I’ve been trying for a long time to work out whether it makes sense for me to use Scrivener, but so far I’ve always got stuck because I can’t answer some very simple questions.
Now I’ve come up against the problem again that you can’t apply style sheets to footnotes, which isn’t a problem for me when I’m writing, but it is if I want to compile the project into a Word file, for example. In that case, I need the footnotes to be formatted with styles (footnote markers, footnote text, etc.).
So far, I haven’t found any guidance on how to do this. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any indication of where in the manual this might be covered either. As my English is only mediocre, I don’t know which terms to search for. In short: I cannot figure out how to use footnotes in such a way that they are ultimately included in the Word file so that I can further process the text using a layout programme.
Maybe someone can help you with the standard Scrivener compile format option (i.e. direct to DOCX, I’ve never used it), you can change the footnote font generically:
But this is injected formatting, not styled.
For those who are open to using a Markdown compile route then this is trivial with Pandoc. Pandoc marks up DOCX footnotes styled with Footnote Reference and Footnote Text styles, and Pandoc also allows you to attach a template (Pandoc - Pandoc User’s Guide) with the styles edited as you want. It combines the template to your compiled document. Here is a docx straight from Scrivener where the Footnote reference is coloured pink and footnote text is italicised (see the styles panel to see it is styled text):
Pandoc creates a very well structured document, where styles do most of the formatting work. This workflow is different than a direct to DOCX in that the styling does not come from the compiler formatting directly, but by the compiler generating a structured document that can then be bound to Word styles. This may require quite a bit of rethinking how you compile, and is a bit more technical to set up…
I also thought the best solution was to export the files as Markdown, convert them using Pandoc, import them into Word, and never give Scrivener another thought.
Unfortunately, this fails because the Markdown export produces plain text files without any markup for headings etc. (though it does include footnotes). This means I have to re-enter all the formatting.
(The best solution is probably to type out the file from start to finish and use a programme that allows for further editing…)
Before offering a solution I do not use footnotes. But here goes. Create a small compile collection with a few sections including footnotes. Now open Compile and double click on the Compile Format designer. Go the the Footnotes tab. Here you can adjust the settings. I suggest right click on the Compile format you want to adjust and duplicate this and name it a version of, or give a name reflecting change you made. You can use the command Windows key + Shift + S to use the snip function in windows to take image of the changes you make in the footnote options (see below).
Thank you very much, but that’s not what I’m looking for. I need a way to export the project so that I can, for example, process it further in a layout programme. It’s not enough simply to specify the font for the footnotes during export; I need stylesheets for the footnotes so that I can easily change their appearance without having to select and format a few hundred instances individually.
My research so far seems to suggest that this option doesn’t exist. It strikes me as so ridiculous (not to say amateurish) that I still can’t believe it. But I’m afraid I’ll have to accept it.
So the question remains whether I can at least export my project in such a way that I can continue working on it in Ulysses before exporting it for layout creation. That doesn’t look promising either, but I’ll keep looking a little longer. (I very much hope I don’t fall off my chair in the process, because I find myself shaking my head in disbelief all too often…)
Nooooo, that is not what i mean — you should still write in Scrivener, take advantage of its structural tools. Use Scrivener’s styles, tables, footnote, lists as you want. BUT when it is time to compile (not export) you use the MMD compile format. This does the job of converting your manuscript, the heading levels, the tables, the lists, the footnotes, the images with captions, into correctly formed markdown. Scrivener can also automatically run pandoc for you, including the command line options to attach your Word template. You just hit compile, and get a well-formed DOCX that needs minimal post-compile tweaking.
Scrivener has several ways of working via markdown, outlined in the manual. We can help you with the details. What other formatting are you using?
Do not export; compile with post-processing, everything IS preserved. The screenshot from Word I showed you was directly from Scrivener without manual processing.
Scrivener remains the best solution, remember it is not sold as a layout tool, but a structured writing tool, yet with enough flexibility via the compiler that almost any technical document can be produced (by orchestrating post-processing workflows)
Thank you very much for giving it a go. It’s not your fault that there’s no solution for this simple task.
(Or maybe it is: there is one. I exported the project to Markdown as a test and converted it to Word format using Pandoc. The footnotes work via this workaround. However, all the chapter headings are then missing. I think this can be solved using Section Types, but the sections dealing with this are written in such a way that I wouldn’t understand any more of it if they were written in Chinese…)
To confirm using Scrivener’s nomenclature, you are “exporting” not “compiling”? Compiling is what @nontroppo and @GoalieDad were recommending and showing the way.
On my website I have a bunch of articles talking about compiling, structuring the novel for compiling section types with images to help. It is windows based but the process is close to the same in the Mac. The articles might help start with this one, Steps before compiling Part one — My Writing Journey
Here is an example from the manual concerning section types (p. 844):
At the most basic level (pun intended), if you want all folders to print a certain
way when compiling then click in the “Section Type” column to the right of the
“All folders” listing and choose the desired type from the dropdown menu (you’ll
find the Blank starter project already has a sensible assignment of “Heading” for
all folders).«
The questions are: What and whr re is the »Section Type« column? Where and what is »All Folders«? How has the Blank starter project Folders? And so on.
I suppose it’s not a problem for anyone who already knows this. But how can someone who doesn’t know find this out, given that they need the manual for precisely that reason?
It’s compiling. But I believe, it doesn’t matter. I’m too daft for this brilliant programme. So I’m going to give it a miss again, and this time for good.
I have since begun to suspect that the whole thing might be based on a major and serious misunderstanding on my part. I will therefore explain briefly and as concisely as possible what I want to do and for what purpose I intend to use Scrivener.
I am currently working on the translation of a relatively lengthy novel. I used Scrivener to write the text, and that went well. The text does not have many levels: there are simply 44 chapters, no volumes or other subdivisions.
Each chapter has a heading that is formatted accordingly; apart from that, there are paragraph styles for the epigraphs before each chapter and the explanatory footnotes, which are quite numerous. And here and there a few highlights in the form of words or sentences set in italics within the body text.
The time is now approaching when the text will be finished, so the layout phase is coming up. For this, I would like to compile this file in such a way that it is output as a Word file with the specified paragraph styles and the one character style, which I can then transfer into the layout programme.
It now seems to me that this final step is incredibly complex (and not particularly well explained in the manual). This raises the question of whether I am working with a tool that is completely unsuitable for my purposes. (That would explain why it has turned into such an obstacle course.)
Can anyone confirm this suspicion? I really appreciate the structured presentation of the text as I write, as well as the ability to add notes and comments that won’t appear in the final text without me having to hunt them all down and delete them individually. And so on… There are a few reasons that have prompted me to give Scrivener another go. But perhaps it was doomed to fail from the start?
Compiling to Word should preserve whatever styles you have assigned in the text.
Page 844 is all the way back in the Appendices, and specifically discusses the Project Settings pane. If that’s where you’re starting, I can see why you find it mystifying.
Very short intro to the Compile command:
Section Types define what an item in the Binder is: A chapter, a scene, whatever. See Section 7.6 of the manual for more information. Section Types can often be assigned automatically, based on the Binder hierarchy. (That’s what page 844 is talking about.)
Section Layouts define how an item looks. This is where the magic happens, as you can make your scenes look completely different without changing the underlying text.
A Compile Format is a collection of Section Layouts, plus some additional settings for pagination and so on. (See Chapter 24 for everything Compile Formats can do.)
The key step in compiling a manuscript is to tell Scrivener how the conceptual elements in your manuscript – the Section Types – should appear on the page, by assigning Layouts to them. (See Chapter 23.)
Styles generally pass straight through to the output document, unchanged.
»Compiling to Word should preserve whatever styles you have assigned in the text.«
That’s what I thought too. But that’s not the case. Incidentally, the formatting isn’t just lost when compiling for Word, but also for Markdown. Apparently there’s another setting that’s kept hidden from the user. Or perhaps the authors of the programme and the documentation believe it’s so obvious that there’s no need to mention it.
One of the help videos on compiling (the first of four I found) explains that if you simply compile your project using the default settings, you’ll end up with a file that looks exactly like the text in Scrivener. In my experience, this is definitely not the case. Apart from the issue with footnotes, all local formatting and character styles are simply ignored. This means, for example, that I have to go back and reformat all the sections I’ve formatted as ‘bold’ after compilation (i.e. in Word), otherwise they simply look exactly like the rest of the text. This is very tedious for a document of nearly 500 pages, not to mention that I don’t really understand why this character style exists if it disappears during compilation.
By the way: I’m just looking for a description of the complation process which is clearly understandable and explains claerly what to do. Something like: Opern the compmilation dialog and press »compile«, let the default settings untouched, press »compile« and you get what you see in the scrivener window doesn’t help. because it it nor true.
(Incidentally, I’m well aware that I’m entirely to blame for this mess, and I’m really annoyed with myself for using Scrivener for this massive project, even though I’ve found time and again that I can’t find my way through that jungle. I also know that Ulysses exists, but that doesn’t help me at the moment; I don’t want to have done a large part of my work on this project for nothing because I can’t convert the file to another file format without losing the formatting. But I’m afraid I’ll just have to accept it.)
— you should still write in Scrivener, take advantage of its structural tools. Use Scrivener’s styles, tables, footnote, lists as you want. BUT when it is time to compile (not export) you use the MMD compile format. This does the job of converting your manuscript, the heading levels, the tables, the lists, the footnotes, the images with captions, into correctly formed markdown. Scrivener can also automatically run pandoc for you, including the command line options to attach your Word template. You just hit compile, and get a well-formed DOCX that needs minimal post-compile tweaking.