I’m a new user, and while I’m genuinely impressed with the overall concept and design, the editor seems quite buggy—at least on Windows. Perhaps it’s primarily built for Mac?
1. Style selection issues
Sometimes selecting a style has no visible effect. The text stays unchanged, and the font size doesn’t update. I often have to manually adjust the font size and spacing to match the chosen style (e.g., Heading 1). Restarting the app occasionally helps, but the issue usually returns after a few minutes.
2. Style application affects multiple lines
When I apply a style to a selected line, it sometimes changes the formatting of the lines below as well. This typically happens when I have a heading followed by a paragraph, and I update the heading’s style. I’ve tried inserting empty lines with No style between sections, but both the heading and the following text still often change, for example, to Heading 2.
3. Style dropdown behavior
The style dropdown doesn’t behave as expected on Windows. After clicking and releasing the mouse, the dropdown immediately closes instead of staying open, forcing me to click, hold, and drag to make a selection. This feels like Mac behavior rather than standard Windows interface logic.
4. Undo moves caret to top
Pressing Ctrl+Z to undo an action scrolls the caret to the top of the document instead of keeping it at the position where I was editing.
For number 3 at least. You select the text you wish to change and then go to the dropdown menu to change the font/style/etc.
You are right if you select part of a paragraph and change the font/style, then the whole paragraph is effected. If you hit enter to separate the lines and apply the change, then delete the space and you can adjoin two different styles.
No style in Scrivener equals default style either chosen by the project settings in place, or decisions you make to choose another default style.
Styles are designed to be applied to small sections of text, with the majority being default style which can be adjusted at the time of compiling.
It is short descriptions and no video. I didn’t think it was necessary to describe in more detail how this works because this is very basic functionality and ougth work if I’ve not missed something, although it may be that the Windows version is relatively new. Is it? How long has it been available on Windows?
Nbr 3 refers to the dropdown behavior—perhaps you were thinking of something else. I’ve been working with paragraphs and styles in various applications for many years, so this functionality is very familiar to me.
I don’t see anything in your reply that is uncommon. The reason I reported these as bugs is simply that they do not work as expected.
I also notice that you seem to be using an older version than I am on Windows. It’s possible that these issues were introduced in version 3.1.6.
I’ve never encountered that problem specifically, but it’s worth noting that styles do not have to set font size. There is in fact a checkbox that specifically excludes font size from what it modifies.
Styles in general are different in Scrivener. I recommend reading Think Different, in the user manual PDF, toward the beginning of Chapter 17 in the user manual PDF.
That said, given the weird restart behaviour you describe, I would try copying the text that is exhibiting this, and using Edit ▸ Paste and Match Style in a new binder item, to see if the problem persists. That will paste as though passing the text through Notepad.exe, cleans out any formatting gremlins.
I’ve never seen that happen either, at least not unless it’s intentional: i.e. it’s not actually multiple paragraphs, but one paragraph with multipe lines within it, as inserted with line feeds. Check View ▸ Text Editing ▸ Invisibles for ⏎ vs ¶ symbols.
That is most certainly not Mac behaviour, nor Windows behaviour, nor Linux behaviour! While click-drag-release menu action is something every operating system and software should support, as it is more ergonomic, it is not something that should ever be enforced in my opinion! It’s a bug that has been around for a long time.
By the way, I use the shortcut for Format ▸ Style ▸ Show Styles Menu instead. To me that is easier to use, and I can hide the Format Bar which I rarely use anyway, reducing screen clutter. Note with that up, you can type first-letters to jump to style names, and punch Enter to apply.
No, it’s an entirely separate coding effort, in another language and framework (C++/Qt vs Obj-C/Cocoa). But it is a project that was plagued by many years of rushed development and an “85% done good-move-on-go-next” tactic. We’re still recovering, and will be for a long time.
I’m not sure why I got an email notification of a new post in this thread, given that it looks like a new one that I never posted in. But since I’m here and read the thread, I’ll just say, as a long time daily user of Scrivener for Windows, that reading this……
That would be because I linked to your post, in one of those points above. It lets you know when others refer to stuff you’ve contributed.
…. elicits in me a renewed sense of “Alas….”
Us too! We just have to power through it. This undo bug might get fixed sooner than later though, is it also impacts the upcoming new program. We’re merging fixes back into Scrivener as we can.
While click-drag-release menu action is something every operating system and software should support, as it is more ergonomic, it is not something that should ever be enforced in my opinion! It’s