Clear Way to Export Scrivener file to InDesign?

[AntoniDol]

I do the exact same thing. If Scrivener could Compile to IDML, I would consider that workflow, but for now docx or rtf to InDesign works fine for me.

[gr]

@kewms

how hard is it to update an InDesign document as the underlying Word (or other) document changes?

You can place a Word document in inDesign in such a way that inDesign continues to reference the source, so if you update the Word doc, the inDesign doc updates accordingly. This is exactly how placing images works standardly. I think you probably would have to not fidget with the text in inDesign for this to work well.

[[Disclosure: I do not use this facility, I just know it is there. I just drop Word docs into my inDesign doc which simply imports the doc.]]

[gr]

@Ramora, I use a Scrivener-to-inDesign workflow regularly. I have Scrivener produce a .docx file and that gets dropped into inDesign. A lot of work is done using the following: You can set Scrivener so that defined paragraph and character style tags are preserved in the compiled Word output. When you drop a Word doc into an inDesign doc, inDesign takes note of what has defined styles applied to it. Now – and this is the magic – if the inDesign doc already has styles with the same names as the incoming, it will (or can be set to) use its definition of the style to style the text. So, you can define styles in Scrivener – these can be stylistically perfunctory in Scriv, because only their name matters in the end – and use the sophisticated styling ability of inDesign to give those things their real look.

As I say, you can also make inDesign stay attached to the source Word doc, so changes to that will update the inDesign document.

[ehbowen]

Turning to the team here for assistance: For a book project, I’m needing to go from Scrivener to Scribus (preferably, or possibly Affinity). My problem is that the author wants graphic separators between sections of text:

The actual pictures and such are few enough that I don’t have a problem putting those in manually, but I’d like to see if there’s a way of automating or at least minimizing the amount of manual work I need to do to put these in. Suggestions?

[gr]

1. Smart money is to identify a publisher’s flourish in a dingbat font you have that is acceptable to the client. Then you can just type the darn thing and make sure your compile respects the special font of those break paragraphs. (Or maybe use custom separators between sections ) Having a dingbat instead of an image, will of course mean that the flourish will be just as typographically crisp as your text.

2. If you must use an image, you might really want your page layout program to reference the source image itself, rather than putting the image into your Scrivener compile. As I don’t use Scribus or Affinity Publisher, I can’t advise on procedure there.

3. But if you do really want to get the image into the compiled output. Well, unfortunately, it looks like Scrivener’s custom separators between sections setting does not accept images, so it looks like you would have to … put each chapter into a folder, then split the chapter text into its intended sections. That is, there should be a document-break everywhere you will want the graphic separator. Then set up a document which just has a single line in it with the image as you want it to appear between sections. Now, the manual part: option-drag that document to place a copy between each of the text sections you created. Easier than just pasting the image paragraph everywhere? No. But this has the virtue of breaking the text up into what are being treated as logically distinct parts and making them visible in the Binder.

Maybe someone has a smart way to make compile insert the image. I can’t quite see how.

[ehbowen]

I’m trying the first one…by customizing a (free for commercial use) publicly available but incomplete (has empty glyphs) dingbat font. Still need to master the workflow of Inkscape and FontForge, though. When I get it done I should just be able to load the font into my computer and then update the group/chapter separators in Scrivener. Got to bear down and get 'er done, though.

[nontroppo]

Shouldn’t placeholders work in custom separators? I never use separators myself and my solution would probably use Pandoc but IIRC they should work…

Images and Text

<$img:imgName>
<$img:imgPath>
<$img:imgNameOrPath;w=x;h=y>
You can use the <$img…> placeholder to have images inserted into your text during Compile. This can be useful if you want to insert an image into a title prefix or suffix, if you want to keep images out of the text while writing, or if you want to include certain images only conditionally (you could use the “Replacements” pane of Compile to remove image placeholders for images you don’t want to appear in a particular Compile format, for instance).
Image placeholders support image documents that have been imported into the project - in which case you should use the name of the document on its own - or file paths to images on disk.

[gr]

Tested and confirmed that <$img:imgPath> does indeed work in the custom separator’s field. That’s nice to know!

ehbowen’s move to a typographic separator is still preferable, though, imho.

p.s. I generally typeset with two kinds of section breaks – little ones and big ones. The little breaks just get an empty line as separator. The big breaks do get a graphical break, but it is just two m-dashes (which appear as one in the typeface) cenetered. One can fancy that up quietly with a middot in the middle (or even two!), if the fancy strikes. This makes such decorated breaks super easy because the device is in the same font as the body text.

[e.calderon]

@farwest1

I’ve been working this afternoon on how I might do this. Seems like I can use a Word file as a kind of “dummy” or intermediary file that I might not even open. I can then link the Word file in InDesign. And when I make any changes in Scrivener, I’ll just save over the linked Word file. I haven’t really tested the process out in practice—may be great, may bomb. We’ll see.

Yes, this might be your best choice, if you want to do all the editing and pre-formatting in Scrivener.

The problem with this is that, if you have done extra formatting (adding other word or paragraph styles) to the InDesign document, you might lose those. But, if you set your word and paragraph styles from the getgo, and import your word document matching the styles you have in InDesign, ID will take over and repurpose the styles there.

[ehbowen]

I’m back.

I did get the separator font customized and it looks acceptable. However, Scrivener is outputting all of the text (to ODT) as POS52 Bold…not a good font. And the Scrivener styles do not seem to be coming through in the output. Suggestions?

Oh, one more thing…I’d like to use the separator at the end of each chapter, as well, but it’s not showing up. I’m still learning Compile, so it’s probably a very simple thing. Where should I insert my separator text (basically just www in my customized dingbat font) to get this to show up between the end of the text and the page break?