iterativelearning

As I blogged earlier, Scrivener did a major overhaul of its splendid writing tool. Since making the jump up to their new version, I’ve gradually been uncovering new little gems. One of the latest that I’ve uncovered is how it syncs any highlights I’ve made in pdfs.

1. Click on the Application icon to launch the pdf in Acrobat
2. Make whatever highlights desired
3. Toggle back to Scrivener and click the Reload icon

So if I’ve added a pdf to my Scrivener Research folder (e.g., research article), it will automatically sync any highlights I make while reading that article in Acrobat. Pretty nifty.

With Google’s recent announcement of editing docs on mobile devices, it got me thinking about why I haven’t seen the same for wikis. I use PBWorks and really like it, but one limitation is the lack of mobile editing.

Wikis seem like a good match for mobile because so much of the adding and editing tends to happen in smaller chunks rather than long, winding paragraphs. A mobile option for wikis might also increase levels of interaction and participation – that ongoing goal of DE educators.

Flickr image credit: Diego_3336

I’ve been increasingly relying on Scrivener for my writing projects and today they introduced a brand new set of features. Two that immediately catch my eye are mobile options (iPad, iPhone) and Revision Mode where collaborators can view and compare changes. I see an upgrade in my future …

After fooling around with it, I’ve decided to switch to Scrivener for all my serious writing projects. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a word processing software designed for the Mac, but in my view it’s so much more than that; not so much because of its features (although it’s got a ton of them and many that I find particularly nifty), but it’s really designed for people who have to do serious writing projects like academics, screenwriters, and novelists.

I may write more about other features in future posts, but I thought I’d point to a couple of real standouts.

First, I really like how it accommodates modularity and makes it very easy to move and arrange chunks (e.g., sections and chapters) of a major writing project; you just click and drag whatever you want to move.

Another feature that immediately caught my eye was Snapshots. All too often on past writing projects, I’ve deleted a sentence or paragraph that, at the time didn’t seem very important or relevant, but then later realized it would have been better to keep. Instead of trying to reconstruct that specific passage from memory or use some kind of kludgy software hack, Scrivener’s Snapshots allows you to quickly capture that text in a separate holding place that can then be recaptured with a simple keyboard command (CMD+5) or via a pull-down menu option.

The more I’ve used Scrivener, the more I’ve realized that the maker, Literature & Latte, genuinely understands what it’s like to tackle a major writing project. If you’re a Mac user and find Word too Windows-like and Pages not quite robust enough for your big projects, I recommend giving Scrivener a whirl. They offer a free, 30-day trial, but in my trial run with it, I think it took all of a week or so to realize that the $39.95 price tag was more than worth it. L&L also offers an educational price of 34.99.