Quote:
Originally Posted by FredH
I was curious about how you (or anyone else) use both Scrivener and OO. I'm just trying out Scrivener for the first time, so I searched the forum to see if anyone had commented.
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I don't think I'm typical, but I use them for different things.
As a lecturer, I tend to prepare my lectures in OO because I can then export the outline to Keynote and tweak the presentation there ... I sometimes think about trying the presentation in OmniGraffle Pro, which I also use. I have also been exporting the outline to RTF so that I can import it into InDesign to produce printed handouts for each lecture which will perhaps eventually structure into a coursebook. I often use Nisus Writer Pro as an intermediate stage between OO and InDesign, particularly to make use of its very powerful Search & Replace to remove things like bullets. That said: (i) I am basically giving the same courses I have given for the third year running, most of anything I have to do with lecture materials is small changes/additions to what exists, so I tend to do them directly in Keynote/InDesign, rather than firing up OO; (ii) given the fact that Scrivener only came out in January this year, all of the heavy lifting on the lectures was done prior to its launch ... had Scrivener been available at the time, I would probably have been working directly in that.
On the other hand, I do a fair bit of editing of translations from Chinese to English. Scrivener is the essential piece of software for that, as I can split the window to have the original text in one half and the English version I am editing in the other. The outlining ability is of no significance in this ... I just know it's there. Lack of time and energy, the result of multiple demands on me from colleagues and students means that I haven't yet used many of the features like notes, keywords, etc., and there is much I want to do in it in organisational terms. I am also using Scrivener to bring together many other disparate but related documents together in single Scrivener projects, rather than keeping them as separate files on disk within an appropriately named folder.
Over the Chinese Spring Festival holiday, and the following months, I will be co-writing a couple of papers with a Chinese colleague. I will be doing my end of the writing work in Scrivener, there is no question, no doubt using many more of the facilities that Scrivener has to offer. However, I suspect I will plan outlines in OO, export them to RTF, import them into Scrivener and then split them up into folders and text blocks Scrivener-style to match the OO outline structure for the writing part. I have the feeling that I will get the planning done better where I can create and see the initial outline as a single document in OO ... than in terms of a structure of folders and text blocks in Scrivener.
I have to say that since I started using Scrivener, my use of OO, and indeed of Nisus has gone down ... I tend to do more work in Scrivener. I would also definitely recommend the Scrivener forum. There are many writers on the forum who use both Scrivener and OO in combination, and who are very helpful and generous with their advice.
HTH
Mark