5 Oct 2010

On the perils of tweaking your workflow

With the announcement of Scrivener 2.0, I've started thinking about the tools I use for writing Quiet Babylon.

Scrivener is great, I've been using it for two years, but it's really not designed for people like me. Scrivener wants you to work with rich text formatting and I want to work in plain text with light HTML syntax. I am constantly fighting with Scrivener to strip formatting out of text that I paste in. On top of that, I've started using the iPad to write, so I'd love to not have to transfer text back and forth between apps. Scrivener promises Dropbox Syncing, but it seems weird and clunky compared to the "just works" syncing of apps like Notational Velocity/Simplenote.

Where I love Scrivener is in the document tree that allows me to easily move posts between folders to help me organize them. I have folders for early drafts, folders for active works in progress, folders for different writing projects, folders for completed posts. I would like to maintain the ability to easily order and search through hundreds of snippets.

I have a pretty good idea of what I want in a writing app. The problem is finding one that does this. Here's my wantlist:
  • Plain text native: I want it to strip out formatting when I paste in text, I want to only be working in plain text.
  • HTML syntax highlighting: for easier editing.
  • Project drawer/folder: some way of having metadata that lets me track the status of many drafts and snippets.
  • Works with files on the disk: When I move a file from folder to folder in the project drawer, I want that change reflected on the disk. I want to be able to have all of this in Dropbox and then to be able to use a dropbox-compatible iPad editor to read and edit the files. 
  • Allows me to re-order files in the project drawer: If I have a list of files, I should be able to change the order they appear in that list to suit my needs
  • Spellcheck.
  • Find/replace.
  • Works on a Mac
I spent several hours last night looking for something that matched this list, downloading reading documentation and messing around. No luck.

Scrivener wants you to work in RTF and uses a package format for the files, so no easy remote editing (there is a Dropbox sync feature coming, but it looks clunky and besides: the RTF thing). Ulysses uses plain text, but also hides everything in a package and doesn't highlight syntax. Textmate gives syntax highlighting, plain text and when you drag files between folders they move on the disk, but it doesn't allow you to change the order of files in the drawer list. BBedit gives the same stuff as Textmate, and it does let you drag and reorder files in the project drawer. However, those changes are virtual and when you drag files between folders, they aren't moved on the disk which results in weird duplications and confusion, which means it won't play well with the iPad, which is the whole point. MarsEdit offers great native blogging and previews of the post, but it doesn't play well with massive numbers of drafts as far as I can tell, let alone playing well with Dropbox etc.

So after many hours, all I've succeeded in doing it driving myself crazy. At this point unless there is something about BBedit that I am misunderstanding, it seems like Textmate is my best bet, except that I'll have to resort to adding numbers to the start of filenames to control the order which feels like something out of 1992.

Help?