Monday
Jan242011
Revision and change tracking in Scrivener
Monday, January 24, 2011 at 10:23AM
It's amazing how rapidly Scrivener has developed over the years. I recall back when I first started using it, perhaps in 2007/8, whining that it didn't have much in the way of revision facilities or change tracking. Keith, the developer, said very honestly that he didn't have the resources to do something as fancy as the very capable change tracking you see in Microsoft Word.
How things have changed. Scrivener 2's approach to revisions and change tracking is different to Word's, and markedly superior in some ways. It's also less than obvious to find. But worth it, trust me. Here's how to get there...
Here's the problem. We want to carry out a major revise on an invididual scene. One so radical we may not be sure it's a great idea, so we're reluctant to lose the first version we have.
OK. Choose the document you want to work on then hit Command 5 or choose this option from the menu.
Scrivener will now take a snapshot of the entire scene and store it separately in an inspector window.
As you can see you can give your snapshots titles and take multiple ones of the same scene. You can rollback to the original at the click of a button. Or look at what's changed between that and your revision too, just by clicking Compare.
Deletions appear in red, additions in blue (sorry but this is a work in progress so I can't really show you the actual text).
I like change tracking in the latest versions of Word. And as always I have to emphasise: Word is how a final book will normally be delivered. But this is probably a more subtle and powerful way to keep track of changes on a heavily-edited book. So congratulations to Keith for coming up with such a clever solution.
It is currently Version 2, Mac only, by the way.
How things have changed. Scrivener 2's approach to revisions and change tracking is different to Word's, and markedly superior in some ways. It's also less than obvious to find. But worth it, trust me. Here's how to get there...
Here's the problem. We want to carry out a major revise on an invididual scene. One so radical we may not be sure it's a great idea, so we're reluctant to lose the first version we have.
OK. Choose the document you want to work on then hit Command 5 or choose this option from the menu.
Scrivener will now take a snapshot of the entire scene and store it separately in an inspector window.As you can see you can give your snapshots titles and take multiple ones of the same scene. You can rollback to the original at the click of a button. Or look at what's changed between that and your revision too, just by clicking Compare.Deletions appear in red, additions in blue (sorry but this is a work in progress so I can't really show you the actual text).I like change tracking in the latest versions of Word. And as always I have to emphasise: Word is how a final book will normally be delivered. But this is probably a more subtle and powerful way to keep track of changes on a heavily-edited book. So congratulations to Keith for coming up with such a clever solution.
It is currently Version 2, Mac only, by the way.
Reader Comments (6)
I really think I need to give Scrivener another try. So much to like in it but the first time around I couldn't quite wrap my head around it all. Thanks for sharing this.
It takes an effort to get your head around it, Jeff, though V2 is easier I think. One of the problems is there are so many features and no one needs them all.
I must say for story development it's wonderful. Must be... I'm back on the Mac most of the time.
[...] It's amazing how rapidly Scrivener has developed over the years. I recall back when I first started using it, perhaps in 2007/8, whining that it didn't have much in the way of revision facilities or change tracking. Keith, the developer, said very honestly that he didn't have the resources to do something as fancy as the very capable change tracking you see in Microsoft Word. How things have changed. Scrivener 2's approach to revisions and change … Read More [...]
One other thing we've added for revision tracking are Revisions. :) These can be found in the Format menu, and basically all they do is colour your text according to the revision level. Red, blue, green, etc. The trick is they force that colour to be used for everything you do (except deletions, Snapshots will remain the best tool for that). You can then at a glance see all of the small things you've changed, and when you are done with a revision, you can easily wipe them all out in that same menu. Additionally, the Find by Formatting feature in the Edit/Find menu has a revision search tool within it. You can search by revision "pen" in a step-by-step way, jumping through your entire book.
This feature is also great if you are working with a co-author.
Thanks Ioa. Will take a look. But I find lots of different colours within the active text quite distracting - I always turn that off in Word using the view selection feature. I can see how this could be really useful in some circumstances though.
What I like about Snapshots is that the revise looks just like ordinary text, and the changes are seen in the sidebar.
Fantastic stuff all round though - well done!
Good point. The default colours are quite bright, but they can be modified to be much more muted if you wish in the Appearance preference pane.
Oh, one other trick, you can drag snapshots to a split to view them in the full editor (read-only of course). When Option-dragged, they will be loaded into the split in comparison mode. I find it very useful to have both versions of the text side-by-side like that, especially since you can scroll the other split with keyboard shortcuts without switching to it with Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-Up and Down arrows.