I often find myself only exporting one or two folders rather than my whole draft. And I find myself wishing for two features (or, perhaps, failing to find two options) which are probably in conflict with each other
First, it would be nice if the title of the exported document (for formats that include a title) were the title of the folder rather than the title of the entire draft. Is there a situation where this is not what someone would want?
Second, it would be nice if it was possible to select more than one folder for export. Right now, the two options are to select a single folder or select the entire draft folder, then weed through a long flat list of every subdocument in the draft folder. In a complex document, that can be a long list!
These features are potentially in conflict with each other, since if you select two folders, then what is the title?
But perhaps a natural implementation that avoids this conflict would be for the selection list to be hierarchical, so that you could click on a folder to select or unselect all of its children? Then one could select the whole draft and quickly select or unselect the relevant subfolders (e.g., chapters) you want to export.
The way to turn on titles for individual binder elements (like folders) is in the first tab. There is a matrix of document components you can export for the three types of documents, and title is one of them.
However, if you are the type that puts the title into the document itself, then of course this setting will do nothing to remove it. If you are getting a title for the whole Draft, it is probably actually in a text document somewhere, as there is no option to export the title for the draft like that. Easiest way to find it would be to select Draft, and use Edit Scrivenings.
There is an easier way of doing this, and that is to use the Outliner with the āInclude in Draftā column turned on. If you select the folder you want to include in the Binder, youāll get a list of all the components of that folder in Outliner. If there are sub-folders or documents stacks, select everything and press Cmd-RightArrow to fully expand the outline. Now Option-Click on any of the empty Include in Draft boxes to turn them all on.
Repeat for the second folder.
You can also use this technique to disable export for everything by clicking on the Draft item, Option-RightArrow, and then Option-clicking on any box that has a check.
Another option entirely would be to place both folders in a temporary single folder, and then choose that container folder for compile source.
Right. Exporting titles for folders is intended to address the desire for having chapters or sections produce a title for it. It is not intended to cause the compile feature to find a title for the entire book. Creating a title page is the best option here.
What you could do is type your title into the container folder from the above suggestion. Or, you could convert the sub-folders into document stacks (right-click on them to do this), make the container an actual folder, and keep the compile option for titling folders left on.
Sounds good in theory, but consider that not everyone uses the Binder this way. For instance, I include notes right in the Draft outline and un-tick the Include in Draft box for notes. I donāt want those to appear when Compiling.
Just so you know, some of what you are looking for has already been thought about and developed. Scrivener 2.0 will have some new ways of working with your Draft that will make all of this a lot easier.
Thanks for the helpful reply. I hope it was clear that my suggestions were intended in the form of wishes, not demands: feedback based upon little places where my workflow has been less than smooth.
Iām sure Iām being dense, but I donāt understand how to use the matrix of Document Elements in the Compile Draft tab to get the title exported as the title of the document. I can get it exported as a top level section header, but not as the title. Iām not talking about the content of the draft, but the metadata of the draft (for document formats that include metadata).
That is, no matter what I do, the Multimarkdown ātitleā attribute (or the html ātitleā attribute in html output) is either empty or what was set using the āMultimarkdown Settingā panel. I thought I was getting the same behavior with the ordinary HTML option (not the MultiMarkdown HTML) option. But now that I try it, for some reason the title is set to the content Iāve specified for the footer, ā<$p>ā. So maybe what I thought was a general issueāScrivener always setting the exported title to the title of the whole document in formats that have such a thingāis just an issue with the way MultiMarkdown meta-data is handled.
As for selecting multiple folders to include in the compiled draft, I guess I think it would be easier to just be able to select two folders when I go to compile than to go into outliner view and make various decisions about what to include in the draft. But in any case, it isnāt hard to just export one folder and then export the other and combine the resulting documents. Thanks for the suggested workarounds.
Iām sure a lot of this has to do with the fact that Iām using Scrivener for something it isnāt quite intended for: managing lecture notes for a quarter long course. In that context, compiling a draft of just a part of the course (part of the drafts folder) is a bi-weekly occurrence; often the part I want to compile overlaps between topics, which Iāve arranged in separate folders; and there isnāt a stable collection of things Iād like to include in the draft vs. things Iād rather not. So this workflow is substantially different from writing a novel, Iām sure. And Scrivener shouldnāt be modified in any way that harms a novelistās workflow to help with mine!
(Every time I read the forum, I hear good things about what Scrivener 2.0 will include. Looking forward to it!)
Okay! I think I understand where you are coming from much better, now that I see you are a MultiMarkdown user. I was coming at it from the approach of an RTF user, and was wondering where you were getting the mysterious project title from, as RTF users donāt really have such a thing without making a cover page.
MMD meta-data is not dynamic. Whatever is placed into the settings box is what will be placed at the top of the export no matter what you select in Compile. This is definitely another aspect that will be improved. In the future youāll be able to supply multiple meta-data sections to your project in a more intuitive manner by putting a document called āMeta-dataā in the Binder at the top of each section you intend to export.
The matrix isnāt going to impact MMD meta-data at all. What that does do for MMD users is supply dynamic hierarchal section headers, which can be very handy if you need it. It strictly impacts how Binder components are assembled using Scrivener meta-data.
For now the implementation definitely revolves around the notion of a Scrivener project being a single project, and so only needing a single title. You are right to conclude that its design philosophy is primarily focussed on the production of a single book. It does have good tools for working otherwise, but unfortunately for you, these tools are more suited for journalists and bloggers, where you might keep a single project for a related series and export individual articles as folders. Combining and blending various parts of the outline isnāt something it handles as well right now. But like I say the ability to export arbitrary selections of the project will be much improved as well in the future. Your suggestion of simply combining two exports is probably easiest for right now.
