JPG is a graphics format. PDF is a portable document format that is a variant of PostScript. Saying that PDF is a “more usable format” for graphics than JPG is like saying that an 18-wheeler truck hauling shipping containers is a more usable format of commuting than a sedan. Sure, you can use it that way, but it’s not what it’s designed for, and the PDF format is COMPLEX. People bitch about Word’s format all the time – they’d fall over dead if they were forced to read the specs for PDF.
Yep, leaving out the context makes it sound stupid 
I was talking about a specific use of graphics, just like an 18-wheeler truck is more usable for a specific type of driving … but not for all types of transportation… so point taken. I should be more clear what specific type of graphics I was talking about. 
If I want to put an image in a book, lets say the front page of a epub, is it JPEG or PDF most people use ? If I send some illustration to someone that they can use for print that I want to make sure they can open, is it not PDF ?? It is , so in other words PDF is more usable when it comes to sending this stuff around, putting it somewhere for someone to see… and to include it in a book. Putting in a PDF file for illustrations is easier then to put in a jpg file. I can print a graph to a pdf file and put it in my book, but making it in to jpf file is much harder…
… but like I said, point taken. Sorry about the confusion, I obviously have to learn to be much more specific and detailed.
Just to end with some facts, I do this all day. I write around 200 pages of this stuff per month. Illustrations in books are extremely time consuming if I have to do it in jpg format or similar. PDF is the format that makes it all go so much faster, i can print directly to pdf files, and just stick it in there…
That depends on who you’re sending it to and why you’re sending it to them. PDF is generally considered in most of the segments of the publishing industry I’ve worked with to be an end-user format, not an intermediate format. PDF is a hugely complicated wrapper/layout format – it’s overkill for “give me a graphic to use as the cover.” Can you do it, yes, but then the receiver has to extract the source graphic from the PDF anyway (and let’s hope it was enough DPI, etc.) and throw away everything else in it, or just add the PDF page to the existing PDF and make a more complicated PDF that could have all sorts of other issues that will trip up some poor reader’s free PDF application.
Most professionals I know don’t use PDF for those corner cases. Scrivener is NOT a PDF editor; that’s a nasty can of worms to open, so it lets you use PDFs for research and relies on your OS to provide most of the PDF functionality (either through built-in libraries or helper applications YOU want and install). But then again, PDF is layout, and Scrivener is not layout – in the same way that while you can use that 18-wheeler to drive your kids to school, the school’s traffic is probably NOT laid out with 18-wheelers in mind and you’re probably going to cause a snarl or two (or have to park a block away and walk your kids to the front door).
In general, one of the things you’ll find about Scrivener is that it starts to encourage better workflow habits, because its designer doesn’t put features in just because they can be done – he (and the rest of the L&L staff) care very much about whether a given function should be done or is the most efficient/harmonious way of doing it. It is a learning curve, and it takes time, but I have come to realize that if Keith digs in on a technical issue…he’s almost certainly done MORE research on it than we have, has far more use case data at his beck and call, and is generally right. Not all the time – but enough of the time that it’s generally not worth sparring with him unless I have specific data he hasn’t considered yet. And even then…he usually comes up with some solution other than what was suggested, something that meets a broader set of needs than the narrow ones I was considering.
It’s actually really nice having someone like that in charge. 
Well, he is a former school teacher, after all, and as such is used to sifting through barrage after barrage of irrational requests and adolescent angst to find the truly sound and useful (and on-topic) ideas.
Maybe a moderator can correct the quotation mistake in the post above?? The devinganger is the one that said its nice nice to have someone like that in charge.
Do this in the windows version: open a pdf file in the research folder, select the dropdown over the file and select Take Snapshot… see image:
… then listen to the sound of a camera shutter click… and notice how NOTHING appears in the snapshot folder…
Then write your thesis on how brilliant this feature is
As you can guess, it does not work, even it is there… so why can it not be a screed shot ? Or the ability to actually take a snapshot, or possible be removed if it is not working?? Why have features that do not work at all ??
I have just installed a program called lightshot, that is integrated with the print screen button etc etc that works great, but it beats me that this is not included in Scrivener. For writers like me, and thousands of others that organize researh for their books, this is a must have tool,… and it does not matter how much you argue against it… IT WILL ALWAYS be a seriously important feature of any software I use for writing my books. I have no idea why so much energy goes in to arguing against this need… the motivation to argue against this need is more than strange at this point.
Agreed !
Agreed !
And if you want to include an (enduser format) file … its very often going to be a pdf
Agreed !
But you have changed the topic now…
Agreed !
But to be able to use the images from a pdf of cut the pdf as an image is not a nasty can of worms. I do it my own software and wrote the code in Qt to do this already, so please slow down a notch…
That is harder to agree with… compile in scrivener is all about layout…
Anybody tell you that you have a talent for dramatizing … he he he im not driving a 18-wheeler to my kids school, im just cutting an image out of a pdf file…
Agreed !
I am noticing how Scrivener have messed up my workflow already more than once ha ha ha
Agreed !
…well, its not possible to have a nynamic TOC unless you use word or epub or html… so I’m not totally impressed… and this issue with pdf is also quite disapointing… but the rest is great.
Good for you ! Sounds like you really enjoy, and that is always good to hear.
Take care
Because “snapshot” can mean two different things, because words evolve, especially when they become entangled in IT jargon. Now, this is my understanding, so if I’m wrong on a technical detail I’m sure one of the L&L staff will correct me…but I believe I’m correct.
It sounds like (and I apologize if I am mistaken) you are thinking of “snapshot” in its original, photo-centric sense – I see a scene, I take a snapshot, now I have a picture of that scene frozen just as it was. Yes?
Well, metaphorically, that’s where snapshot comes from in the IT sense, but what it literally means now is “a point-in-time copy of a given data structure” – I first recall hearing the term in conjunction with file systems (like NetApp’s WAFL system, various Unix file systems, even NTFS once VSS got incorporated into Windows) but then I started hearing it applied to the same concept in documents and databases. If you think about it, even in source control systems, each new branch/version is a snapshot of the codebase at that time (according to the IT definition) – a point-in-time capture of one or more entities so they can be compared/contrasted at a later time.
That’s the sense Scrivener is using it. It’s not a graphical function at all except via the metaphor (hence the sound of the camera shutter) – it’s not taking a screen grab/capture. It’s taking a point-in-time copy of the selected document(s) in the Binder so you can refer back to them later. Nothing to do with graphics, images, etc.
So…why doesn’t it work against PDFs, images, etc.?
Because Scrivener does not let you edit these files. You can put them into the Binder structure, but you can’t edit them in place (you would have to replace the item to change it). Taking a point-in-time copy would literally be wasting space with an additional copy of data that is (from Scrivener’s view) unchanging. Scrivener’s snapshot engine is tied up in its text engine – it keeps point-in-time copies of text documents when requested so that you can compare the changes in them at a later point in time, after revisions.
So to me, this behavior that you describe is as-designed. It’s Scrivener functioning as intended, given the well-explained constraint that Scrivener is not a non-text editor. Your mileage may, and obviously does, vary – but L&L have been very straightforward and consistent over the years about explaining their vision of Scrivener and what it is and is not.
I think that is a consistent mis-interpretation of what Scrivener is, because people have gotten so used to programs that let them control margins and font and points and foo and bar and baz being layout programs that they don’t stop to think or understand that is not Scrivener’s intent.
Scrivener is not intended to be FrameMaker, or Quark XPress, or InDesign, or Pages, or Scribus, or any other fully-fledged layout tool for desktop or traditional publishing.
The point of the Compile module (and again, this is my understanding) is to allow the Scrivener user to impose consistency on the compiled draft. There is a lot of basic layout functionality there that is “good enough” in many cases to remove the need for a layout program in your workflow, but that is not one of Scrivener’s design goals. It is not intended to give you full control over every last detail in your output. It is intended to make your output consistent enough to dramatically reduce the amount of work you have to do in a full layout program. Output to RTF, DOCX, or DOC and send the draft to your agent/editor – they don’t care about the missing layout functions because that’s not where you are in the process. Output to PDF and it’s good enough to send to beta readers or even use as input in some of the self-publishing toolchains out there. But full control, final tweaking, full power comes from other software packages – because Scrivener was never intended to fill that niche.
In Windows 7 (I doesn’t test it on later versions) there is built-in utility called Snipping Tool. It is not very powerful, but for quick tasks it is very convenient and I use it pretty often. With that utility, it is possible to simply “cut” any rectangular part of the screen. Alternatively, it could snip some window (full screen option is also exist). Here is screenshot with appropriate options:
And for screenshots with mouse pointer, I use this AHK script:
autohotkey.com/board/topic/8323 … ntry530486
(For myself, I slightly modified it, so if you interested, I could paste it somewhere).
Yes, there is, but that is NOT what the snapshot functionality in Scrivener does. It does not create a screen capture. It creates a point-in-time backup of the selected document(s) so you can compare them with newer versions (or recover that older version more easily) at a later time.
Yep, I know about filesystem-snapshots, so I understand the difference. I just wanted to suggest some workaround.
Hm, by the way I found some feature in Scrivener, which is actually something like screenshot-taking:
Right click somewhere on the text and there is an option “Capture Selection From Screen”.
Cool. Thanks. Never saw that one.