Idiot guide to MMD and Scrivener ?

Scrivener Markdown & LaTeX
1

hello

I’ve familiar with Mac apps like Byword and Marked and Multimarkdown Composer. I’m also familiar with LaTeX via TexShop and Texlive.

I love Scrivener but I’m damned if I can get anything MMD or LaTeX to work. I can’t even get the simplest MMD code to go from MMD->PDF.

Can someone please give the simplest idiot guide to getting from Scrivener->MMD->PDF please - say with this table ?

Header One Header Two Header Three Header Four
Default Left Center Right
hi Peter maybe will work 34

thanks

Peter

2

I tested your table out of curiosity (not a MMD expert by an stretch), compiling MMD to HTML. That worked just fine for me.

I tried it on my Windows installation, latest official Scrivener release (1.5.7.0), with no supplemental MMD installation; just what comes with the Scrivener installation.

What operating system are you running? What version of Scrivener (the “About Scrivener” menu item will display the version)? Have you ever installed a separate version of the multimarkdown scripts?

3

I’m assuming Mac, since the MMD->PDF option is not currently enabled for PC.

One important bit of information is precisely what you mean by it not working? Does Scrivener generate an error, or is something else generating an error, do you get a blank file, garbled file, verbatim MMD without any conversion, etc.?

It definitely sounds like you have LaTeX installed fine; the PDF option wouldn’t even come up if Scrivener cannot locate a pdflatex executable, and I’m guessing you’ve used LaTeX via some other means at least once before to ensure that the system can indeed typeset to PDF. It might be worth double-checking that if you haven’t recently. Just compile to .tex instead of PDF, and try typesetting from TeXShop. I use TexLive as well, so the distribution is not the problem.

4

I am having similar problems (I cannot compile Multimarkdon –> Pdf). I am not familiar with latex etc. I get this message:

There was a problem generating the PDF file using pdflatex. Please ensure that you have any necessary supporting LaTeX files correctly in place, and that your meta-data is set up properly.

I can compile other Multimarkdown outputs. Please help.
I have latest system (Mac Os) and latest Scrivener beta.
Thank you.
ES

5

The PDF export is just a convenience for quick compiles (it just automates what you would do yourself). If it stops working it is always going to be a better idea to compile to LaTeX and figure out the source of the problem using the more extensive feedback you get while typesetting. TeXShop is good for this. You don’t have to have a huge familiarity with LaTeX to do this particular thing (though it certainly wouldn’t hurt to learn a bit if you intend to use it). Just load the .tex file in TeXShop and hit Cmd-T. If anything comes up needing your attention you will be prompted in the logging window. Generally you need to typeset three times to get all of the cross-reference metrics accurate.