Compiling to PDF doesn't look like I told it to look

[CTBehr]

I’m 100% certain I’m being an idiot here, and I’m just getting confused with some of the incredible features of Scrivener.

Context: Agent I’m submitting to wants a PDF synopsis in Times New Roman, 12pt, double spaced, 30mm margins (A4 implied).

What I did: I created a Synopsis document in my Notes folder. I then used the Compile command to select a PDF output, and created a new Project Format for this project. I made sure the Scene text (which is what my Synopsis document is classified as as a Section Type) was selected, and then I double clicked and edited the Section Text, setting it as needed for this agent.

Note: I am ensuring the Compile panel applies only to the currently selected document, not my whole Manuscript. “Compile → Current Selection”

What went wrong: When I compile with this format, the PDF is completely wonky for spacing, margins, and layout. What should be no more than 1-2 pages is 4 pages. It’s as if it’s quadruple spaced, double the margins (particularly on the left hand side), and so on.

Workaround: If I just “Print” the currently selected document to PDF, having adjusted the Margins in the Scrivener flip-down of the macOS Page Setup panel, the PDF looks exactly as I want it to. I even took out a tape measure to make certain.

Part of my confusion may stem from the fact that the on-screen ruler has negative units, and 0 is not the left edge of the visible white page area, but about 50mm in from that visible edge. This may be normal, but it’s not resulting in a WYSIWYG experience for me.

I know I’m doing something wrong, but I’m not sure what. I even formatted the Synopsis as per the requirements I have, and unticked the box to override text formatting in Compile and still got the wrong looking result.

I suspect my problem is that I’m still missing some understanding on the relationship between on-screen formatting, compile formatting, and the various styles that could apply to elements of a document.

TL;DR: How do I ensure that one specific document in a Scrivener project outputs PDF so that there is a 30mm margin on both sides, is double spaced, and in a specific font?

Pointers appreciated!

[GoalieDad]

You can compile a single page by selecting current selection as you did and then edit the compile format by double clicking on the one you want to use.

Go to section layouts and choose your scene Section Layout (do you want a title)

To edit the formatting for this document you need to click inside the text in the formatting area. If you want special formatting, then check the box to override text and note formatting.

In this setting below override the normal formatting and make it appear the way you want.

Adjust paragraph indents (if you want)

Save and look at preview pane in the Compile Panel. In this example created with double spacing.

Compile your single document. I hope this helps

[RevoTiLlor]

@CTBehr

but it’s not resulting in a WYSIWYG experience for me.

Scrivener cannot produce WYSIWYG.

[AmberV]

Just as a quick sanity test, I like to simplify my parameters if something is being mysterious, and then gradually add complexity back up until it breaks (or hopefully does not). So I’d start with:

1. Select all of the text in the synopsis document and Copy it.
2. Create a new empty text item below it, don’t touch any formatting, just use Edit ▸ Paste and Match Style to strip out all formatting, treating it as plain-text.
3. Leave that new item selected, and compile using the “Manuscript (Times)” stock Format in the left sidebar (you might need to assign the item you’re compiling to one of the simple TNR 12pt text Layouts, like “Text Section”, or the one with a title maybe).

That will at least demonstrate what can work, and that certainly should work. It’s more aligned with how Scrivener is intended to be used, which is in part why I demonstrated it that way. It sounds like you’re working the other way around, and doing a lot forcing in the text editor and then trying to turn off as much as you can in the compiler. I think you’ll have a better time going with the flow. You will have to edit the Format and tweak its Page Settings, as they default to the 25mm custom instead of 30. The rest is probably fine though.

That said, I’m not sure if that’s actually going to work for you outside of being a demonstration. If you have a lot of deliberate formatting, such as italics, that Paste and Match Style deleted, then we might need to go back and look at just what is making a mess. Usually it’s the over-application of styles, the misunderstanding that styles in Scrivener are for exceptional cases rather than body formatting, for example. It might also be your text is hard line wrapped for some reason, with actual empty lines between pre-wrapped lines, so that’s why you get weird “margins” and double-double spacing… but we can get into that if the above doesn’t get you into the right neighbourhood.

[FanLi]

I tried a couple of times compiling to PDF but was not happy with the results. But since I seldom have to do that since I usually compile to .rtf. So, whenever I need a PDF I just compile to .rtf, tidy it up then turn that into a pdf. It works for me.

But, if you plan to compile to pdf a lot, then it would wiser to figure out how to do that.

[CTBehr]

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. I have stepped through them and tried to make progress, but, alas, I’m still missing something - even though I’ve double checked all of the settings for PDF compile output, overriding text formatting, and so on.

Indeed, when I opened the PDF, where I said I wanted Times New Roman 12, I’m actually getting Publico Text 15; I used the Text tool in Preview to overlay exact words and they matched.

Playing the Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words game, here is what I am seeing:

This screenshot shows the formatting that I’ve selected. As you can see, Times New Roman, 12, left justified, double spaced. It applies to Titled Sections, which this is. Also, you can see that I’m selecting the option to Override text and notes formatting (yes, I’ve tried this both ways).

And you can see here that I’m applying this to the correct Scene and whatnot:

So, I’m trying to compile to PDF, using the Agent Format, I double clicked the “Scene” box in the middle panel to get that first pane where I set the formatting requirements. It’s all applied correctly as far as I can tell.

However, here is what I see as the output:

(Yes, I used the sample text to do this, using the suggestion of Copy → Paste and Match Style as well.)

As you can see, the margins are insanely wide, definitely not close to 0, but the paragraph indentation seems to be correct. The font is significantly larger than it should be. I believe it’s the right font, and I’ve tested my process by changing the font to Helvetica to make sure that’s what came out the other end, it did, but the size, and margins, are still wrong.

To contrast with the “workaround” I mentioned, whereby I used the Page Setup panel to set 0.3 margins and formatted the document itself to be Times New Roman 12, left justified, double spaced, and then Print to a PDF, here’s what I see:

Which is correct. Font size, margins, everything.

I should add, there’s also a bug in Scrivener on macOS whereby if you attempt to adjust the margins with the little downward pointing triangles, the cursor disappears. I have to quit and restart the app to get it back. This happens in the Compile panel, but also in the document editor itself, 100% repeatable here.

Anyway, thanks everyone for the suggestions. I may indeed have to Compile to an intermediary format and then use that to create the PDF I need (the RTF suggestion). I’d prefer not to, but, I’m clearly running into something on my end that I’m missing.

[CTBehr]

I think I’ve cracked it.

When I saved to RTF and opened in the TextEdit app on macOS, I then went to Page Setup and realised that the document format was set to some bizarre parameters. I didn’t take note of what they were, but, I changed it to A4, and suddenly things looked right.

I then went back to Scrivener and followed the excellent advice from @AmberV about using the stock Format.

That set me down a merry path of looking at all of the options that a Format can have to adjust what I wanted and didn’t want. By doing this, I think I realised what was “stuck” on my setup. I had a custom format that I was using earlier (the one with the yellow triangle in it in one of my screenshots) which likely was setting a parameter for a page size that I wasn’t paying close enough attention to, and probably a few other things.

Even though I created a new format, the one for the Agent export, I was (likely) somehow inheriting values from the other custom format.

By taking the Stock format of Times for Manuscript, that set all of the values to various defaults correctly, and allowed me to tune the output to what I needed and wanted.

At least, it’s a heck of a lot closer than I was before, so, thank you all.

Like many, I’ve been more focussed on the input side of Scrivener, rather than the output, so still learning how to get things “right”.

Thank you!!

[CTBehr]

For you time travellers who have come to this topic in the future and wonder where I should have been looking to fix this all along, here you go:

I just had to double-click the format name (having duplicated the stock Times format), go down to Page Settings, and make sure Page Setup and Margins were set correctly, and in the right units.

Since the Agent asked for 30mm margins, this was the magic place I had to find all along.