Big Feature Number 1: Sync with External Folder

This feature alone was worth the $25 upgrade fee. As you’d expect, it lets you, well, sync with an external folder. The intent here is for you to use a service like Dropbox as your sync folder, although you don’t have to. When you sync a Scrivener project it creates subfolders with the bits that make up a project — a Scrivener project isn’t a single file like a Word (s msft) document; instead it’s a package made up of  files — be it text files as part of the manuscript, or images or PDFs for your research.

When you set this project to sync, it’ll create subfolders for all those nested bits, and you can edit them on any computer that has access to that folder and can edit the text files. This is a fantastic feature for use with iPad editing tools. I’ll export all my current projects to Dropbox. When I edit the project on the iPad, it’ll auto-sync when I open the project up in Scrivener. Also, text files created in the sync folder will auto import. All my TAB stuff goes into one project, so if I create a new article on the iPad, it’ll get imported. This feature is also very handy if you’re collaborating on a project with another Scrivener user.

Big Feature Number 2: Create E-books

Creating an e-book from your work has been somewhat challenging up until now. Open-source tools like Sigil can create e-books, but my experiences with it showed me it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s probably not something the average writer is likely to want to deal with. When Apple recently introduced ePub exporting in Pages, I felt it was the first e-book creation tool average users can work with. Now, Scrivener can create both ePub and Mobi-formatted books.

I haven’t played with this feature much other than to export a project and view it on my iPad and Stanza (s amzn) in OS X, but, it worked, and looked quite good. I did notice the iPad was a little more font-sensitive than Stanza (it didn’t see all the font overrides I set in Scrivener). Using the supplied novel template I also noticed that the table of contents were auto created.

I haven’t tried to send a compiled e-book off to one of the self-publishing services, so I have no idea how well that aspect works.

Not-so-big Features

Better Academic Usage

My experiences using Scrivener for academic work were frustrating. While it was great at storing research, getting Scrivener to bend to MLA formatting just wasn’t worth the hassle. Now, Scrivener includes templates for MLA and other academic standards. There are also now presets for things like block quoting that really help alleviate some of the frustration of formatting.

Also greatly improved is footnoting. Footnotes (and comments) now appear in the Inspector rather than in-line. The combination of these two improvements makes Scrivener a more appealing tool for student use.

Better Outlining

Most of my work doesn’t involve outlining. That said, there are some impressive new additions to outlining in Scrivener. The biggest one for me is custom columns. I live or die by word counts, and now the outline view can show the word count for all my drafts. I can also add columns for progress to a target word count, modified date, etc. This is especially handy for files like my TAB binder, which can become very congested.

Collections

This is going to be the feature I’m glad was included later, even though I don’t currently use it. Basically, collections let you grab scrivenings without changing their place in the overall structure. If you’re working on a large manuscript and you’ve identified scrivenings that are to be the focus of the day’s editing, you can drag those into a collection and not screw up their position. I haven’t figured if there’s a way to create a smart collection based on keywords. I can easily see using this as a to-do list.

Conclusion

Scrivener 2.0 was one of my most-anticipated upgrades this year. It hasn’t disappointed me. The folder sync feature is a boon to us iPad users and lets me use Scrivener as the Grand Central Terminal for my writing. The upgrade is $25 and the full version is $45. It’s a tremendous bargain for such an awesome writing tool.

Another writing tool I often take advantage of is Markdown, a sort of formatting shortcut language created by John Gruber. The lack of native support wasn’t a big deal for me. I already know most of the formatting commands so I could just enter them in by hand and preview them when I exported them.

The Markdown implementation is a little tricky. If you’ve created a file on the iPad, you’ll need to change the extension to .md, .markdown, .mdown or .mdwn. That will activate the Markdown preview button. It doesn’t appear to add any shortcuts for common Markdown elements, like #. It’s too bad since the need to access the secondary or tertiary on-screen keyboards can slow you down. If you are a heavy Markdown user, I recommend the excellent Edito iPad app.

Now that Elements supports both subfolders and Markdown in version 1.5, it just might become my iPad plain text editor of choice

One of my goals when I did that was to spend more time writing my fiction. However, after not getting much done with that I learned I work much better with some sort of deadline — or at least a content manager bugging me for articles.

I am pleased to announce I am now one of the contributing writers at The Apple Blog. For me, it’s a fantastic opportunity; I get to write about the technology I use every day and get paid for it.

I ran three tests (four if one of the three tests generated a number out-of-whack from the other two): Three from a fresh startup of the OS, and three from just quitting the app and re-launching it. In the case of Parallels, I quit Word from within the VM and then quit Parallels. I did not do a fresh boot of Windows XP for the tests; I left the VM in a suspended state.

I’ve got the numbers at the end of this post, but from a cold boot time. Word 2007 from within Parallels won, with Word 2007 within Crossover coming in second and Word 2008 natively within OS X coming in third. Warm starts Word 2008 won, with Word 2007 in Parallels coming in second, and Word 2007 in Crossover coming in third.

I’ll admit: there are a lot of apples to hand grenades comparisons happening here. About the only valid point is two separate Microsoft Word Processor have drastically different start times between a native app and one running in a two different emulators. You also can run into some issues if the emulator doesn’t want to start up properly – not to mention in Parallels’ case running an entire OS on top of OS X.

I’m not really sure what to make of these numbers. If you told me Word 2007 running in two different emulators would actually start faster than Word 2008, I would have laughed my ass off. However, in none of the cold start time tests I performed did Word 2008′s fastest load time beat the fastest cold start time tests of an emulated Word 2007. If you rarely reboot your Mac, subsequent loads of Word 2008 are faster, but not dramatically so.

One other difference is looks. I’ve attached screen captures of the three versions below, but I found Word 2007 in Parallels to read clearer because it uses Clear Type. Word 2007 in CrossOver looked the worse since it was bolder than the other two. Word 2007 also interacts with SharePoint and Blogs better; this entire post was written and posted in Word 2007. I’m also enjoying the ribbon interface a little better in Word 2007.

That said, I think it’s unlikely I’ll be doing a lot of work in Word 2007 – mainly because it’s not a native OS X and running Windows XP on top of OS X is too resource intensive. I did find it amazing that it loads faster than Word 2008.

Time Tests

Word 2008:

Cold Start 1: 1:03.11

Cold Start 2: 34.7

Cold Start 3: 1:09.4

Cold Start 4: 1:22.3

Warm Start 1 7.3

Warm Start 2: 6.9

Warm Start 3: 8.4

Word 2007: Parallels

Cold Start 1: 32.7

Cold Start 2: 46.5

Cold Start 3: 43.5

Cold Start 4″ 1:29.8

Warm Start 1: 10.7

Warm Start 2 : 1:36.4

Warm Start 3: 11.6

Warm Start 4; 10.3

Word 2007: Codeweavers

Cold Start 1: 40.8

Cold Start 2: 41.0

Cold Start 3: 38.5

Warm Start 1: 12.8

Warm Start 2 :13.8

Warm Start 3: 11.8

I’ve been struggling with fully using Scrivener for a while. When I bought the program, it seemed great for long bodies of work like books, short stories, etc.. With none of the stuff I write these days being that long, Scrivener seemed doomed to sit in the neglected pile. Which is too bad, because there are a lot of features I like in it. Its full-screen view is amazing, for instance.

There were two big hassles: since the columns end up on the web, creating a Scrivener project for of them seemed silly. School often has rigid formatting guidelines, and I was afraid I’d be spending as much time reformatting the exported Scrivener document as I would have spent just doing the damn thing in Word.

I had a perfect storm of light-bulbs going off in my head. Instead of creating a separate Scrivener document for every column and essay, why not create a Weblogsinc and School project, and then use Scrivener’s multi-document tree structure to write each column. When I’m done, just delete the file but keep the project. Same thing for the essays. My print clients will also get their own Scrivener file. It’d probably make sense to just have one Scrivener file for ALL my articles and columns, but it’s easier for me to focus this way.

It’s worked well so far. I’ve come to the realization I’m never, ever, going to get rid of Word and I’m ok with it. Unlike some Mac people, I’m not that anti-Microsoft and I actually kinda like Word 2008. My big beef is the damn thing takes too long to load and most of my instructors still can’t accept docx formats yet.

Which got me to thinking about Pages 08. The big strike against it has been the fact that it saves everything in .pages formats, and I need to export it to a .doc file to hand it off. Kinda like I have to do with Word 2008, now that you think of it.

The amount of stuff I need to do heavy formatting in is negligible. The Online Documentation class that just wrapped had heavy formatting needs with some tables, but the Modern Middle East class just requires single-spaced Times. Even though I prefer using Cambria these days, I set up a Scrivener Compile Draft setting to export or print it in Times. Scrivener sorta integrates with Endnote, so if I need to cite something I can run it through Endnote and get the bibliography done.

This is not a completely clean process. To be frank, if you’re a student and need to write a lot of research papers you might be better ponying up the extra $70 to get Word (or, if you go through your school’s bookstore, the cost for Office is actually around $80) , where the 3rd party tools work 100%. Note: Word 2008 has built-in bibliography, and having used it for two papers I can attest it actually works quite well. There’s a caveat in that it only supports a smattering of formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian (no, I don’t know what that last one is for, either).

I also don’t know how well this works with programs other than EndNote, and I’ll assume you’ve already built your database.

1- In Pages use the Research Paper template located under Reports. Adjust the style so it matches your professor’s requirements.

2- Write the paper and keep EndNote running in the background. When you need to cite a reference, Apple-tab over to EndNote, select the reference, then go back to Pages and go to the Pages menu, choose Services, EndNote, Insert Citation. The citation will appear like this: {Darmer, 2004 #5}. Don’t worry about the formatting. Use the built-in styles to format the body and block quotes.

Alternately, you can type in the name of the author, highlight it, and choose “Find Citations” from the same menu. That will let you do this step without leaving Pages.

3- When you are done, save the document as both a Pages document and an RTF file. I’d suggest being mostly done at this point–i.e. it’s all proofread and just needs the bibliography.

4- Open EndNote and go to the Tools menu, Format Paper, and choose Format Paper. This will open up a dialogue box where you will open the RTF file you’ve saved. It will verify the citations you’ve cited and create a new RTF file.

5- In Pages open up the newly created RTF file. You’ll notice all the nice styles are gone from the styles drawer. To get them back go to the Format Menu in Pages and choose Import Styles and choose the .pages doc you saved in Step 3. This will get back the Cited Works Syle.

6- Go to your cited works section, select the text, and apply the Cited Works style to auto format it. Make sure the rest of the document looks right. I also had to recreate the headers so you might want to copy that back over, too. Double-checking the formatting is probably the biggest pain of the process. Also, save this new version as a .pages doc, too.

Like I said earlier, if you need to write a lot of research papers you might want to just get the student version of Word. However, if you can’t afford it or just plain hate anything with the MS logo on it, you can create biblios in Pages at least with EndNote. If the other citation software work similar to EndNote, you might be able to use these steps.

So, I’ve been hauling around this dead weight for the times I feel like writing at lunch. I’m starting to think that web-based tools will work just as well for most of the stuff I’m working. The advantages are pretty obvious: At work and home, I’m connected to the Internet so therefore I have access to my stuff. The MBTA is in the process of rolling out WiFi onto the trains–I guess they figure since the trains are always late, maybe we can get some work done on them–so once that happens, if the stars align and I feel like writing I can still get to my docs.

The downsides are also pretty obvious, in that I need to be connected to the Internet. I’m not sure how time-sensitive the stuff I’ll be working on is, though. Google Docs is pretty good but it lacks proper formatting. Anything for school, where I’m adhering to academic standards will need to be done in Word.

I’m going to be giving ScriptFrenzy a try — the NaNoWriMo of Scripts, where you have a month to do 100 pages. Scripped.com has a nice little on-line script tool, but I’m a little suspect of its apparent PDF only export.

I’ll let you know how I make out.

$150 gets you the Home and Student Package which at least gives you Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It *may* come with Entourage but it will not allow you to connect to an Exchange server.

$400 gets you the Home and Student Package plus the ability to connect to an Exchange server in a SKU called Office 2008 Professional.

$500 gets you all of the above plus some fancy media organizing package no one knows jack shit about right now. My feeling is this will come in handy for people who make media-heavy presentations. Like Steve Jobs.

Naturally, this got the Internets going on Microsoft releasing too many confusing SKUs when one will do. I don’t see that in this case. The Home edition is for people who need more out of a suite than iWork provides. For roughly double the price you get about three times the features. Yes, yes, I know some of you are perfectly happy with Text Edit. $150 for a package that gives you close-enough-for-government-work-guaranteed compatibility with Office users is a good deal.

The $400 version is really a $250 tax on being a corporation and needing to connect to an Exchange server. I find this reasonable, especially since volume pricing drives the price down quite a bit anyway. What’s that, you say? The poor college kid that needs to connect to the campus Exchange server has to shell out all that extra cash? Um, no. You see the “real” student price for Office 2004 is actually less than the Apple Education price for iWork. Through my University I can get Office 2004 Student for $68, and the Pro version for $80. Assuming those prices are inline with the 2008 pricing, college students can get Office 2008 Professional for about $80.

While I’ve switched a lot of my general word usage to Pages, I’ll be getting this day one. I’ll be damn glad I can get the student price on it though. Do I *look* like I’m crazy enough to spend $400 just so I can connect to the Exchange server at work?

MMOs are a huge time sink—it’s in their nature and I don’t have a problem with that. The goal is too keep you playing, even a non-subscription game like *Guild Wars*. Finishing a review, though, gives me an odd form of closure; when I’m done with the review, I’m done with the game. *LOTRO*? Loved it. Only logged in once or twice after the review. Same thing with *Auto Assault*. When I wrapped the *Burning Crusade* review it was a few months before I logged into *WoW*—and was a combination of it running on my MacBook, an awesome guild, and the ability to get something done in an hour or so.

The industry is either shoving games out the door so fast you can’t think straight or they aren’t putting any out. It is not unusual for me to have reviews stacked up like planes at O’Hare National. January had *Burning Crusade* and *Vanguard* back-to-back and *LOTRO* wasn’t far behind. Usually when I do 2-3 MMO reviews in a row, I get burned out on them for a bit and by the time the urge strikes to play one again, well, heck, there’s another one that needs to be reviewed. So, as much as I loved the game during the review, the cycle the dictates I’m likely to not to do much with it afterwards. Even though I live in the world of Fun Tax Deductions keeping a lot of subscriptions going isn’t feasible (yay for companies that comp press!).

*Guild Wars* has always straddled that line. It’s free and, thus, well clear of the Anger Spouse With More Fees issue. But, it’s hit the Closure rule where I finish the review but make a note that I need to finish up a few things when the urge strikes—clear off some side quests, etc.. Which is where I’m at now. I’ve beaten *EotN*, but there’s a bunch of content I didn’t see. There’s bits from the older chapters I haven’t seen either. I’d like to think I’ll follow up in a month or so and cross them off my list. Since one of the driving forces on playing old games is if it’s something I’ll need for a future review, and *EotN* is the last of the *Guild Wars* line, I doubt I will. Besides, *Tabula Rasa* ships in a month…

The research paper topic is going to be on how the show 24 has affected American’s opinion on torture. For a long time it seems American’s have viewed themselves as being the “good guys” and the “good guys” don’t torture people—that’s the “bad guys” job. Since Jack Bauer, the lead character in 24, routinely tortures people because he doesn’t have the time to ask them nicely and the show receives both high ratings and critical acclaim, I’m curious how American’s view torture against the context of the show.

The hardest part is going to be finding sources. I need at least seven sources, and I’ve found some decent ones: an article in which Justice Scalia is quoted as saying that Bauer would never be prosecuted and that extreme times call for extreme measures. I’ve found articles in which Pentagon and West Point officials have visited the producers telling them to lighten up a tad since apparently military people are using Jack Bauer as a training manual. Those are soft sources and I need to find some harder ones, which means I’ll need to nail down the topic and thesis into something I can find academic sources on, which may prove difficult for something entertainment-based.

I’m looking forward to this; the last time I had to write a research paper was almost 20 years ago. Since I’ve been writing professionally for a while, I do not doubt my ability to do the work, but I’m curious how the standards for academic writing differ from writing for publication. When writing for publication, I’ve found the criteria seems to go: 1) on-time, 2) doesn’t take up too much of my editor’s time, and 3) good. I expect academia standards are a tad different, but I actually wouldn’t be surprised if they were that much different: “Hmm, looks like Mr. Crump handed in his assignment on time. That’s a bonus. Looks like I won’t need go through five red pens marking this one up, either, and whaddya know, it’s actually fairly decent.” But I have a nagging feeling it’s going to be much different.