Apologies, in the midst of a crucial compile, hence posting three times (so far !
I’m not sure whether what I’m experiencing is a bug, my own confusion or a wish (in which case, I’ll repost this in the wish list).
I have a saved compile preset called MSWord which I’m tweaking so that my MS formats correctly for Word. Every time I make a change to the preset that I want to keep (and this is a LOT right now), I have to go into the Manage Compile Format Presets pane, locate my MSWord preset, click Update, click OK to override and click OK again to exit. It’s really convoluted when you’re making a lot of changes and tweaks.
I went to the Wish List to see if anyone else had asked for a Save Compile Preset button and lo and behold, AmberV is there saying, “In the Compile window, hold down the Option key to convert the Cancel/Compile buttons into Reset/Save buttons. Clicking Save will do exactly what you want.”
But I’m confused as to what I’m saving here. This only seems to work for the Custom compile preset. It doesn’t work for the currently loaded compile preset, which in my case is my previously created MSWord preset.
Is that a bug? Should it, when you click save, save the changes to the currently loaded preset? Because it doesn’t.
Also, the Save option then closes the dialogue box. Which means, even if the save button did work the way I want it to, after I’ve tweaked my preset and clicked to save it, I have to go back and compile again. What would be really nice is when you hit the Compile button, a dialogue box appears that says, “You have made changes to Compile Preset MSWord, do you want to save these changes.” Simples!
A preset is something separate from a thing that is applied to that thing and changes it in preset ways. That is nearly always the case, and definitely how we use the word in Scrivener, for example a Formatting Preset is separate from the text it is applied to. Presets are not compile settings, they are settings that influence your compile settings. As for those, well as mentioned in the manual, those are saved as you use them. There is absolutely no need at all to repeatedly update a preset just because you changed your compile settings, until you’re at a point where you’re done tweaking your settings and wish to save them for future application to other projects, or as a way of restoring your settings in this project after radically changing them (e.g. selecting another preset to print out a proof copy).
For more information, see §24.4, Compiling and Saving Settings, starting on page 361 of the user manual PDF.
So yeah, that’s why all of this is really clumsy and awkward, that is in fact by design. This isn’t supposed to be something you do fifteen times a day, more like fifteen times in total, if that.
Yes, I should have gone straight to the manual!!! DOH!!! Naughty Naughty!!! I had it fixed in my mind that I knew how it “should” be working!!
I keep selecting my MSWord preset every time I open the compile box instead of sticking to the Custom preset where all my tweaks have been stored with the project. That makes sense now. I should go on tweaking this Custom preset my 15-20 times and only save it as my MSWord compile preset when I’m tweaked out and happy!!
Oh I hardly meant to imply you should read the manual before asking a question, but if you wish to read a bit more about the system, there is the explanation.
Yeah, it’s more like a Word stylesheet in that regard, if you make a change to the stylesheet in a .docx it becomes a part of the document and is no longer like the stylesheet it started from—it is custom. You wouldn’t ever have to save a new stylesheet to the Word library unless you wanted to use that custom stylesheet for other documents, or if you wanted to experiment on the document without losing your work.
No, but we should read the manual first to see if our question is answered there. I think, after you’ve been using Scrivener for a while, you think you understand it and don’t need the manual any more. So I usually look through the forum and post if I don’t find my answer there.
Thanks for your time Amber, it all makes sense now I realise the changes to the compile are saved with the document.
!