I am currently syncing a project via Dropbox between my Mac, my iPhone and iPad.
I am using Helvetica / Regular / 14 on my Mac and I set this font by overriding the Preferences default at: Project -> Text Preferences -> Use different default formatting for new documents created in this Project -> use current.
All new documents created in this project on my Mac are created in Helvetica / Regular / 14.
Here is the issue: When I create a new document on either of my iOS devices it gets created with Palatino / Regular / 13 and I’m not sure why this is happening.
If I create the document on my Mac and then go to my iOS devices everything works well - the font on OS and iOS are both in Helvetica / Regular / 14. This problem only occurs when I create the document on my iOS device.
I would like my iOS devices to match my Mac project settings and that is why I chose a font I thought should work in both OS and iOS.
Any help you can provide would be most appreciated!
After you create a doc in iOS, tap in the Editor to make it active then look up top and you’ll see a paint brush; tap it. Tap Style. That opens Text Options. Tap Palatino; choose Helvetica from the recommended fonts; tap the circled i to choose Regular; choose the desired size at the top of Text Options.
iOS has fewer fonts than macOS, and only a few Windows fonts are also available on iOS. This can cause problems when working on a project across platforms… If you open a project in Scrivener for iOS that uses a font not available on iOS, the text will default to using Helvetica.”
My project IS using a font that is available on iOS and in fact it is the font that iOS defaults to when the font being used is NOT available.
So I wonder why is my iOS defaulting to Palatino and not Helvetica?
I think we’re talking about two different issues here. The first is about working cross platform. As you said, the project files from Mac that you imported into iOS retained the desired font. As I understand it, that doesn’t change the iOS default font for documents subsequently created in iOS Scrivener. If you were to import a project that had a font that didn’t exist in iOS Scrivener, that’s when the font would default to Helvetica. I haven’t tested that but that’s my understanding.
BTW, I’m pretty sure that iOS Scrivener’s initial default is Palatino, at least it was for me. An adder for my last post: after you’ve done the steps to set your font and other formatting to your liking, in Style, tap Formatting Options then tap Set as Default Formatting. Those settings will now persist for each newly created iOS doc.
Somehow I was under the impression that, as long as I chose a font that was available in both OS and iOS, the font preferences for the project would carryover and be used when I created a document in iOS as well.
Now I understand that I will need to setup all of my devices to make sure they create a new document in my desired font.
Apologies if I should be making a new topic for this, but is there a way to get Palatino to automatically default as Palatino Linotype on Scrivener running on systems without it, and vice versa? Currently if I go with Palatino in iOS, it defaults back to Courier on Windows, and if I go with Palatino Linotype on Windows, it defaults back to Courier when opened on iOS.
Or is this not possible, and I should just give up and switch to Georgia or one of the other tiny handful of universal web-safe fonts?
Scrivener needs the font installed, so you’ll need to use a font that exists on all the platforms you’re running Scrivener on. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Scrivener is unique in this way, you’d probably need to do the same for Word or any other writing app.
I didn’t find this to be a huge challenge, though. Go to a reputable free font site (I use Font Squirrel), find a font that you like, and load it onto Windows, iOS, and Mac. What better way to procrastinate from writing than font hunting?
