I’ve been using scrivener 1.x for quite some time, but have recently switched to 2. I think it’s a great bit of software, so don’t want to come across as a moaner by any stretch. However, the export to word etc seems to have degraded significantly.
I was successfully using 1.x for all my script writing needs, exporting to Word and shifting the page breaks around as appropriate (to avoid dialogue splitting across pages). However in 2, the export to word/open office appears to have got a lot worse. The page breaks are all over the place, and there seems to be no right margin definition any longer. I followed the instruction to use RTF instead, but that seems to suffer from similar limitations.
Does anyone have any advice on workarounds for maintaining more of the formatting in export?
If not, or additionally, is there likely to be any improvement to the word export in the future?
Have been really excited about the changes in scriv 2, but this is definitely going to make life harder
Actually the export to Word hasn’t changed! And the RTF export has been improved (more features added). So the most likely explanation is that you need to go through your Compile settings. One thing to note is that because of the changes between 1.x and 2.x, the compile settings from 1.x don’t get carried across when you update a project. Could it just be this that is the cause of your problems?
I’ve had a look, but I am not sure what settings, if any, that are different from what I had before. Essentially when I use the export for old word, the dialogue text (screenwriting format) is correct, but the paging is all messed up, and if I use the .docx compile, the paging is fine, but the dialogue is messed up (which is the same for the open office compiler as well).
I am using open office, so maybe the paging thing with the old word format is just an interpretation issue. The only reason I am doing this at all is because the PDF generation runs dialogue over page breaks. I am sure the list of future dev is long and distinguished, but is there any chance of putting some behaviour in to put in the character name again after it paginates on the PDF?
Any other suggestions for compilation settings gratefully received, but I am guessing there’s not much more you can offer at this point.
Adding character name again after page break is actually tougher than it sounds, and would involve a lot of code for something that isn’t really something Scrivener is designed for (being a first draft tool, it prefers to leave that sort of thing to dedicated layout or scriptwriting programs). The other formatting issues you are having sound odd, though. Could you send your project to support@literatureandlatte.com, with an explanation of how things should be exported and what is going wrong? That way we can take a look at it. If things work fine in 1.x, then they should definitely work fine in 2.x - we probably just need to take a look at the settings and point you in the right direction.
