing is part of master documents, too, but that phase is long over by the time you cut-and-paste rescue what you can. At that point, you’re past weeping and into the acceptance stage of your grieving.
I really like Nisus Writer, but what I do with it can be done in Word. Put it in draft display mode and use the Navigator to whisk around to various headings in your file. It’s all one document, but it’s navigable like master document mode.
If you want to edit in chunks, Scrivener is a great tool, and Literature and Latte’s customer support is a thing of rare beauty.
Posted by Amontillado
Dec 1, 2017 at 07:37 PM
In my experience, Word’s master document feature has always had fatal problems. In a few drag-and-drops, across several versions of Word, I’ve always been able to get subdocuments entangled without a means to recover them, other than cust-and-paste.
I mean “cut and paste.” Sorry. Freudian. Cussing is part of master documents, too, but that phase is long over by the time you cut-and-paste rescue what you can. At that point, you’re past weeping and into the acceptance stage of your grieving.
I really like Nisus Writer, but what I do with it can be done in Word. Put it in draft display mode and use the Navigator to whisk around to various headings in your file. It’s all one document, but it’s navigable like master document mode.
If you want to edit in chunks, Scrivener is a great tool, and Literature and Latte’s customer support is a thing of rare beauty.