I ran across Scrivener the other day by total accident. It's a program for writing long-format books, primarily novels, dramas, etc., but it can be used in a variety of applications.
What it does is it allows you to organize information into chapters (folder) and scenes (pages), and each chapter and each scene can be represented by an index card on a virtual corkboard, so you can organize the entries however you want.
So if you're writing a story, you can write "The chapter where Bob gets a haircut," with as many scenes in it as you want. A scene where Bob decides to go out and get a haircut. A scene where he tells Mary he's taking the car to get a haircut. A scene where he's ACTUALLY GETTING HIS HAIR CUT.
You can manipulate scenes/chapters however you like. Scenes can be one sentence, or 100 pages. Whatever you want. They'll display all as one chapter, or you can hide scenes from the display. (It's tweakable.)
I saw it, and I thought that it looks like it might be a great way to organize all of my Japanese grammar notes. I like creating study notebooks and outlining as I review, and this looks much less tedious. (I think. No idea how it'll work in practice.) What I really want is that one go-to personal resource that tells me what *I* want/need to know, and what helps me keep things straight, so I don't wind up looking up the same crap over and over and over again.
Naturally, what I need, and what someone else needs are probably going to be different.
The idea I'm kicking around is, for example, to create a chapter for や否や (or any other grammar point I may want to polish up). Scene 1 could be the explanations I have for how it works, what it means, and how to construct it. Scene 2 might be a few example sentences. Scene 3, however, would be where I practice writing my own sentences using it, and figure out how to use/differentiate it from, say, なり or が早いか.
What's also cool about Scrivener is that you can select whatever you want, however you want, and print it out as a paper book, PDF, RTF, text file, or whatever.
It's on sale, too, until Sunday, I think. Mac and PC. The PC version is a little bit behind, but the author is getting it close to caught up to the Mac version. I have the PC version, and it's fine.
I already picked up a copy, because I plan on using it for other things as well.
And yes, I know, I could just Anki it. But I want to try something different for a change, something that involves me writing out things and working it out in my brain, rather than simply reacting to flashcards like a rat in a box hitting a lever to get a food pellet.
Sale (50% off):
https://store.boingboing.net/sales/scrivener-2
Program:
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
A good 1.5 hour bootcamp on using it, aimed at authors, done by a NYT best-selling author:
What it does is it allows you to organize information into chapters (folder) and scenes (pages), and each chapter and each scene can be represented by an index card on a virtual corkboard, so you can organize the entries however you want.
So if you're writing a story, you can write "The chapter where Bob gets a haircut," with as many scenes in it as you want. A scene where Bob decides to go out and get a haircut. A scene where he tells Mary he's taking the car to get a haircut. A scene where he's ACTUALLY GETTING HIS HAIR CUT.
You can manipulate scenes/chapters however you like. Scenes can be one sentence, or 100 pages. Whatever you want. They'll display all as one chapter, or you can hide scenes from the display. (It's tweakable.)
I saw it, and I thought that it looks like it might be a great way to organize all of my Japanese grammar notes. I like creating study notebooks and outlining as I review, and this looks much less tedious. (I think. No idea how it'll work in practice.) What I really want is that one go-to personal resource that tells me what *I* want/need to know, and what helps me keep things straight, so I don't wind up looking up the same crap over and over and over again.
Naturally, what I need, and what someone else needs are probably going to be different.
The idea I'm kicking around is, for example, to create a chapter for や否や (or any other grammar point I may want to polish up). Scene 1 could be the explanations I have for how it works, what it means, and how to construct it. Scene 2 might be a few example sentences. Scene 3, however, would be where I practice writing my own sentences using it, and figure out how to use/differentiate it from, say, なり or が早いか.
What's also cool about Scrivener is that you can select whatever you want, however you want, and print it out as a paper book, PDF, RTF, text file, or whatever.
It's on sale, too, until Sunday, I think. Mac and PC. The PC version is a little bit behind, but the author is getting it close to caught up to the Mac version. I have the PC version, and it's fine.
I already picked up a copy, because I plan on using it for other things as well.
And yes, I know, I could just Anki it. But I want to try something different for a change, something that involves me writing out things and working it out in my brain, rather than simply reacting to flashcards like a rat in a box hitting a lever to get a food pellet.
Sale (50% off):
https://store.boingboing.net/sales/scrivener-2
Program:
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
A good 1.5 hour bootcamp on using it, aimed at authors, done by a NYT best-selling author:
Edited: 2015-10-16, 2:08 pm
