"side by side" chapter or scene revisions

[anko roze]

hello again.

 

one of my ways of working is to have multiple drafts or revisions of one scene or chapter, which i then compare and blend the best parts or approaches of into a 'working draft'.

 

it would be nice for this purpose if it were possible to be able to have multiple drafts of a scene or chapter live 'side by side', at the same level, in the same storyist manuscript structure.

 

what i'm thinking of is being able to have versions 1, 2 and 3 of a scene for instance, living on the same level in the manuscript and being able to _literally_ compare and review them side by side in two document views. then i can 'bless' the 'working' version while keeping the others on hand for future reference. the working version of the manuscript would comprise the blessed/working versions of each scene or chapter.

 

this would be a very useful functionality (for me). can anyone suggest a way of accomplishing this in storyist?

 

thanks,

anko.

[marguerite]

hello again.

 

one of my ways of working is to have multiple drafts or revisions of one scene or chapter, which i then compare and blend the best parts or approaches of into a 'working draft'.

 

it would be nice for this purpose if it were possible to be able to have multiple drafts of a scene or chapter live 'side by side', at the same level, in the same storyist manuscript structure.

 

what i'm thinking of is being able to have versions 1, 2 and 3 of a scene for instance, living on the same level in the manuscript and being able to _literally_ compare and review them side by side in two document views. then i can 'bless' the 'working' version while keeping the others on hand for future reference. the working version of the manuscript would comprise the blessed/working versions of each scene or chapter.

 

this would be a very useful functionality (for me). can anyone suggest a way of accomplishing this in storyist?

 

thanks,

anko.

Hi, Anko:

There are several ways, each with its own pluses and minuses. Here are some suggestions:

1. Set up multiple manuscripts within one project. Version 1, Version 2, Version 3, etc.

I do this during editing or when i want to nuke a scene from my active manuscript but think I may need it later.

To get a scene from one manuscript to the other, use copy/paste. Usually Storyist remembers the section name, although not always.

Advantage: you can display the two scenes side by side in different windows.

Disadvantage: you can't (yet) drag from one ms to another, so moving the scenes is a bit clunky.

 

2. Use Storyist's Back Up feature (File > Back Up). That creates a snapshot of your file at a given moment in time, and you can open both files (File > Backups > Open Copy) and compare them.

Advantage: no copy/paste.

Disadvantage: although you can arrange both files on the screen, they don't take advantqge of the program's multiple windows.

 

3. Create multiple versions within the same ms. Say, chapter 1, chapter 1a, and so on.

Advantages: you can see both versions side by side in multiple windows and drag and drop the scenes.

Disadvantage: you soon have an enormous ms, and if you print the thing, you have to specify every time which pages you want to print, plus word count is meaningless, since it counts all the versions.

 

That should get you started, at least. Someone else may have a more elegant solution.

Best,

Marguerite

[anko roze]

Hi, Anko:

There are several ways, each with its own pluses and minuses. Here are some suggestions:

1. Set up multiple manuscripts within one project. Version 1, Version 2, Version 3, etc.

I do this during editing or when i want to nuke a scene from my active manuscript but think I may need it later.

To get a scene from one manuscript to the other, use copy/paste. Usually Storyist remembers the section name, although not always.

Advantage: you can display the two scenes side by side in different windows.

Disadvantage: you can't (yet) drag from one ms to another, so moving the scenes is a bit clunky.

 

2. Use Storyist's Back Up feature (File > Back Up). That creates a snapshot of your file at a given moment in time, and you can open both files (File > Backups > Open Copy) and compare them.

Advantage: no copy/paste.

Disadvantage: although you can arrange both files on the screen, they don't take advantqge of the program's multiple windows.

 

3. Create multiple versions within the same ms. Say, chapter 1, chapter 1a, and so on.

Advantages: you can see both versions side by side in multiple windows and drag and drop the scenes.

Disadvantage: you soon have an enormous ms, and if you print the thing, you have to specify every time which pages you want to print, plus word count is meaningless, since it counts all the versions.

 

That should get you started, at least. Someone else may have a more elegant solution.

Best,

Marguerite

 

thanks Marguerite.

 

ideas 1. and 3. are the two that had occurred to me, since i haven't explored the backup feature yet.

 

idea 1. seems the most obvious way to do it using storyist's multiple manuscript support, keeping a 'blesssed'/working/main manuscript and splitting off others for versions. it's great that you can compare side by side using this method too, but it's most counter-intuitive that you can't drag and drop between versions if you use this approach. this is a major reason why i started the other thread here asking if drag and drop between manuscripts is on the drawing board.

 

idea 3. is close to how i was doing it before, along with a mixture of single chapter and scene files. the problems with printing etc. are big drawbacks here. if storyist had built in 'knowledge' of multiple revisions per scene, and a way of maintaining the 'blessed' sequence of scenes or chapters as an entity, as the known 'working' manuscript text, then this way of achieving what i want using storyist would also work.

 

idea 2. is interesting, more though i thing for 'freezing' historical versions for reference.

 

- anko