Comments on: When Everything Looks Like a Nail

By: Dannynic

Dannynic — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:31:54 +0000

Hi Chris, thanks for the comments on my whiteboard blog. I’d be up for a skype chat sometime. Good luck with the book writing!

By: Jo McLeay

Jo McLeay — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:15:35 +0000

Wow, Chris that’s great news. I thought I’d seen rather less of you than usual and this explains it. Can’t wait to see your book when it comes out. Will it have stuff for secondary teachers? Regarding your podcast post, I haven’t been listening to podcasts since I’ve been away so lots to catch up on/

By: billgx

billgx — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:35:10 +0000

Just checked it out. Looks like I will have to wait for my next computer upgrade. I’m still stuck in PC land but hope someday to switch back to the Mac platform it requires.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:33:57 +0000

Bill: I think it would be perfect for a thesis, in fact I think it would be way better than Word. The way it let’s you write in an essentially non-linear way (if you choose to) makes it very powerful.

Grab the 30 day trial and let me know what you think…

Susan: Thanks. Should be available in the second half of this year… Don’t know about the pre-ordering bit, but I can slip you a sneak preview of a chapter if you’d like. Could use some good feedback on it before I give it to the publishers. let me know if you’d like me to send you a chapter or two…

By: Susan Sedro

Susan Sedro — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:33:53 +0000

An IWB book for teachers? That is very welcome news! When is it due out? Can we pre-order?

By: billgx

billgx — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:49:13 +0000

Do you have any feel for how Scrivener would work for academic work such as a thesis or dissertation? I have not started mine yet, but one looms ahead in my not so distant future.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:23:11 +0000

I actually considered the same thing Ginger. At the moment, no, it’s not a collaborative thing. It would be nice it if was, since the book I’m writing is actually a collaborative work with someone else who is geographically remote from me.

The process we are using is that he wrote some things as draft ideas and sent them to me, and I’m massaging them into a basic book form. We did actually start this process using Google Docs, but I must admit I found the GDocs interface just a little slow and clunky for managing such a lot of text that was broken up into chunks like this. I like the Living in the Cloud idea, but there is no doubt that when you’re working with large amounts of text that are sitting into small chunks, having an actual application that runs from your hard drive is hard to beat for speed and convenience. I actually pulled all our text down from GDocs and put it into Scrivener to work on.

Once we get the main chapter structures written (and this is what I’m finding Scrivener so useful for), we will be putting the mostly-complete chapters into Google Docs again to collaborate on the finishing touches.

But yes, a collaborative version of Scriv would be great…

By: GingerTPLC

GingerTPLC — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:55:32 +0000

hhmmm. This looks nice. However, I wonder if Scrivner would ever consider making this multiple-user friendly, such as Google Docs. I’m co-writing a piece in Google Docs and yes, we do have different chapters in several different files. It’s not nice, since I like to be a whole-picture type of girl. But I do need for other people to have access to this work too.

There’s never a perfect tool; when we experience one, we want more and better. Such is competition and improvement!

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:09:27 +0000

I should add too, that I’m still using the 30 day free trial of Scrivener but will certainly be buying it. At $39.95 with a 12.5% discount for teachers, and a home-based site licence to use on every Mac in the house, it’s a bargain! (I know I probably sound like a bit of a fanboy for Scrivener, so I should probably add that I have no financial interest whatsoever in the product… I just really like what I’m seeing with it.)