Okay, for years I’ve used Scrivener to keep an archive of internet articles and blog posts on writing that I’ve found useful. I’ve used the as-is compile feature in the previous iterations of Scrivener and just formatted the articles the way I wanted to see them in the documents, like so:
I’ll then compile it to an ebook from Scrivener and then drop into Calibre to convert it to an AZW3 file (I used to go straight to Mobi in Scrivener but I found I preferred letting Calibre do the epub to Kindle format more) and send it to my kindle that way.
Only now, with new compile settings, I can’t seem to get any of the settings right to get it to actually format as-is in the default settings with Scrivener 3. This is the closest I can get it in an epub:
As you can see, the paragraphs are indenting and I don’t want them to, the font size is all the same, and I’ve got ten point breaks after the paragraph set in paragraph spacing that aren’t showing up in the final compile.
I know Scrivener 3 can make the conversions because I did a proof trial in a PDF and it got a lot closer like I have it in the Scrivener project itself, like so:
(Yes I’m aware of the italics getting changed to underlines and there aren’t any section breaks; I just used the default PDF Proof Copy format as an example.)
I’m using pretty much the default compile settings marking everything as “as-is” in compiles style layouts which is what I understood is the new way you tag everything to compile “as-is” like in Scrivener 2. What am I doing wrong? Help!
EPub (basically packaged HTML) is a special format, in that the compiler does not use the new section types for styling compile output. Scrivener 3 takes the RTF in the editor, converts it to MultiMarkDown and then this gets styled using new CSS stylesheets.
This creates much “better” HTML for generating EPUB/MOBI, but the idea of “As-Is” really doesn’t apply to this format anymore. You do have lots of control now, and in general Scrivener’s EPub support is hugely improved, with Styles being able to trigger custom CSS, appending styles and all sorts of goodies.
But the downside is perhaps your use-case, where you want the output to look like in the editor without any fiddling. You could certainly make it look the way you want, but would have to do this by editing the stylesheets to your taste…
EDIT: did you try using EPub2 compile, as i think this is the same as the old EPub export, and it may preserve more text “as-is”?
OH WOW! I am a moron, with a capital M. That fixed it (using Epub2). Now I get to get back to learning how to play with all the features and, eventually finish the book(s) I’m currently in progress with. Thank you so much, it was a little fix.
Where are the “new CSS stylesheets”?
There is no entry for “css” in Help.
I don’t see a place to add additional css during the Compile process.
So where are these magic sheets hiding?
The manual is not the ‘Help’ menu item.
I don’t see a CSS menu item or radio box or any reference in the Compile Format Editor relating to CSS.
There is a column on the left: Default, ebook, ebook screenplay, Outline Document.
Clicking on each one brings up different text in the center pane.
Nowhere is CSS mentioned.
You can “duplicate and edit” a format, but you can’t just edit one. Doing so brings up an additional dialog that looks like the legacy compile/all features dialog. But even there, CSS is not mentioned and the menu item for html is gone.
Or are you referring to something else?
This tends to prove my point (albeit stated elsewhere) that v3 is, when it comes to compiling, essentially a new program requiring extensive study.
BTW, I think it would help you a lot to do Interactive Tutorial - specifically the What’s New collection. Many of the questions you have been asking are covered there and it will give you a good overview of what the process is.
The Help index is not linked to the text in the Interactive Tutorial. So if there is an entry in the Interactive Tutorial, you won’t find it by searching on a word in the Help field. The Help Index is not linked to the 847 page manual, either.
If you try to edit a style/layout/preset–still not sure how to classify these–the screen with a CSS menu item will not come up. It will only come up if you choosed “Duplicate and Edit.” You can argue whether or not this is intuitive. It did not occur to me that to edit a style/layout/preset you had to duplicate it, make your edits and save the edits as a new style/layout/preset as an alternative or delete the original style/layout/preset that you wanted to edit in the first place.
It’s a fair comment to say, “take some time and learn the program.” That’s great advice for new users. But when you have to give that advice to veteran users, well…
Ah, maybe that’s where you are misunderstanding? Version 3 is a MAJOR upgrade and has been described as such from the beginning. Some of the changes are so large that the new version in some aspects can be seen as a completely new app. Having used version 2 for years doesn’t mean that you can jump straight in and expect to know all you need to know about version 3. So ”take some time and learn the program” is actually good advice also for us that have used version 2 for years.
Have you done the tutorial?
