Free the headers !

[Arkhaiel]

Hello there !
I’m a math teacher and I’m trying to use Scrivener for this purpose.
I wish I could use the header to indicate the chapter concerned by the current activity, but the headers seems to allow only few placeholders (<$pageGroupTitle> and <$pageGroupParentTitle>). Could you allow some more metadatas ? Maybe some custom metadatas ? It would be great to get headers and footers automated !

Thanks !

[brookter]

Isn’t that what those two placeholder tags are for — to show the current document (or parent) title, which, if you’ve set the binder appropriately, can be the Chapter.

From the Placeholder help file:

<$pageGroupTitle>
Gets replaced with the title of the document that first comes after the page break most recently preceding the header or footer in which it occurs. In practice, this is useful for placing chapter titles in headers or footers. For instance, if you have a chapter in a single text document starting on a new page, then that document’s title will replace “<$pageGroupTitle>”; if your chapters are broken down into smaller sections placed inside folders, and the folders mark the start of each new chapter, then the folder’s title will replace “<$pageGroupTitle>” throughout the chapter headers and footers.
Note that if the section title cannot be calculated for any reason (for instance, because there is no text in the section associated with any documents), <$pageGroupTitle> may fall back on using the abbrevated project title (working the same as “<$abbr_projecttitle>” - see User and Project Information for details on where the abbreviated project title is drawn from).

<$pageGroupParentTitle>
The same as <$pageGroupTitle>, except that instead of inserting the title of document that first comes after the most recent page break, it inserts that document’s parent’s title.

What are you seeing instead?

[Arkhaiel]

I see a lack of freedom, and in each folder “chapter” I may have some sub-sub documents. In these cases, the result is not what I expected.

[brookter]

OK. Those two placeholders are new in V3.02, I think, partly as a response to this sort of request, and they’ll do for a lot of circumstances, but not for all it seems.

I can see a possible way of faking it by creative use of Section Types (ie have your ‘section’ and ‘subsection’ documents together on the same level in the binder — but with different section types — rather than indented, so that they have the same parent), but I don’t have time to test it to see what the implications are (eg for auto-numbering). Might be worth trying it out though.

[brookter]

Actually I’ve just been testing and the <$pageGroupTitle> tag seems to work as advertised — the Chapter is printed in the header no matter how many sub-levels you go to (I’ve tried section, subsection and subsubsection)

You can see the sections change to subsections / subsubsections and back but the header stays at ‘This is the first chapter’, which I think is what you’re asking for. I’ve done nothing special to get this — I’ve just used Section Types and Layouts in the normal way.

How are you setting it up?

(I’m not trying to stop you asking for more — just trying to find a workaround for the time being…)

[Jussi]

Hi,

I am trying to put the chapter name in the header as well. So far with no success. I get “<$pageGroupTitle>” written in the header on every page instead. Doesn’t it work for 1.9.7.0 in Win?

[legacy_rdale]

@Jussi

Hi,

I am trying to put the chapter name in the header as well. So far with no success. I get “<$pageGroupTitle>” written in the header on every page instead. Doesn’t it work for 1.9.7.0 in Win?

No, it doesn’t. It didn’t work in v2 of Scrivener for Mac either, but since it’s new to V3 for Mac, it should work in V3 for Windows when it comes out.

[Arkhaiel]

Hello brookter, I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your post.
Thanks for your example. I understand how the placeholder works, and it works fine with me, but I’d like to set a custom metadata in my files in order to compile all the files in one shot and keep the ability to fine tune the header.
For example, in the same subsubfolder, one file with a header “trigonometry : applications” and an other file with a header “trigonometry : formulas”. The subsubfolder’s name could be “1st year - maths / trigonometry”.

Do you get it ? I get it about your example !

[Arkhaiel]

Just come back here to tell you I found kind of a substitute that works for me.
In the prefix tab of the Section Layout, I insert the custom meta data I need to be displayed (for example, the numbering of each paper in the sequence), or the kind of content.
The header can’t display different informations for each paper when I compile every papers at the same time, I still think it’s, in very few cases, something that could be needed.
Anyway, that works for me !

edit : in the compile box, I wrote “<$custom:TypeDocu><$custom:OrdreActi”>