What advantage is there to having one application manage different kinds of data? I’ve tried and given up on various kinds of shoebox applications before, in favor of just relying on the Finder and searching. I have also long been in favor of the Mac/Unix approach of using many narrowly focused applications, rather than big behemoths. Why is Scrivener an exception to this? I mean, why do I need a program other than Preview for PDFs? How is having a Scrivener project better than just having a project folder?

I am not trying to be combative—- I really want to fall in love with something like Scrivener, if only I can get over my hangups.

And how good is it at legal/academic writing, which relies very heavily on footnotes that must be formatted just so? And does it export to Word with styles?