However, I’m not sure that i would be a very good fit for the type of writing that I typically do (long, boring academic stuff). For that, I tend to prefer LaTeX and LyX, which is why I’m still slowly working on LyX-Outline.

To answer your previous question, I’m still working on it, but it is progressing slowly. My highest priority at the moment is to finish a book that I’m writing. As soon as that is finished, I have to wrap-up a study for publication. Once that is out of the way, then I intend to dive into LyX-Outline with a passion.

I thought it might be interesting to know that there is another project underway marrying Scrivener with Word.

http://writingoutliner.com/

How are you? And how is the project? I might be missing the news, but it seems there aren’t any.

Thank you very much for the interest. I’m glad that it looks useful.

Like you say, this version of LyX-Outline is largely a proof of concept. I wanted to show myself and others that a Scrivener type program could be put together with Qt. Currently, I’m in the process porting over the foundation code from the python into the real version of LyX. Since last week, I’ve made some promising (if slow) progress. In order to support two-way editing of documents, I’ve needed to make some extensive changes to the underlying model used for the table of contents in LyX. This has resulted in instability and I need to work the bugs out before proceeding.

However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t take advantage of LaTeX/LyX to write in Scrivener. The secret is to use of a syntax called multi-markdown that can be used to export to XHTML or LaTeX:

http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/using_multimarkdown_with_scriv/

You write your document in Scrivener using the multi-markdown syntax. When complete, you export to LaTeX. LyX has an excellent LaTeX import function. You then finalize your draft in LyX and create your final PDF. For creative things, I’ve found it to be a dream. Even better, it doesn’t require any scripts or computer black magic.

It doesn’t work so well for academic type documents though. They come with too many riders. (Footnotes, endnotes, citations, tables, figures, etc.) For academic or professional writing, I’m much more productive using LyX from the outset.

Hope this is of some help.

Rob

fascinating. Thank you. A question: for the likes of me – a person who is already in the early middle parts of a Scrivener based project – any ideas, as your project matures, on getting partial or completed manuscripts out Scrivener and into Lyx-Outline? Would that work?

How might it work, would it be an easy or a difficult proposition? Any ideas? Could one instruct Lyx-Outline to simply import in some sort of format? Or would one have to do it by hand – copy-pasting and using the tools of Lyx-Outline segment by segment as one goes? Is this territory you have entertained?

I hope the question is not naive. Writing of software and scripts is rocket science for me. But the thought of having a document processor available in a Scrivener-similar context sounds like heaven. Good luck.

Jyri

Cheers,
Sybill

Here’s the current state of development: all of the special views (corkboard, outliner, etc.) have been ported to C++ and work with the existing LyX document system. However, editing only happens one way (from the main document to the views). You can move things around and change the level of outline items (which is two way), but you can’t make an edit in the special view and have it updated in the document. To support two way interchange of information requires that I completely rewrite the LyX model system. But since so many things rely on that model, I have to be very careful in doing so. The idea is to make LyX better, not break it completely ;0)

I’ve been keeping a list of people who are interested in updates and in serving as beta testers when LyX-Outline does become available. If you want to shoot me an e-mail at LyX-Devel at oak-tree.us with your contact information, I would be happy to add you to the list.

Is there a way to download latest snapshots of LyX-Outline, or at least to know current dev/release roadmap? That would help a lot to ease a Scrivener-related frustration of a certain Windows user.

Things are going well. I’ve spent much of the past six weeks working on the code that coordinates what the computer sees versus what the humans see (it’s called a model). This will make it possible for edits in the corkboard and Outliner to change the underlying document. At present, it only shows what the underlying document looks like.

I’m not the world’s best C++ programmer, so it has been very slow going. But, once it’s finished, things will go very quickly since I’ve already got the corkboard up and working (with drag and drop!). Then I’ll just need to write the outliner.

Once I have a barebones version, I am going to start making custom builds available for testing purposes. I hope to have that done by late August. Any interest in being a tester?

Cheers,

Rob