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Draft2 - Coggle Diagram

- - - - The first thing to notice in the inspector is the index card at the top. This appears in the Notes, References and Keywords panes of the inspector (but not in the Snapshots or Comments panes, which require more space). The index card is an important concept in Scrivener. You can type a synopsis of your document into the body of the index card (note the header of the index card can be used to rename the document, too). One of the core ideas behind Scrivener is that every document (or chunk of text, or image, or whatever) is associated with a synopsis, which is represented in the inspector by the index card. You can then view these synopses in different ways (which we will come to later) which will make outlining and organising your work easier. The best way to understand this is to imagine that each document in Scrivener is a sheet of paper that has an index card clipped to it containing a summary of the document’s contents, which can then be viewed alongside other index cards to get an overview of the whole.You can auto-generate a synopsis by clicking on the button in the top-right of the inspector: if any text is selected in the editor, it will be copied into the synopsis; if no text is selected, the first few lines of text will be used.You can also display an image in this area if you want. To do so, just click on the icon of the index card with two arrows next to it in the header at the top of the inspector and choose the image icon. The synopsis will be replaced by a blank area containing the text, “Drag in an image.” You can then drag image files from the binder or from File Explorer into this area. (If an image is selected for a document in the synopsis area of the inspector, it will also be used to represent the document on the corkboard instead of the synopsis text—we will come to the corkboard a little later.)So that’s the index card. Below the index card are other tools to help you organise your work, starting with the General pane. Note that the Synopsis and General panes can be collapsed by clicking on the disclosure triangle in their respective header bars.Please click on “5b: General Meta-Data”. (Or, if you’re going only through the “Quick Start” documents, click on “Step 6: End of Part One”.)
      - The “General” pane in the middle of the inspector contains several meta-data elements:Label and StatusLabel and status are just arbitrary tags you can assign to your document. You can set up the project labels and status list via Project > Meta-Data Settings… You might, for instance, rename “Label” to “POV” (for Point of View) and use it to hold the name of the point-of-view character for each document. This way, you could easily run a search on all scenes that have a particular character as the protagonist by searching on label only (don’t worry, we’ll get into the details of how to do that later). Status works much the same, except that it is set up to keep track of the state of the document by default—for instance, “Finished”, “To do”, “A mess” and so forth—although you can rename it and use it for something completely different, should you so wish. If you change the titles for these meta-data types, the General Meta-Data section will show your custom title instead of the default “Label” and “Status”.Created/Modified DateSwitch between the created and modified date by clicking on the arrows next to where it says “Created:” or “Modified:”. No surprises here—as you would expect, the created date holds the date and time the document was first created and the modified date holds the date and time the document was last modified and saved.Include in Compile, Page Break Before and Compile As-IsThese options affect how the document is compiled when you come to export or print the draft (which we will come to later). They only have any meaning if the document is contained inside the Draft folder. They are mostly self-explanatory:Include in Compile specifies whether the document should be included in or omitted from the draft when exported or printed,Page Break Before specifies whether the document should have a page break before it (useful if it marks the beginning of a chapter, for instance).Compile As-Is tells the compilation process not to change the formatting or insert a title for this particular document, no matter what the Compile settings are.You can view all meta-data in columns in the outliner view, too (which is covered in Part 10).Next, let’s look at the “Notes” pane—click on “5c: Notes” in the binder.
      - At the bottom of the inspector is the notes area, where you can jot down anything you want that will help you with your document. If you click in the notes header bar (where it says “Document Notes”), you can flip between Document Notes and Project Notes. As you would imagine, document notes are specific to each document and will change depending on the document you are viewing in the current editor, whereas project notes can be viewed from any document (project notes can also be seen in the inspector when you select one of the special root folders—Draft, Research and Trash—which have no associated meta-data or synopses). You can have multiple project notes associated with your project (new project notes can be added using the Project Notes window, available from the Project menu).Please click on “5d: References” in the binder.
      - Click on the next button in the inspector header bar, the one with the picture of several book spines on it. This switches to the “References” pane (the index card and meta-data area will remain where they are, only the notes will disappear to be replaced by a list of references). The references pane allows you to store references to other documents within the project, your computer or on the Internet. Click where indicated to (1) add a new reference or (2) remove the selected reference.By clicking on the “+” button, you can choose to add a reference to a file on disk or you can select a document inside the project. You can also drag documents from within the project you are working in, from File Explorer, or the URL from a browser address field, into the references table.Double-clicking on the icon of a reference will open it: external references open in their default application; internal references open inside Scrivener. Double-clicking the reference title will let you edit the title and path. As with notes, you can store references at the document or project level—click on the bar where it says “Document References” to flip between Document References (which are specific to the current document) and Project References (which can be viewed from any document). Next click on the key-shaped button at the top of the inspector to view the keywords pane and then move on to “5e: Keywords”.
      - As well as Label and Status, you can also assign keywords to your documents. Keywords are useful for adding arbitrary tags to documents that you can use when searching. So, for instance, you could add keywords for characters that appear in a scene, the location a scene takes place, the theme, authors referenced, or anything else (or you can just ignore keywords completely). You can add keywords by clicking on the “+” button. You can also assign keywords via the Project Keywords dialogue. Open that now by clicking on the “Keywords” button in the toolbar (the black box with the key inside it) or Ctrl+Shift+O. A floating window (that means you can keep it open while you work, and it will always “float” on top of the other windows) will appear. This shows all of the keywords that you have created or assigned to documents so far. You can also create or modify keywords inside this window (you can change the colour associated with a keyword by double-clicking on the colour chip in the Project Keywords window) and drag them to the keywords table in the Inspector. Another way of assigning keywords is by dragging them onto documents in the binder or the outliner and corkboard views that we will look at later. You can assign keywords to multiple documents at once by selecting the documents in the binder and then dragging the keywords from the Keywords dialogue onto the selectionTry dragging the keyword entitled “Assign this one” to the keywords table in the inspector.You can assign multiple keywords at once. To see this in action, click on the triangle next to “Characters” in the floating Keywords dialogue to reveal the names of some characters. Hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple keywords, then drag all of the selected keywords into the inspector keyword table. Note how all the selected keywords are added.A quick way of searching for documents that have been assigned particular keywords is to select the keywords you want to search for in the Project Keywords dialogue and then click on the “Search” button at the bottom. Try that now, with the “Themes” keyword. The binder list to the left will be replaced by a search result list. Only this one document should be listed. To leave the search result list, click the “X” button in the lower right-hand corner of the binder sidebar. We’ll learn more about searching later. You can close the Project Keywords window now, either toggling it with the toolbar button, Ctrl+Shift+O or clicking the “X” button in the corner of the window.Now click on “5f: Custom Meta-Data” in the binder.
      - If you click on the button at the top of the inspector with the icon of a tag on it, you will by default be presented with a blank grey area with the message “No Meta-Data Fields Defined” and a button with the title “Define Meta-Data Fields…”. This area can be populated with custom meta-data that you create for your project, and the data that can be viewed here can also be viewed as custom columns in the outliner. This provides a way of assigning arbitrary information to your documents. For instance, if writing fiction, you could add a meta-data field for the time at which a scene takes place, or you could add a list of characters that appear.We first need to define some custom meta-data fields, though. Let’s do that now:Click on the “Define Meta-Data Fields…” button (alternatively, you can choose “Edit Custom Meta-Data Settings…” from the menu that appears when you click on the gear button in the “Custom Meta-Data” bar, or select “Meta-Data Settings…” from the Project menu and then choose the “Custom Meta-Data” tab).Click on the “+” button in the bottom-left of the sheet that you’ve opened, and enter “Date” into the row that gets added to the table.Click on the “+” button again and this time enter “Characters”. For this one, also click on the “Wrap Text” checkbox.Click “OK” to accept the changes and dismiss the sheet.The Custom Meta-Data pane in the inspector will now show the two fields you created above. Click into the field under “Date” and type something, then do the same for “Characters”. Note that the “Characters” field will expand to fit the text, because you selected “Wrap Text”.You can view all custom meta-data in columns in the outliner view, too (which is covered in Step 10).For many projects you may not need to touch custom meta-data at all, but if you ever find yourself wishing for an extra piece of information in the outliner or inspector, then it’s good to know that it’s there.Next, on to one of Scrivener’s most useful features for editing documents: “Snapshots”.
      - As a writer, the chances are that you will on occasion be nervous about committing changes to your text. This is what the “Snapshots” feature is for. Before embarking on editing a document, you can click on “Take Snapshot” (Ctrl+5) in the Documents > Snapshots menu. You will hear the sound of a camera shutter which indicates that the snapshot has been taken. Let’s try that now…Once you have taken a snapshot, you can edit your document safe in the knowledge that you can return to the old version any time you so wish. Click on the “Snapshots” button (the one with the picture of a camera on it) in the inspector header bar to see what I mean (you can also switch directly to the Snapshots pane and have the inspector open if necessary by going to Documents > Snapshots > Show Snapshots). The inspector now shows a list of snapshots at the top, which should consist of the one you took and one I took while writing the first version of this tutorial back in 2006. Clicking on a snapshot in the list reveals its text in the lower part of the inspector. You can restore an older version of your text by selecting the version you want from the list and then clicking on “Roll Back” at the top (at which point, you will be given the option of taking another snapshot of your current version, just in case you forgot).Snapshots are very useful for keeping old versions of your text around and for checking what you have changed.Now let’s move on to Step 5h for information on the comments and footnotes pane.
      - Now we’ll look at the “Comments & Footnotes” pane—don’t worry about clicking on the button in the inspector header bar just yet though (for your reference, the “Comments & Footnotes” button is the one with the “n.” inside a square speech bubble).Comments and footnotes in Scrivener work a little like comments in Word or OpenOffice, but they’re not exactly the same. Let’s take a look at them.For a start, click on the orange highlighted text in the sentence below:This sentence has a comment attached.Note how the inspector automatically switches to the Comments & Footnotes pane, and the comment associated with the text gets selected.Next, click on the grey footnote in the inspector, directly below the highlighted comment.This sentence has a footnote attached.See how clicking on the note in the inspector automatically selects the text associated with it in the main editor?If you click on a note in the inspector, the editor will automatically scroll to the position in the text where the note has been placed. This allows you to use the comments and footnotes to navigate the text, which means you can use them for personal placeholders, too. Try scrolling to the bottom of this document, and then clicking the orange comment to return to the spot where it is anchored.Adding Comments And FootnotesLet’s try adding some comments and footnotes. There are a couple of ways of doing this. First, select some of the text in the following sentence:Select some of the text in this sentence.Once you’ve selected a word or two in the above sentence, either click on the “+” button in the top “Comments & Footnotes” bar in the inspector or use the Format > Comment menu command. A new comment will be created in the inspector and it will be selected ready for editing—add some text. Once you’ve finished typing in the comment, tap the Esc key to return to the editor.Alternatively, you can just click into or after a word to add a comment or footnote to it. This time, just click into the word “commented” below so that the blinking insertion point (or caret) is somewhere inside it:This sentence will be commented.Again, create a comment using your preferred method. Note how the whole word “commented” gets a comment associated with it.Let’s try it with a footnote too. Place the cursor anywhere in the last word of the following sentence:This sentence will have a footnote after it when exported or printed.This time, click on the “+fn” button in the inspector (note that you can add icons for “Footnote” and “Comment” to the Format Bar by using Tools > Customize Toolbar…).Note how the footnote gets attached to the word “printed”, including the full stop. It generally doesn’t matter where you attach comments, because they are usually for your own (or collaborators’) reference only, but with footnotes you should always ensure that the footnote link (the grey highlight) ends at exactly the place you want the footnote number to appear when printed or exported. Since the footnote highlight ends right after the full stop, that means the footnote number will be inserted there, which is usually what you will want.Excluding Punctuation from FootnotesIn some languages, footnote markers are placed before the final period of the sentence rather than after it. If you write in such a language, you can turn on “Terminate footnotes and comments before punctuation” in the “Editor” panel of Tools > Options.Changing The Colour Of CommentsYou can change the colour of comments by right-clicking on a comment in the inspector. The contextual menu offers a choice of default colours, or you can open the colour chooser to choose a custom colour with “More…”. You cannot change the colour of footnotes, which use a single colour to differentiate them from comments, although you can choose the background colour for all footnotes in the “Appearance” panel of Options.The contextual menu also allows you to convert comments to footnotes and vice versa, and to revert comments or footnotes to their defau