Scrivener, Ulysses, Obsidian Oh my!

Now v1.0 is out so it’s possible the devs will start on mobile apps.

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No idea… I’ve given up trying to do serious writing on the iPad.

I loved the iA Writer app for a number of years until the introduction of The Library, which I found that I disliked. There are other good Markdown editors that offer more flexible editing-in-place. I use Byword with EagleFiler and the Finder and am able to create all the structure that I need.

I do miss iA Writer’s beautiful typography and interesting experiments with monospaced type display. I’ve tried to carry that forward in Byword, which is a good looking app in its own right, by using the free-to-download IBM Plex Mono 18pt font, which is an analog to iA Writer’s design.

You can download iA Writer’s custom fonts here:

Well that’s why there are different markdown editors! I absolutely adore the library. Makes it super simple to create a folder of materials for a long document and take advantage of content blocks. Easy to get the library out of the way with keyboard shortcut. Easy to move around via keyboard. An absolute delight for me.

… but we’re not the same and if the library bugs you then I fully understand why you’d prefer Byword. It’s a very nice editor.

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Ulysses has a similar feature called “glued sheets”. Not quite the same in that while separate files are used they appear while editing as one. That said, you can write them independently and later glue or merge them for export.

Thanks, @ThatNerd, I downloaded iA Writer’s monospaced font and find the difference from its parent IBM Plex monospaced font to be subtle but refreshing. (If this were a beer commercial I would have said Bold and Refreshing!) :slightly_smiling_face:

Seems unlikely, but even the cursor seems a little brighter and closer to iA Writer’s special blue!

Glad to hear you’re enjoying it!

I don’t think Byword supports these but in VSCode I use these themes for an iA Writer-like experience:

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Worth a try but don’t see any way to use these themes in Byword, which is such a clean simple app that all I really needed was the original font to put the finishing touch on the UI!

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Scrivener is one of my foundational apps. It’s my workhorse. I’ve even developed ways to handle incorporating MS Word reviewer comments. It’s not as easy as just pushing accept/reject in Word, but it is not a burdensome process the way that I do it. Scrivener thinks the way that I do. When I was first investigating Scrivener, I also looked into Ulysses and it just didn’t make sense to me. Obsidian is a bridge too far for me.

I set up a series of special Word templates and matched my styles in a Scrivener template, so the compile process is frequently a painless task.

I echo this sentiment:

I had to work with (ah, re-write) a 300 page Word document that was in complete disarray recently. I pulled the document into Scrivener, broke it up into separate text files (in some cases one paragraph per file). Then I was able to painstakingly re-arrange them until I found the right organizational thread. Sounds like a lot of work, but I was able to get it done in a weekend. I could have never done that in Word. It would have been required some kind of start from scratch and a month of work.

I also love being able to keep all the research close at hand.

I hope the Literature & Latte folks earn enough money to keep the lights on for a long, long, long time.

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Go on…

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I LOVE Scrivener. There is so much to it. And you can write as you learn. Terrific community too.

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Which community? Is there a user group like this one? Good to know!!!

Very helpful and knowledgeable membership – not just about Scrivener techniques, either.

Thanks!! This is very helpful.

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@anon41602260 Thanks for this, I just joined! I’m using a combination of Obsidian, iA Writer and Scrivener with all plain text markdown files. It is working well! Syncing with an external folder of markdown files allows me to avoid using DropBox with Scrivener.

I worked with Scrivener maybe five years ago and really enjoyed the experience. I can only assume that it’s improved significantly and added many features since then?

At the time, I was compiling entries from my then blog (hosted on Typepad, those were the days!), and also including word documents to create a book of short fiction and essays that I had written. It was a big project, and Scriviner was well suited for the job!

On my new blog, I’m using Ulysses to write and Craft to compile notes and ideas.

I am finishing my doctoral thesis in Scrivener and even learned Ruby because of the Scrivener Manual Template that contains a script in the post-compile. I, then, made my own (kind-of-complicated) post-compile script as well. Writing the thesis with it was frightening at first, but then very comfortable and enjoyable. It offers a unique set of tools that no other software in the market does. Tinderbox comes close and, unlike Scrivener, it is scriptable, but while the former allows a greater degree of flexibility, the latter is already ready to rock and roll with large texts that need to be cut up and stitched up back again.

HAHA! Following is my system. I use one of two methods depending on how extensive the comments are and how long the document is.

Method 1

I open Scrivener and the marked-up Word document side by side. I take a snapshot of all the text files in my project. I navigate through each of the tracked changes and make the decision to accept or reject in Word. If I accept the change, I copy that change over to Scrivener. If I reject the change, there is nothing to do in Scrivener. If I make a change that is different from the proposed change, I just make that directly in Scrivener. When I’m done with the changes, I have a Word document that shows me what I did with the proposed changes. From Scrivener, I compile the updated Word doc and then run a redline against the previous version. It looks like a lot of steps, but really it does not take substantially more time then just handling directly in Word.

Method 2

If Scrivener project is really simple and the Word document is not to long or complex, I sometimes handle the revisions this way. Again, I start with taking snapshots of all the text files in their current state. (Actually, normally I do that right after a compile, but the point is to save the prior state.) In this method, I just accept 100% of the changes in Word, paste the revise text into my Scrivener text files, and then use the compare tool make the edits. Then, I re-compile, as above.

I’m not trying to sell anyone on my process, but to understand why I do it this way, here’s the story. First, I like having my Scrivener project–as much as possible–be the canonical source of how my writing project has evolved. I like to have all the edits and history in one place. Second, now that I have a workflow developed for handling the changes, it’s not that burdensome to address the revisions this way. In fact, it forces me to think a little more carefully about editing decisions, so that’s a little bonus, too.

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I had a similar reaction(!), but not in terms of writing a thesis. It seemed daunting at first to develop all the styles and compile settings in the Scrivener template, and then create the styles in the corresponding Word template. But once that was done, the whole process writing process became simple. I can recompile with ease because I don’t have do much clean-up after a compile; so that process is trivial. I use the same set of templates repeatedly, so creating new documents is hassle-free.