Hi there. I’m a LaTeX user, trying to write elaborate things on Scrivener. Nice app, I’m a little disappointed though for the file structure I still not quite grasp.
I’ve tried to delete an old project, resulting in multiplicating the file. Moreover, it seems that the backup mode does not work on my installation, as an error appears every time.
Is there a way to learn how the file structure is intended? How to re-install the app correctly?
Thanks so much for your support
Welcome to the forum.
- What version of Scrivener?
- Have you see the General NonFictionLaTeX template available in Scrivener? Full instructions to use are provided in a new project you create from this template. (I’ve used it for years)
- Lots of posts already to learn from in the “Markdown and LaTeX” subcategory. Some use pandoc for that sort of stuff. Scrivener - Literature & Latte Forums
- What did you do to try to delete a project?
- Where are all the extra (multiplicated) files located?
- Where was the project located? In a folder synced with a third party sync service? Or on a local drive?
- What is “backup mode”?
- Exactly what is the error you see?
- What are your settings for backup folder location, rule for on open and/or close, number to keep, zip or not?
- Have you gone through the interactive demo? Read any books on Scrivener? Browsed the Scrivener Manual?
- What have you tried and failed with?
- Rarely does re-install fix anything. What causes you to think this will help? Any symptoms to report?
- Version 3.4, paid.
- I am following An Introduction to Scrivener - Literature & Latte. Where can I find the tutorial you are mentioning? I can create new project alright - the problem is, how to delete old ones…
- Actually I’ve decided to give Scrivener a shot, independently from LaTeX. I think Scrivener is superior for managing long projects. For some LaTeX features though (think of Lettrine), it is difficult to get comparable results IMHO
- I’ve closed the old project. I did not find a File item to deleted. I assumed I could interrogate the file system to do the deletion manually. No luck. The repository where the files are kept is nowhere to be found. So I’d like to find some description on how the files are stored.
- when I right-click the Scrivener icon on the dock, a list with such multiple projects appear. They are still somewhere - maybe my ill-directed attempts are just multiplicating such hidden files all over (heck - but where?)
- I have no clue of where the old projects are located. Now, I started anew project anew and apparently the file is on the desktop, where I wanted it to be. My efforts to understand the file structure are not very reassuring…
- When I start Scrivener a warning pops up, saying that the back up was impossible on the disk.
- Here’s the warning: Impossibile creare backup in ‘/Volumes/LaCie/I Guardiali dell’Acqua - Un Romanzo-bak.zip’. Backup file compresso non riuscito. Errore: Operazione di decompressione non riuscita. I guess you can figure yourself, even if it is in Italian - thanks for your efforts.
- I did not set any backup mode - I’ve only indicated the LaCie (extenal disk) as the target (expecting to reduce the clutter on the main OS disk.
- As I said, I am following An Introduction to Scrivener - Literature & Latte but so far it was unhelpful. Should I read a book on Scrivener? I got the impression, a wrong one at this point, that Scrivener was making me up and running in minutes…
Thanks you for your time and patience.
In Scrivener’s Help Menu
I use macOS Finder
Keep in mind Scrivener is a writing tool, with some formatting via compile settings. For many people, formatting by compiling works just fine, but for some publishing requirements need to use specialty formatting tools or for you, LaTeX is possible.
Does not exist in Scrivener. Use macOS Finder.
The project files are where you put them on creation. There is no default location.
They are where you put them. The doc only shows file names, and it remembers files used in past.
I don’t put working files in ~/Desktop. I put them in my local Dropbox folder, or if not using Dropbox, in ~/Documents/Scrivener.
Based on my interpretation of thatt warning, probably due to permissions on that external disk, or not mounted, or flawed? Hard to tell. Check disk permissions as first step. Nothing to do with Scrivener.
I backup to the main macOS disk in ~/Backups/Scrivener and use my external usb drive, e.g. your LaCiie disk, for TimeMachine backups which will include the entire system, Scrivener projects, and Scrivener backups.
Unfortunate that it is not helpful to you. Others find it useful.
Not at all sure where you got that impression. Scrivener needs some minimal learning, and then from then you use it you will learn more on a continuous basis.
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Project basics
As far as finding projects on the disk, there are two tools for that in the File menu, toward the top:
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Show Project in Finder, for open projects.
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Final All Projects in Spotlight. If you don’t see this one, you might have bought the version Apple sells. For some reason Apple doesn’t like software opening Spotlight windows with the search criteria already typed in. To do it yourself, type “kind:Scrivener Project” into Spotlight.
You might want to consider switching to the direct sale version in general though, as there are other random and weird things Apple doesn’t like and forced us to remove, such as triggering command line scripts when compiling—which as you can imagine is quite useful for TeXies. The LaTeX template in fact demonstrates how you can compile straight to PDF by it triggering the latexmk command and then opening the PDF in your default viewer with a simple shell script.
Note: the wording of this command is very deliberate. If the project is not in the Spotlight index, it won’t be found. If they are on your LaCie drive, and it is set to not be indexed, you may not find them this way.
Overall though, §5.1, The Basics of Using Projects, in the user manual PDF, may be helpful, but really I’d hope everyone would read Chapter 5 as that is arguably the most important topic to have locked down before getting too invested in the software.
As for where they are stored, it is direct cause and effect. You create a project, it asks where to put it in a standard file save dialogue box, and there it goes.
Backup errors
Two troubleshooting steps to try:
- First, in the Backup settings tab, disable zip compression, since that seems to be the direct wording in the error message. Maybe the zip libraries on your system are not working right. It would be nice to have that option enabled in general, as it keeps your backups in a format Scrivener cannot accidentally open, but suboptimal backups are better than no backups!
- I would also try (even if the above works), another folder, and if that doesn’t work, another disk. Normally that should work fine, but maybe there is something about the location that is causing problems, like a nearly full disk. Errors can sometimes be misleading.
Learning tools & LaTeX
Disclaimer: this goes into some theory on Scrivener and a practical demonstration of how it can be used. It might not all make sense at first, but hopefully with the prepared demo attached below, you can at least see it work, first, and know what is possible, even if all the paths to that point are still yet to be learned.
If you’re like me, videos are hard to follow and difficult to retain information from. Try the Interactive Tutorial, in the Help menu. The written format lets you go at your own pace.
Actually I’ve decided to give Scrivener a shot, independently from LaTeX. I think Scrivener is superior for managing long projects. For some LaTeX features though (think of Lettrine), it is difficult to get comparable results IMHO.
As with using Scrivener for Markdown (which it has more extensive integration with), using it for LaTeX is different than other tools for sure. But it definitely has some solid advantages—rare capabilities you will not find in your average special-purpose text editor.
I am not sure what you mean here though, as the only ‘lettrine’ I could find related to this is a dropcap package. What would stop you from setting up your project to use this?
Now if you mean using Scrivener all by itself, like a word processor, and not using anything else with it like LaTeX—okay sure. Yes, it’s a simplistic “rich text” editor with a design scope more the rough draft to final draft phases. It’s not meant to replace LaTeX, or InDesign, or even other more complex workflow editors like Word.
So to look a bit more into Scrivener is meant be used, here is an example of a project based off of the stock LaTeX project template, slightly modified to show off what this program brings to the table over .tex editors:
latex_lettrine_example.zip (318.3 KB)
To try it, just open File ▸ Compile... and click the Compile button. It is all set up to go, and you should get two chapters with paragraphs that have the lettrine dropcap, and this file should be ready to typeset (assuming a typical TeXLive distribution).
Notes on project...
Now to see how it works.
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I’ve marked in red the three sections I added to the binder. I created a new section in the Front Matter folder for “Typography Packages”, and added the usepackage line to it. This will be added to the preamble when compiled, as everything in this folder will get inserted at the top of the .tex file.
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The two red sections in the Draft folder demonstrate two different techniques for achieving the same output.
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In the first example, the “Raw LaTeX example” section, we find the simplest solution to the problem.
Just type it in.
This template (on the whole) is designed to demonstrate how Scrivener can minimise how much we need to type in, to show it can handle a lot of the manual labour (like inserting \chapter{blah} \label{blah}lines), but it’s entirely meant to be something where it’s okay to just type in LaTeX where you need it, rather than complicating your life with configuration. -
That said, I mainly demonstrated the above to illustrate that second point. For this sort of task, where we want the first letter of a chapter in dropcaps, this is an entirely procedural thing that in my opinion falls under manual labour.
- It also falls under presentation. By removing the presentation from our source text, we can later decide not to have dropcaps with ease, or change the parameters of how they display, by changing the export settings.
- Putting the code in the text also reduces the flexibility of our outline. If we end up moving the paragraph down, because we want to write an introduction, we have to also move the code. Wouldn’t it be nicer if Scrivener could just insert the code itself, on whatever paragraph is first?
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So that is what the “Compile-based example” shows… nothing. It is just a paragraph of text. To see how it works, open
File ▸ Compile..., and this time double-click on the “LaTeX (Memoir Book)” format in the left sidebar, to edit it.- First, in the Section Layouts tab, scroll to “Chapter w/ Dropcap Text”, and click on it. Section layouts are like little templates for defining how the parts of your work are meant to export. You’ll get into that in the tutorial, but for now that is probably good enough.
- As you can see in the preview text below, this layout is adding a chapter and label automatically, and also a placeholder \lettrine command, which is deliberately incorrect. All by itself, this will of course not work. To see where this is added though, click on the Prefix tab.
- Now to see how this ends up becoming valid syntax, click on the Replacement pane in the sidebar. Replacements are like an automated Find and Replace that runs whenever you compile.
- At the bottom of the list you will find a Regular Expression that looks for our deliberately invalid lettrine command, takes the first letter following it, and then the rest of the word up until the first space it encounters. It then takes the whole thing, fixes the command, and puts the first letter in the first argument, and the rest of the word in the second argument.
- I had to make the command incorrect with the dashes so that this replacement didn’t damage the example where we typed it in by hand. You wouldn’t need the dashes normally, but they don’t hurt anything either.
I understand the demo is probably a lot to take in if you’re still learning how projects are saved and all. We’ve gone straight from first steps to some rather advanced compile techniques. But in a way that’s why I showed the easy way first. I wanted to show what Scrivener can accomplish for you as a LaTeX authoring environment, how it can make your writing job easier, but at the same time how you can also just do what is most simple, by typing it into the text editor. You can gradually learn more advanced techniques, or learn how to use the examples this template provides, bit by bit.
There are things I didn’t explain, like why the first chapter doesn’t get a \lettrine added in front of it while the other chapter does (Section Types is the answer), but as I said you’ll learn these concepts in the tutorial and it will start to make more sense.
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Wow. In all my years (many) … never noticed that (not needed since I know where my projects are).