I'm a writer and a Theme Builder

Literature & Writing I'm a writer!
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As a Theme Builder for Scrivener 3, I wrote an e-book about Mastering Scrivener Themes.
Although beginning Theme Builders will find everything they need to change the color of the Binder background, or replace the arrows in front of folders in the Binder with arrows that have better contrast, this book digs deep into the topic of creating Themes for Scrivener 3. It goes far beyond changing colors and enables you to style the Scrivener UI to your every wish. A version of the e-book for macOS computers is under development.

A voucher at the end of the e-book, gives you a 50% discount on the price of the TropicalNight Windows Theme. Most examples in the book are taken from that Theme. An AutoHotKey-script to reload Themes fast is available for free to every Theme Builder.

Mastering Scrivener Themes - Omslag e-boek

I’ve had a blast writ­ing this book in Scrivener while build­ing my Theme called Trop­i­cal­Night and de­vel­op­ing an Au­to­HotKey-script to reload themes at the same time. The Theme is based on the color pal­ette of a box of tea sa­chets. I can’t share it with you be­cause of copy­right is­sues. I have tried and con­tacted the il­lus­tra­tor, but it didn’t work out.

Many times it was un­clear whether the cre­ation of the Theme in­spired the book or the other way around, but many of the dis­cov­er­ies cre­at­ing my Theme be­came a good part of this book. For me, the re­al­iza­tion of what is pos­si­ble was a great mo­ti­va­tion to get this in­for­ma­tion out there and share it with you.

It was not easy to write about Scrivener Themes in Scrivener. Many modal win­dows made it hard to write about them and see the di­a­log win­dow at the same time, for ex­am­ple. This made cre­at­ing tem­po­rary screen­shots nec­es­sary, so I could see what I was writ­ing about. Mean­while, my writ­ing en­vi­ron­ment be­came more and more so­phis­ti­cated, and writ­ing this book meant I tested the Theme on the go, as well.
All the time, the doc­u­men­ta­tion of the plat­form was open in my browser, al­low­ing me to cross-check the in­for­ma­tion I was pro­vid­ing. Many times, I had to in­ter­rupt my writ­ing by search­ing for in­for­ma­tion and dis­cov­er­ing more or less rel­e­vant knowl­edge about the plat­form and its pos­si­bil­i­ties for Theme Builders.

I wish you all the best in cre­at­ing a Theme of your own, know­ing all about the en­thu­si­asm in the be­gin­ning, the grind­ing in the mid­dle, and the ela­tion at the end of the process. I’m con­vinced this book will help you when you need help and in­form you when you lack the know-how.

I hope to see the re­sults of your en­deav­ors some­where on the plat­forms for shar­ing your Themes.

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This looks very interesting. How much of it is applicable to the Windows version of Scrivener?

Also, I tried to download the AHK script from the book’s IO page, but I got “Deze pagina kon niet worden gevonden.” Is there an active link I can use?

Thanks. And congratulations on offering us this book.

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This is Windows exclusively at the moment.

The link is updated so it should work now. Maybe a cache is still interfering.

Make sure there’s a “2” in the link (for Februari) and not a “1”.
https://antonidol.nl/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/ReloadScrivenerTheme.zip

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You mentioned using scripts to do things within Scrivener. Is this part of Scrivener or something the themes add?

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The two scripts mentioned in “Mastering Scrivener Themes” are AutoHotKey-scripts, so they’re not part of Scrivener.

The first script allows looping through the Predefined Themes in the Windows version of Scrivener.
The second script optimizes restarting Scrivener with the same (updated) Theme. Because even the slighted change, like adding a semi-colon to a Stylesheet, makes restarting Windows necessary, the script saves Theme Builder a lot of time.

Find the correct download link to these scripts earlier in this discussion.