With all spacings set to 0 in format/text/spacing I see an odd thing with lists, both bulleted and numbered.
The list layout is fine until you hit a backtab to back out to the first level in the hierarchy.
Tabbing/backtabbing leaves everything in good vertical alignment except for the leftmost level.
At that point, subsequent leftmost topic level numbers are indented too much, possibly by the first line indent value. (The text of the list entry seems to always line up.)
The workaround is to hit tab and then backtab on first entering a list. A list entered, starting with tab/backtab always seems to line up well.
Here’s another way to see what’s happening.
Turn on list mode and note the position of the bullet or the number. Hit tab, then immediately backtab.
The bullet or number moved right with the tab. Backtab, though, didn’t return the bullet or number to the original position. Once you’ve down an initial tab/backtab, jumping the leftmost position to where backtab leaves it, the list will be well aligned.
Lists also seem to make changes in the text spacing settings. i keep ending up with a first paragraph indent. No big deal, but it may be a symptom of something larger afoot.
Any suggestions appreciated. Scrivener is a great product.
I’m running into this problem as well. I’m surprised more people haven’t posted about it. Is there any intention to fix this bug? I didn’t see it listed in any of the current beta bug fixes.
I am also having this issue. I just want to be able to outline before I begin filling in with content but this bug (which I did not realize could be worked around) was making Scrivener more of a complication than a helpful tool (which it usually is). Is there any way to have a fix worked into the beta and eventually the stable release? If one already has been that’s great, but I didn’t see it when scrolling through the features/updates lists for the beta.
Hello? Is anybody home? What does it take to get an answer?
JackAubrey, I’m unable to recreate this in either 1.6.1.0 or 1.7.0.6
I assume L&L folks will be able to and help you work the problem.
About the only pointer I can offer, based on a quick tryout of lists, is that the cursor needs to be at the start of a list line before doing a backtab (Shift+Tab), other wise it gets interpreted as a tab.
hexagonalcarbon, to answer your question… Humility and patience. New to the forum, your first post is on a Saturday and your impatient followup is on Sunday. Seriously? L&L is a small organization and they are probably taking well deserved weekends. L&L folks are dedicated professionals and will no doubt respond. Whereas I’m just someone who tries to help out a little, and you’re giving me zero reason to want to try to help.
hexagonalcarbon and arrrlikeapirate, both new to the forum, apparently can’t find any significant number of reports of such an issue, yet hijack someone else’s thread and immediately begin wondering about and cheap shotting L&L’s intentions. Why wouldn’t L&L be interested and, if there is an issue and it can be worked, why wouldn’t L&L do so and fold it into betas and prod releases at some point? Why not just throw in charges of crimes against humanity while you are at? A clue, you aren’t the center of the universe. And over the top attitude such as yours doesn’t help and damages your credibility.
Start from the assumption that if you report a problem calmly and professionally, as JackAubrey did, L&L will investigate and respond and fix and incorporate as and when appropriate and practical.
Sorry, tired old man crankiness coming out in me…
P.S. You may also want to try outlining in/via the binder or outlining mode. Not saying you can’t or shouldn’t do it via lists, but in/via the binder or outlining mode may prove better.
(1.7.0.6), encoutering this problem too. But what bothers me more is that we do not get back to standard formating when “closing” a list… Anyway, very easy to get around both problems.
@SpringfieldMH : Hello, I think the use for lists or numbered lists are very seldom in novels, but Scrivener is usefull for many other things and, for instance, I use a lot of lists in my present project. Things like that:
- Blabla
- Blazaaaah
- bwaaaaaah
…
But even with 20 or 50 lists in a project, reformatting them correctly one by one just takes a few minutes
And I fully agree with you : programming is long and tedious, and Scrivener for Windows is allready progressing smooth and fast. Many many bugs are corrected in each beta release.
Just please be patient with the devs !
That is unavoidable as Scrivener is a simple rich text editor and not a stylesheet based program. Without stylesheets, formatting just streams from one alteration to the next—lists just happen to be the last alteration. With 1.7 you can now set up your default paragraph style as a Formatting Preset, which will ease coming out of lists.
Alternatively, a habit I’ve picked up over the years from Scrivener and many other programs that work this way, is to always give an unusual block of formatting space before changing the format. So for something like lists, that would mean hitting Enter twice, this creates two empty paragraphs with your default formatting, and that means that when you insert the list into the first empty paragraph, the second one will go on being what it was before the format alteration. Then when you are done, you simply arrow into the placeholder you left behind.
As for the original issue, I see that as well. In my opinion the problem is that lists are not indented initially. It seems to me that they should start out indented, in the way you get when Shift-Tabbing out of a nested list. That’s the behaviour I see in most word processors anyway.