Let me add my praise of Scrievner to the others. I write, edit and publish books using InDesign. Until recently, I did almost all my work in ID because the alternatives (i.e. Word) seemed so much worse. But ID isn't designed for all the messiness and data/text management tasks that writing requires. Scrievner is. I won't say it's perfect, but it's as close as perfect as I've seen in a writing tool and, at version 1.03, it can't help but get better as it moves toward 2.0.

If you publish with LaTex, there are already some handy tools (using Markup) that'll let you control the final formatting from inside Scrievener. I'm hoping to develop ways to make it equally friendly with InDesign.

--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle

Speaking as a fiction writer, Scrivener is the best program I've found yet. It has a great full screen mode to let me pour out text, yet can shift gears to let me rearrange it into a coherent flow of story.

The split screen function lets you see two different documents and drag and drop text between them. I've always wanted to do that! And I've found it exports into Word without a lot of fiddling on my part. Once you have Word set up with your manuscript format, the text flows into it, and all you need add are your page breaks and numbering.

How impressed was I? It was the impetus for finally replacing my 366MHz iBook with a laptop that will run Tiger. I just had to combine my favorite hardware tool with my favorite software tool.

I feel it fits my writer's brain. I urge anyone who writes to give it a try.

Scrivener is a good program and a standout amongst the many "creative" wordprocessor/project managers (I've tried them all - from Ulysses to Avenir to Jer's Novel Writer to Z-Writer to CopyWrite to WriteRoom to Smultron and TextMate; steer clear of Supernotecard - too buggy and dreadful support) and combo wordprocessor/sketch-outline programs (like Curio, OmniGraffle, NoteTaker, VoodooPad, and NovaMind) and sui generis apps like Tinderbox, a uniquely powerful pluripotential program with an equally daunting learning curve.

But if you want a creative wordprocessor/organizer app, and if you are like many creative writers - at least I am such an one - then you are probably making connections with existing texts, pages of notes, web pages, snippets of information and images from your own personal toolbox. Which is why I do not use Scrivener any more but rather DEVONthink (I actually use DEVONthink Pro, DTP). At $39, DT is roughly the same price as Scrivener. Although DT is a few dollars more expensive than Scrivener, it is unfair to compare the two costs as the price of two wordprocessors since once you own DT, you have a lifelong, smart, scriptable repository of virtually infinite capacity (10,000 files for DT and much more for DTP) within which one can dump virtually any text format of any length (I've put entire books into DT), any web page format, any image format - and then later access, arrange, and cut and paste them into one's creative effort. (I have not done any screen writing so cannot attest to its use for such). Full screen editing is also a feature. If one wants multiple windows open and in a certain arrangement, a la Scrivener or Ulysses, one can open as many windows as one wants, place them in desired spots on screen, tick off "Open windows that were open on quit" in Preferences and they will open in same location you left them when you reopen DT. One of the many additional advantages of DT/DTP are the incredibly powerful search, classify, "see also" (for similar passages or items in database), and other properties of this unique program. And the word processing is clean and simple but all you'll want or need for writing most genres. There is also an accessory search program, DEVONagent, to complement DT/DTP. The user forum community and program admins are quite responsive, helpful and polite.

For smaller "quick and dirty" projects I prefer Smultron (donationware, with almost hourly upgrades) and TextMate, using its project feature (a little more pricy than Scrivener at 39 euros). The bad news is they have fewer bells and whistles than Scrivener. The good news is that they have fewer bells and whistles than Scrivener and are therefore, for me at least, much easier to use. (I find corkboard options in Scrivener cute but of no utility - clearly personal preference.) Smultron also sports split windows. And of course for writers/programmers - their primary audience - these two programs have many, many other features.

By the way, the best version-comparison app (since DocuComp in the old pre-OS X days!) I have found is Mariner Write, using the Window->Cleanup feature which allows one to tile many open files (in their own windows) horizontally or vertically, quite useful for texts in which the actual physical layout/appearance is important - in my case, sections of poems with word/line arrangement at stake.

Yes to both. I never use the corkboard (the binder and outliner are plenty without it), and recent versions of Scrivener allow you to set whatever background you want.