Hello,
I wish to know how to make a drop cap to begin my chapters.
Thank you
A) The No Answer
Drop caps are definitely a page-layout thing (not a writing thing). You will not, I think, find any facility for doing drop caps per se in Scrivener. So, this is something you might need to do manually after the compile stage.
B) The Yes Answer
That said, if your output format supports drop caps, you may be able to “mark up” your drop cap spots in Scriv in such a way as to prime things for your target.
For example, I get drop caps in InDesign layouts from text that starts in Scriv as follows: I have an initial-paragraph style defined in Scriv which does nothing in Scrivener per se (other than make a tinted background so I can see it in the editor), but (and this is the thing) these paragraphs retain their style specifications when I compile to .docx. My output is then placed directly into an InDesign doc which has a same-named style, so any incoming .docx paragraph with that particular style designation gets formatted as my InDesign template says it should, which includes the drop cap. Voila!
So, depending on your target format you may be able to set something up so that getting the drop cap in the final output does not require manual adjustment at the post-compile stage.
All Best,
gr
P.S. Notice, this means it is down to the output format’s ability to do drop cap page layout. So, for example, if you are compiling right to pdf, you are out of luck.
Thank you so much for your answer. It was truly helpful!
It’s a shame that PDF is not supported. I worried that was the case. I’ve been searching for an alternative to Scrivener for a while now just to have features that are severely lacking from Scrivener.
The answer is mark it up like gr suggests then compile set to open in your word processor or page-makeup app of choice do the conversion to drop caps in that—I use Nisus Writer Pro, so my compile is to RTF which opens automatically in NWP—then print to PDF from that.
I don’t even compile to PDF for personal use, because seeing the text in a different interface often highlights mistakes, typos etc. that I’ve missed—for instance I have spell check turned off in Scrivener but on in NWP—and allows me to make any tweaks without necessarily having to sort it out in Scrivener and then re-compile.
Mark
To Xiamenese: How do you form a drop cap in Nisus Writer Pro? That is what I need to do.
For those using Scrivener+LaTeX, the Lettrine package offers comprehensive support for Drop-caps, including options to adjust the size, placement and coloring of the Drop-cap, to name a few. Samples below.
scrive
[attachment=0]Drop-caps2.png[/attachment]
Hi,
While I was writing this, having also seen you’ve already joined the Nisus forum, Philip, one of the macro-gurus on the forum has already posted a suite of macros to do most of what you want.
Mark