EDIT: Oh noes! BlockWriter link no longer seems available in the FreeStuff archives. I’m getting a 404.

But yes, having a writing environment that somewhat matched the way type looks on paper is pretty important to me. I use the P22 Typewriter font for much of my work. If you want to see another application using some visual models I worked on, search the Scrivener forum for “BlockWriter”. It’ll be a *very* old thread. Curious bit of trivia, for a while there was thought to making Scrivener’s full screen look much like BlockWriter’s full screen, as well as acting like it too. It acts much like a typewriter, except it lets you correct typos. But if you go back and try to delete something from earlier, it won’t let you—it will overstrike the text instead. It was decided that such a model would be too crazy for most people though, so the plans to include it in Scrivener were abandoned. However you can still download the old test application and play with it. I do sometimes still write in that because I like how it forces you to keep writing.

Perhaps I’m a little old-fashioned, too.

Strange how often technology ends up imitating real life, huh? I know I haven’t quite been able to fully jump into the eBook formats for reading simply because the feeling of paper is just too important, I feel, in regards to the whole experience of reading.

Guess I must be old-fashioned. ;)

The amusing thing is that the default full-screen colour scheme is actually modelled after the way evening light was striking the paper in my typewriter, in my writing room, 2005. I proposed the look, and that’s how it has been ever since. :)

So. First step is to make certain that your view has the two editors, top and bottom (or left and right, depending on your screen real estate). Once you have your editors set up the way you want them, you want to right-click anything in the Binder, go to “Binder affects” and select “Top editor”. Then, in the top editor window, at the bottom there’s an icon with two arrows pointing in opposite directions. If you click this, any document you select in either corkboard or outliner modes in the top editor will open in the “alternate” or bottom editor.

Also, you can only auto-open folders which contain “chapters” or “scenes” in this way. If you click on an empty folder, you’ll get nothing. Setting the “Binder affects” property in this way ensures that you never have to click into either editor windows to make it active; Scrivener will always “unfold” your Binder items into whichever editor is active, but “Binder affects” overwrites this action.

I hope this helps you somewhat. If you still have questions, I’ve added your e-mail adress (don’t worry, it’s kept private on the site, but WordPress notified me of your comment with your credentials) to my GTalk account. Just add me and I’ll try to answer your questions if I can. :)

-roelani

I do, however, have a question regarding something you mentioned. You said something about how after everything is set up, you can work so that when, say, a folder is clicked, the files under it will show up in the top editor in outline format. Then when clicking on a file, it should automatically open in the bottom editor.

How do I get it so that it works like that? I’ve been fiddling around with it for ages, but it’s just not working. Whenever I click on a file, it does absolutely nothing. Double-clicking only allows me to edit the file name. The only way for me to make something show up on the bottom editor (or the top one for that matter) is clicking on it to make the window active and then going to the binder to select the file for whichever window I’ve clicked active. It’s not functioning like the way you mentioned, so I’m wondering if I misunderstood something. The preferences doesn’t seem to have an option for that either.

Any help or advice you can give me would be GREATLY appreciated. It’s bugging me that stuff keeps popping up at the wrong editor simply because I forget to click on it to make it active. Ideally, I’d like it to work like how you mentioned- it sounds like the way Mail works… and that’s good for me.

Thank you very much!