Hello, returning to Scrivener 3 after having gone to other software for a few years.
I am having trouble getting my Scrivener settings balanced to provide both of the following at once:
Word count excluding footnotes (don’t care whether it’s inline or sidebar footnotes)
Styling within footnotes such as emphasis which can then become itals on markdown compile
Right now, I can’t seem to make inline footnotes exclude from word count. Sidebar footnotes do exclude from word count but I can’t find a way to format inside them so that bits eventually get through Markdown as italic.
Am I mis-understanding how I configure Markdown compiling–is there a way that normal ‘ital’ (using command-I) passes through to emphasis markup in Markdown?
Or is there a way to exclude inline footnotes from word count?
Apologies if I am asking a redundant question. I searched around a bit but most historic posts on related matters seem to refer to older versions.
You should be able to use markdown directly in your inspector footnotes, so emph and strong etc.
I’m not sure whether converting italics to markdown automatically in footnotes should be considered a bug? I normally use my own style transformations, but you can’t apply styles to footnotes either…
Thanks for the reply Nontroppo. I had presumed that not being able to style inspector / sidebar (whatever it’s called) footnotes had some kind of rationale, not that it was a bug, though not sure what that rationale might be. Do you suggest I post or enquire somewhere else?
I am just trying to arrive at any situation whatsoever where I can have italics in footnotes AND exclude them from the word count AND be able to export to multiple formats, including markdown (so trying not to use md syntax inside of Scrivener) all at once.
Hi Rebecca, it seems you are correct that direct formats (PDF / DOCX) the “convert multimarkdown” setting does not apply to footnotes. So if you want the flexibility of compile outputs and styled footnotes it seems you cannot get reliable word counts.
Maybe AmberV has a smart workaround, if not perhaps you can make a wishlist item to allow character styles in inspector footnotes (which would work in MMD outputs and perhaps get dropped if a format didn’t support styling in footnotes, or to allow “convert multimarkdown” to also apply to footnotes?
Thanks again nontroppo. Could you clarify whether there is a reason that basic styling (such as command-I for italic), which does work in inspector footnotes, cannot be transposed into Markdown on compile. Should this be the wishlist item perhaps?
Hm, I replied to this a couple of days ago, but looks like my message got deleted somehow. I did test standard italics and bold, and it did work for my in Inspector footnotes compiled via Multimarkdown?
Styles (like Emphasis) cannot be applied to the footnote, and they do have some restrictions on what type of rich text can be applied, I assume for a good reason. But if all you need is italics and bold and inspector footnotes and compile to PDF directly or via MMD then I think it should be working…
Hi again, thanks for picking this up again. I can confirm that all I need is italics and bold . This may now be down to my being inexperienced with the current version. For some reason, when I compile, italics that are not explicitly styled as emphasis drop out. This could be there is something that is set as default that I haven’t figured out how to take control over yet. If I could solve this, I think the rest would all be fine.
You’re welcome. Do note that you cannot use any markdown with this setting as it will escape it (so emphasis will become *emphasis* and will not convert to italics) rather than let it pass through…
