Textmate vs Scrivener for blogging
I’ve been using using Textmate to write my blogs on my Macbook Pro but I’m considering using Scrivener instead.
I love the automation the blogging bundle and the way it lets me add the categories to this WordPress blog right in the text editor. I can also drag a picture into the editing window and it transforms it into proper HTML and uploads the photo to my blog.
Textmate is also a bit clinical. It was written for programmers and I’m a writer, which brings me to Scrivener.
Scrivener provides a stark canvas for creating my posts. It makes me feel more creative and takes away all of the distractions from my desktop. It also keeps all of my blog posts collected in one database, something a program like Writeroom or Textmate can’t do (although I do collect them all in one folder in Pathfinder).
What Scrivener gives me in writing environment, it strips away in Internet functionality. What to do?!
For now, I’m going to give Scrivener a whirl. That will mean writing my posts here then opening a browser, going to wordpress.com, copying and pasting the content, selecting the categories and clicking the good ‘ol publish button instead of a handy collection of cherished keyboard shortcuts.
I’m hoping the change will improve the quality of my writing at the cost of a little virtual elbow grease in the posting process. We’ll see how it goes and I’ll report back later…
How did you find Scrivener for blogging?
For actually cranking out tons of writing for the reasons mentioned above but I still fall for the automation that comes with TextMate and the blogging bundle. Supersweet!
It’s what I’m using now and doubt I’ll stray far from it ever again. I always come back to it.
Why don’t you marry the two approaches. I use both Scrivener and TextMate. TextMate has a bundle that allows you to install “Edit in TextMate” to any application as an InputManager. In Scrivener, you can activate editing the content in TextMate with a keystroke. Then use the Blogging bundle to modify your post and send it to your blog. Save the file and you’ll have those changes (the post id, post url, etc) in your original Scrivener document.
Kim,
I believe that may be a brilliant idea! I’ll take a look at that. There is something that intrigues me about the simplicity of my current system – a folder of text files sorted by date.
Thanks for the tip!