Let’s start off with the following assumption – I am a moron.
That said, I am new to scriv, and to date all I have really done are short stories that are no more than 3 “chapters.” My normal method of “sit and type until done” was developed using “the wrong tool” and now that I have scriv I am actually trying to write properly (outline, pre-develop characters, etc). Today I thought it would be “neat” to see it all prettied up for the first time.
When I started the current project I used the “Novel Standard Manuscript Format” just to have a starting place. I changed the title page, Added a couple of folders in the binder to collect idea then started in on the scenes. Once I had a few lines in the scenes (pitiful amount really) I did the File -> Compile Manuscript, selected the matching “Novel Standard Manuscript format” changed a few of the options (remove the # as scene separator) and hit export.
From there I loaded the generated .tex file into the TexShop (part of the mactex install) and hit the typeset button. This cover/title page comes out nice, but instead of an index followed by content, all I have after the title page are 3 blank pages followed by all my scriv content in an ugly wad on the last page.
I know I am doing some simple thing wrong so please be gentle.
Remember that moron statement? Just keep that in mind.
Some additional late night searching of the forum and I discovered the MM/scriv how to on fletcher’s site. In following that I can now make every doc a chapter by exporting the Titles for Files, File Groups, and Folders. I tried unselecting files but then I am back to the blob of text at the end of the document.
I also went through and removed all the leading indentations from all my text (suggested on the MM site) as well as extra new lines for paragraphs. Not sure how to get the indent on the first paragraph back, but anything after the first paragraph is good.
BTW this is actually making me like scriv and MM much better. Seems to me that the more I get to know scriv and its tools the more I appreciate what it is capable of doing.
Sounds like you worked it out. Basically, the novel template was designed for exporting as DOC or RTF (which most users will probably want). If you want to export using MMD, as you have realised, you need to set up the text and formatting differently using MMD syntax.
Best,
Keith
This is a setting within LaTeX that you can edit. But if you want a manuscript submission format, you can use the sffms format (also on my site) that handles all of that and puts it back in courier for you.
My personal philosophy is to do as much as I can in the MMD format - I tend to producer cleaner documents this way, and it’s so easy to reformat them for different purposes. It’s not for everyone, but for those who like it - there’s nothing else out there that does the same thing.
I encourage you to use the MMD discussion list as well if you run into MMD specific issues - as opposed to Scrivener issues that should, of course, stay here.
Luckily for me I really don’t “need” to do this yet, so I will plug away at it later.
On the RTF/DOC front I seemed to not get page breaks before chapters. Not a big deal. I incorrectly assumed that TeX would be preferred by publishers (which is not a problem as I don’t expect to be published any time soon).
The smart publishers should prefer ASCII. They each have their own way of formatting, and a plain text file ensures that all formatting commands are stripped out. I suspect that this is one reason that the “standard” manuscript submission format involving courier, etc still exists. It forces you to submit the text, and not your idea of how the text should be formatted. I would argue that RTF and DOC are horrible formats for submitting manuscripts for publication.
Smarter publishers should use Markdown or MultiMarkdown (or develop their own variant). A structured format would ensure that the document is ready to be converted to whatever formatting they prefer, without having to strip out any formatting that authors put into their own documents. But it still gives the author some control over the general layout of the text (this is a paragraph, this is a list, this is a quote, this is emphasised, etc).
Math/physics journals often do have a latex template setup for article submissions, which could easily be incorporated into a MMD workflow.
