[LH3485] Copy Special -> Copy as Basic HTML feature not functioning as it should

Scrivener Windows Beta (Archived)
1

Hello.

I realize this may be low priority, however, as someone who requires exporting simple HTML to publish, it has been very frustrating to have this feature not working properly.

Essentially, unlike in the Mac version, the Windows version of the “Copy as Basic HTML” function works the exact same way as just “Copy as HTML”—which means it includes style tags like margins, indents and line heights; as well as italics/bold as span tags rather than simple / and , making the filters in certain platforms that don’t accept complex html (I’m talking archiveofourown specifically here) panic and erase the entire code, leaving only completely unformatted text.

For example, if I type “Line of bolded and italicized text.” and copy as Basic HTML on the Mac version, I’d get this:

Line of bolded and italicized text.

But on Windows, I get this:

Line of bolded and italicized text.

I believe this is also a problem even in the current public release version of Windows. I’ve found a couple threads reporting this dated as back as 2012, but it seems no progress has been made in fixing it still.

Are there plans on fixing this so that it works how it works on the Mac version? I understand this isn’t exactly a software breaking bug, but I believe it is an important feature for Windows users who require exporting the most basic HTML possible. This is genuinely the only thing stopping me from making the full switch from Google Docs to Scrivener, because exporting from Scrivener to ao3 without this feature is a massive headache.

Thank you.
2

Yeah, as you note, this is an old one. It has been documented internally, but I don’t know the status of it at the moment.

Right now the best way to get clean HTML out of Scrivener is to compile with the MultiMarkdown HTML output. Do note that in the beta you needn’t use Markdown to write, to get that result. There is a checkbox in the options tab of the compile overview area that will run a pretty thorough conversion of rich text conventions, and keep your stray punctuation from being unintentionally interpreted as Markdown.

And honestly that will probably always be the best way. As you know from the copy command on the Mac, it’s all right for simple stuff, but it does break down if you need more complex components like lists.