Importing an RTF-exported Scrivener doc

[bohdanz]

I finished draft one on Scrivener - finally. But here's where I need everyone's technical help.

I exported it as an RTF format file so I can work (during lunch hours) on it at work where the place is only Windows. If I keep working on the entire novel in RTF format can I re import it somehow.

Or am I better off just cutting and pasting individual chapters?

Thanks

[KB]

Hi, yes, you can re-import RTF files very easily. Just drag them directly into the Binder (or do it via File > Import...). Obviously, you would then have to delete your original. Or another option is to take a "Snapshot" of the original (Shapshots menu - Scrivener versioning) and then copy and paste your RTF over the original (that way you have a backup of it pre-edit, if you want it).

Note that I am talking about individual files, here (individual scenes or chapters). If you have exported lots of different files as one long file, then you may have to split it back up when you bring it back into Scrivener, if that's what you want to do...

Hope that helps,
Keith

[bohdanz]

Keith,

Thanks for the idea. I did a good rewrite of chapter one and I now see how I can make my project co-exist with the PC at work and my Mac at home.

[janra]

How? How? do share please :-)

I did a bit of attempted co-existence back in November, for NaNo. Basically I took advantage of the fact that Windows doesn't know anything about mac package directories (or whatever they're called) and treats it like a normal directory. I just browsed in and edited the RTF there.

This may have had an adverse effect on the metadata, but I never noticed anything. I'm not sure if that's the recommended way of doing things (I imagine not...)

[KB]

Hi Janra, that is certainly *not* the recommended way of doing things. If you do that, you will soon find that the word count goes out of sync, for a start. Instead, you should just export the individual files you want to edit on a PC as RTF. Then just copy and paste them back into Scrivener when you are done. (Note that the word count is stored rather than calculated dynamically, otherwise you will be waiting for the word count to be calculated every time a document is opened, which might cause lag on extremely long documents.)

[janra]

I didn't think it would be. Oh well, now I just write in text files when I'm on other computers, and if I want it in scrivener I import those. I've written a good chunk of a few stories on scraps of paper with no access to the rest of the story, so I'm sort of used to that sort of thing. (They kind of look at you funny when you bring the entire novel-in-progress to work...)

[KB]

Actually, this post has made me think. It might be nice to have a feature whereby you could select a file and have the option to have it replace the text of the given document (and take a snapshot of the old version at the same time, of course). You could even just drag the new file onto the navigation bar... Hmm, I'll look into this, as as an easy way of getting files in and out is probably something a lot of people will want. No promises, of course, as the feature set of 1.0 is supposed to be locked.

[janra]

Version management is ... well, I'm just starting to read up on it for managing plaintext versioning. I don't imagine it's much fun for non-text content.

[KB]

?? I'm not sure what you are getting at. Version management in Scrivener is done via Snapshots. You are only allowed to version text (although that may have inline images etc) - Scrivener is a writer's tool, after all, so it has no business versioning images or anything else. Versioning in Scrivener is much like in CopyWrite - it just lets you keep an old version of your text around which you can restore should you change your mind about any changes you have made (actually, it lets you keep as many dfferent versions of any given text document as you wish). It doesn't offer any sort of comparison feature such as you would find in a dedicated word processor such as Word, and neither will it. It is just there for basic backup purposes so that you can see what your text used to look like. I think it is good at what does, but obviously some users needs may differ.

[janra]

I was talking about diff-type version comparisons. I find it difficult to work with two versions of a document when I don't have a diff of some sort to point me in the direction of the differences between the files. Too used to programming and using diff and cvs I guess :-)

[amberv]

Some sort of generalised input/output mechanism that makes working with other platforms and software seamlessly would be -- awesome. I do a *lot* of my writing on a Palm Pilot (using one of those nifty fold-out keyboards). My word processor on the Palm handles RTFs just fine, but the whole input/export process is a bit cumbersome.

In the future, I plan to move to Dana as my external writing platform, which is essentially no different than using a Palm, from the desktop side of things. At any rate, no matter what the hardware, until I can afford to have a Mac desktop -and- and Mac laptop (ha), I'm going to be bound by this input/output hassle. It is just a way of life, hardly any programs support a good "satellite system" mechanism.

It would be really spiffy if Scrivener did. I think a lot of writers do use satellite systems. We tend to go where we are inspired, and often that is not at home. So count this as a vote for version 1.1 or whatever. If this were integrated with versions like you suggest, that would be even more useful.

One thing I do wonder about though, as our concept of what a Scrivener document is, becomes richer, how does this get handled by external software? For example, synopses, notes, and even more nettlesome, inline data such as the new footnote and annotation system. If these are implemented in ASCII as per my original proposal, it will not be a problem, but if it is using a marker system or something that is unique to Scrivener, what is going to happen to them?

Some ideas:
In export draft: A new option at the top that says, "Export project for external editing..." or something to that effect. This checkbox disables the entire rest of the dialogue box. It exports the entire draft into a chosen folder. Each document has three files, the editor pane, the notes, and the synopses. A dialogue pops up warning the user to not change the names of the files with a checkbox to disable the warning next time. A new function, "Import draft from external edit" will then read the chosen directory and match up the files with the documents in the draft. If a file is missing from the folder, it will not touch the document in Scrivener. For each document it provides the version dialogue with a new button "Merge". The version that is on the disk will appear as a new version in the rollback list. A checkbox that appears only on this version of the version dialogue will say "do this action for all files,". If the user simply clicks okay, new versions will be created for all imported draft documents. If they click merge, it will simply update the existing version with the disk copy, not creating a new version. If the checkbox is left alone, it will ask for each document set on disk. If only part of the document set exists on the disk (say the synopsis) it will pull the existing data from Scrivener for the new proposed version, showing the updated portion along with the prior data. If a file is found in the directory that does not have a matching Scrivener document it will ask the user what to do. It will provide a dialogue with all existing Scrivener documents in the draft, and allow you to manually specify that it should be this other document -- or allow you to create a new document, and then where to put it in the draft outline.

In a typical workflow, I could export my project out, sync the files I wish to work on to my Palm Pilot, head out to the coffee shoppe or whatever, and spend the day writing. When I get back, I can unload the files from the Palm to a new directory, then have Scrivener read that directory in. It will take just the files I've edited and update the project using the above process. If the platform or software that I used to do my external editing munged up the filenames, Scrivener will ask what I want to do with each document that looks new to it. Fortunately, unless one is using a Mac OS 9 system or a really old DOS system, that shouldn't be too much of a problem.