swartzfeger wrote:Scrivener […] Even with no text in the main doc view it feels slow. I can't imagine what it would feel like with 100K or 200k words.
I just crammed Scrivener full with long text documents that I downloaded from Gutenberg (long novels), over one million words. Scrolling was no problem; it was as snappy as ever!
Nisus -- I downloaded a demo after not using it for probably 15+ years. It crashed after spending a few minutes in the preferences (not a good sign).
Considering the fact that Scrivener feels slow by you and Nisus crashes, it may be something at your end that is not in order. I would run Disk Utility and see if your disk is working properly. Also, this could point to a problem with the system's sandboxing security features. Some files (and folders) need to be given new access permissions. I have never encountered this problem, but I have read about it in the Nisus forum. You should try again (in the preferences), and if it happens again, tell me what you were doing at the time, or ask in the Nisus forum <
https://nisus.com/forum/>.
But the statistics in a separate pane, and only a separate pane, is a deal breaker for me.
It is very easy in Nisus to extract all the statistical data
you want and place it with a macro wherever you want. As an example, you can put those data automatically on the Clipboard, and you can have them written into your document with attributes that really stand out, so that your eyes can spot them immediately. The only limit here is your imagination.
I often just press a key combination and let Nisus insert the number of words I have written so far at the end of the text. I have it inserted in the form [/2109/]. Thus I can immediately see that I have written 2109 words at a particular section in the document. You can, of course, also include the character count or how many words you still need to write to reach your goal. And with another key combination I can make all statistical data disappear from the document, if I don't want them anymore.
Of course you don't have to put the statistical data at the end of the text; you can have it inserted where your insertion point is, or wherever you want (after each chapter, after every 10th paragraph, etc. etc). — Believe me, there is hardly anything you can't do with Nisus. If you run into difficulties, ask in the Nisus forum <
https://nisus.com/forum/>
Additionally, it puts 8 or 9 icons in the bottom status bar that I don't want or need and that I can't get rid of.
You will appreciate those tiny icons when you start working with Nisus. They give you, among other things, an easy access to your character and paragraph styles. Character attributes can be selected or removed; you can quickly find all text with certain attributes, etc. It's a big time saving for writers. Very useful. You can also change footnotes to endnotes there, and vice versa. Very convenient too.
When I write (fiction), I'm ripping through a few thousand words a session and I get a sort of 'tunnel vision' -- my main focus is on the page, not on the sides or periphery. If my eyes are flicking to the left or right to check word count, I jar myself out of rhythm. I want something clean, front and center, and not a pane floating off to the side.
You should have said that right at the beginning. This explains the idiosyncrasy.
If you tear off the small Statistics palette in Nisus and place it *
on* the bottom status bar, it will come pretty close to what you are looking for. It will show you the number of characters, words and paragraphs. It's very small, always resides on the bottom status bar and won't interfere with your 'tunnel vision'.
Just out of curiosity, why are you “ripping through a few thousand words a session” to get this tunnel vision? Most writers use the Navigator in Nisus and the Outline in Mellel to quickly move around in long documents.