From Drafts 5 to Scrivener?

1

Has anyone developed, is developing, or is thinking about developing an action that posts a draft to a Scrivener project?

2 Likes
2

You probably want to take a look at this topic.

3

Hi,
There are two ways I have integrated Drafts 5 with Scrivener.

  1. If you put your scratchpad on Dropbox you can use the Drafts Dropbox action to post notes to your Scratchpad
  2. Sync your Scrivener project to an external file where destination is on Dropbox (do this first as initial sync wipes everything in the destination folder you choose). Like (1), you can post from Drafts to this folder using the Dropbox action and these “documents” will show up in your binder when you sync with external file in Scrivener.

Both 1 and 2 are text only. I use txt extension as I am one of those nerds that tends to use markdown as default writing style

Alternative to Dropbox for (1) is to put scratchpad on iCloud folder for Drafts 5 in “Draft”. I have not tried this. Disadvantage would be everything in Drafts then shows in scratchpad which you probably don’t want.

4

Drafts doesn’t store drafts in files, but rather in a database. Therefore I wouldn’t expect everything in Drafts to show up in Scrivener’s scratch pad.

5

Hi all,

I’m new to Drafts and am very excited about integrating it with Scrivener.

Using the Drafts Dropbox action to add notes to the Scrivener Scratchpad works great! After synching, when I open Scrivener, the updated Scratchpad entries are already there. Perfect.

Now, does anyone have a suggestion for doing the reverse? That is, viewing the Scrivener Scratchpad within Drafts?

I would like to create a Drafts action to show me the Scrivener Scratchpad, similar to how I would see it in Scrivener. That is:

  1. read the file list of the Scrivener Scratchpad from Dropbox (i.e., just the file list, with correct links to each file).

  2. create a new Draft, with a list of the Scratchpad files. Ideally, the new Draft would have a title something like “Scrivener Scratchpad [[date]]”. And ideally, would be autopopulated with tags like #scrivener, #scratchpad, dropbox, etc.

  3. Ideally, each entry in the list should be formatted as a link that I can click to load the original file from the Scratchpad.

Any ideas to get me started, please?

I am not very familiar with Drafts actions, Apple Shortcuts, or Javascript, although I’m familiar with coding in general.

Cheers,
Matt

6

This is actually quite a different request to the original (it is the opposite sort of flow), so do think in future about posting a new topic. You can alway include a link back to any related topics.

You would have to import each file effectively creating a snapshot of the files in Drafts - Drafts does not work directly with files in the file system.

You could use wiki style cross-linking to link from your index draft to each Scratchpad file draft. But you could also just have a workspace that you use to review the Scratchpad entries and use the draft list as you index draft. If the index is never to be manually modified with additional content then I would go the workspace route.

You might also want to archive prior Scratchpad drafts as part of your import process just to keep everything current and clean.

You would need a (Java)script-based action to do this, or you could use Shortcuts to build everything in Drafts)and you can even call that from an action in Drafts with a non-scripting step. Shortcuts is easier to get started with, but if you have programming experience (depending upon the language), JavaScript might well appeal. I would suggest spending a few hours learning a bit of both and then decide on your tool of choice. If you get stuck, then we can all pitch in and help.

Hope that helps.

7

@sylumer:

Thank you. That was indeed a helpful starting point. Also, apologies for reawakening a 5 year old dead topic. I’ve started a new one here, with a link back to this one.

Cheers,

Matt