I’ve got a document where I indent each section by a certain amount. This basically continues as I add child text nodes to child text nodes, etc.
But, when a text node has a numbered list, the numbered list does not heed my “compile” > “formatting” > “override text and notes formatting” section indentation.
Do I need to format the original text differently? Does this apply to any other local formatting?
Thanks,
-Luther
Lists, images and tables are a bit special in that regard. Given that 99% of the time you would want these things to completely ignore paragraph settings in any overrides, that is precisely what they do. You want a centre-aligned image, not a left-aligned image. You want your table to look the way you set it up, not with each cell looking like a body paragraph. You want lists to use their own tab stops and indents because they need special ruler settings to display the bullet and line text neatly.
If you were to force the list to use “body” paragraph formatting, and thus inheriting the indent you’ve set up for that file level in your compile settings, it would cease to look like a list. The thing that indents your text is the same exact tool used to make a list look like a list. 
I think that makes sense … but there is also something special about indenting whole, entire sections of text. It isn’t that unheard of to do … and things like number and bullet lists would work just fine if they were calculated relative to the left margin.
This is a paragraph
1. This is a list item
2. This is a list item
This is an indented paragraph
1. This is a list item
2. This is a list item
This is yet another indented paragraph
- this is a bullet item
- this is another bullet item
1. this is a list item that extends past the
end of the line
2. this is another list itemTechnically, this may be difficult but conceptually, certain formatting can be context sensitive … and I thought numbers and lists might fall under that. Technically, I’d personally find this useful in terms of indenting quotes and centering images as well.
This is a paragraph
1. This is a list item
2. This is a list item
"this is an indented quote
that happens to wrap around
the line a few times."
THIS-IS-A-CENTERED-IMAGE
This is an indented paragraph
1. This is a list item
2. This is a list item
"this is another indented quote
that happens to wrap around a
few more times"
THIS-IS-A-CENTERED-IMAGEBut as you allude to, it seems like Scrivener would need to need to interpret a left margin indentation as a special sort of styling such that other stylings acted in ‘reference’ to the left margin as opposed to being oblivious to it. Maybe even a toggle to facilitate either behavior.
And, I’m not sure how many other folks would find this useful. It just makes my job a little difficult here since I can’t leverage the compiler/formatter as I was hoping.
I’ve been trying to think of a way you could accomplish this without a lot of post-compile editing or baking the nesting indent level directly into the list itself in the text editor (reducing flexibility of the outline since that means resetting the indent level to what is appropriate for its new outline position, whenever the section containing the list is moved). So far I haven’t thought of anything really easy to do though.
But yes you’re correct, conceptually this is hardly even a problem—just relatively push the list indent settings over by 1“ to match some external edict (however that is derived). Technically doing that is where I suspect it would be very difficult—lists are a chunk of code provided by the underlying text engine that have no methods for altering how they work. You’ll note that even in the text editor they do not react to the formatting of paragraphs around them. If you are writing a block quote with a 1” left indent and make a list it will still jump all the way over to the left edge of the editor. The compiler has no special powers that the text editor does not when it comes to manipulating the formatting of text.