One of the many blessings that Scrivener not only allows but promotes, is a structured flexibility that, by design, can lead a writer to challenge such a flexibility that Scrivener provides, turned limitation, to be expanded.
I experienced such a flexibility, turned limitation, with my own unique approach to Scrivener Styles that I discussed here some time ago.
It appears I’ve bumped against another flexibility, turned limitation, with the Scrivener Compile screen. The existing flexibility to select/deselect the chapters, sections, subsections, etc. to be included in the compile has become essential for this author.
Such flexibility to Compile has spawned a wishlist item from this Scrivener/LaTeX author for a possible extension to the existing flexibility. Such an extension would allow an additional degree of freedom in how we may quickly select/deselect the chapters, sections, subsections, etc. to be included in the Scrivener Compile.
In my case, the wish list for additional flexibility arose from a particular conundrum that I faced on the LaTeX side of my Scrivener/LaTeX community of code. With literally several hundred chapters, sections, and subsections in my project, it would help immensely if I could easily and rapidly select/deselect entire groups within the list of Binder items to compile, or not compile.
Given the rather limited bevy of Scrivener writers who use Scrivener with LaTeX, it is understandable that interest in the wishlist item may be limited or non-existent.
The wishlist idea for the Scrivener compile screen would consist of two parts.
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The first part would be to replace the binary checkmark selection alongside each Binder item on the Compile selection screen with a user-definable drop-down list. Such a drop-down selection list would allow the writer to group the Binder items on the Compile selection screen into categories of Compile items, which would then tie into the second part.
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The second part would be to create a separate (perhaps popup) screen that displays one line for each item in the same user-selectable list of items described in the first part, with a checkbox alongside each item in the list. A checkmark alongside an item in the second part would indicate that that particular user-selectable group of items should be included in the Scrivener Compile.
The wishlist item arose out of a need to diagnose a condition that occurs when typesetting a post-Scrivener LaTeX project file: a non-zero exit code. This is clearly NOT a Scrivener issue, but if the wishlist item I described were available, diagnosing such a non-zero exit code could be addressed in an order of magnitude less time than without.
Although my wishlist suggestion may, at an initial glance, may appear to have limited utility for the average non-LaTeX Scrivener writer, there may be some other utility not documented herein for such writers.
Thanks for reading,
scrive
