Perhaps I’ve missed this on the boards, but does Scrivener have the capability to compile a document with select variable page attributes, depending on the section? I have some wide tables in a dissertation document that would be better in landscape format, although most of the document is in portrait mode. My hope is to compile directly to PDF from Scrivener rather than exporting to Word or InDesign, if at all possible.
While on the subject, any thoughts on the occasional jaggies and glitches in table format? I occasionally copy and paste directly from InDesign, which seems to cause the columns to misalign between merged-cell headers and the multiple columns that (should) be directly beneath them.
Thanks to any and everyone with wisdom, suggestions, and clever workarounds…
No, there’s no way to have both portrait and landscape pages in Scrivener, sorry - that’s the sort of thing that is left to dedicated page layout programs after export (Scrivener being more for the first draft stages), so you will need to go to Word or InDesign for that.
As for glitches in tables, to be honest, tables are not exactly perfect in Scrivener - although you may be surprised to learn that Apple coded them, not me. I use the standard OS X text system (that is, the text engine built into OS X and available to any program that wants to use it). This is the same text system used by TextEdit, for instance, which is why you will find that tables and bullets in Scrivener work exactly as they do in TextEdit. And tables are not pretty - they are basic and definitely a bit awkward to manipulate (Apple hasn’t really improved them since they were introduced in Tiger). The trouble is that there is no way for me to fix them or improve them (they are essentially a “black box”, the code behind them unavailable) - the only way of providing better table support is for me to start from scratch. That is indeed what I would like to do in the long run, but it’s a big job, and as the sole developer working on Scrivener for Mac, at the moment I don’t have the resources to do it. It is on the list for improvements that definitely need to happen in the future though.
Thanks Keith! I appreciate the detail. Have to say - Scrivener is working so well for my dissertation, I wish I didn’t have to export it. But I suppose pain and suffering (in Word) is part of the dissertation process. =)
M