As another part-time Scrivener user, I, too, would love to see a similar merge/split function implemented in Ulysses if it were possible. Although I can tolerate using good old copy & paste to manipulate text when necessary, a more efficient way of doing this would certainly be welcome, especially for large writing projects where I'm not entirely sure where I'm headed when I first begin, and will probably end up rearranging things somewhere down the road (as is often the case with fiction writing). To be honest, the lack of this feature is one of the few reasons why I still use Scrivener over Ulysses for some of my--usually longer and less well-planned--writing projects; otherwise, I much prefer Ulysses' elegant interface and distraction-free plain-text editing, which is big plus for a writer with a short attention span such as myself!

Split/merge or no, however, I love Ulysses all the same. As a writing app, it truly is one of a kind.

Many thanks for the thoughtful reply. It makes sense even with your son sleeping on your shoulder. (;

For the way I work (I won't speak for zerift), splitting is more important than merging. I might write five paragraphs in one document, afterwards splitting that document into five - so I can reorder the paragraphs without doing cumbersome cut-and-paste operations. The genius of writing applications like Ulysses and Scrivener is that they break the one-document-per-text paradigm that makes writing long pieces in Word or Pages such a pain.

To be more specific, I would like an easy way to split an open document at the cursor and save both. In Scrivener, you place the cursor where you want one document to end and the next to begin and choose Split at Selection from the menu (or hit its keyboard shortcut). Scrivener saves the document above the split under the existing name and names the new, after-the-split document by the same name with the added number 1. That new document appears in Scrivener's binder immediately below the above-the-split document.

In Ulysses, my imagined feature would work like this: Working in an open document whose tab is active, I would place the cursor where I want to split the document. Choosing a menu item (or hitting its keystroke) would cut everything below the split from the existing document and automatically paste it into a new document in a new tab. I could then re-sort these documents manually in the document browser.

Then again, the duplication feature you describe sounds intriguing and would allow a similar workflow. It sounds somewhat cumbersome for my purposes, but I haven't seen the implementation, of course. (;

I don't know if my idea fits the Ulysses way of doing things - a way I'm just learning. One reviewer comparing Scrivener and Ulysses suggested that Scrivener's "natural" unit is the scene while Ulysses's is the chapter. If so, then perhaps I work more "naturally" in Scrivener despite my attraction to Ulysses.

Whatever the case, their are worse fates than oscillating between two excellent writing applications on the Mac platform. (I could be shackled to Windows.)