I’ve been trying to take notes in Scrivener by using the lists feature. The shape my outlining usually takes is something like this:
Page number
Bullet-Text text text text
Bullet-Text text text text
Bullet- Text text text text
Bullet- Text text text text
Page number
Bullet- Text text text text
Etc.
I know I should probably use a word processor (as opposed to project organizer), or better yet an outlining program (eg. OmniOutliner) for taking notes, but as mentioned I’m trying to keep everything “in house” as it were. And so far it is working. With one small hiccup which I can’t seem to pin down. When meaning to indent to the left on a new line with no text in said line, the indentation occasionally will not be made, and instead the cursor (and new bullet) will merely drop to the next line leaving a vacant line between where the cursor now rests and the last bit of text. I’m not sure if this is a bug or if I’m just missing some nuance in the listing system. At one point I thought perhaps it had to do with where the cursor was prior to hitting the return key. I thought that if there was a space between the last typed word before hitting return versus immediately after typing the last word hitting return that the former would cause the issue but from not-so-scientific-experimentation, I’ve determined where the cursor is prior to hitting return has no baring on whether the next line will indent to the left or not.
Aside from this nagging issue the whole workflow has worked wonderfully. I’ve even found a good way to divide the page numbers within the notes without having to re-apply lists from the menu.
You should just have to hit return to indent left, or hit backspace (which might be less volatile?). I haven’t seen what you are describing, but it would be remiss of me to try to persuade anybody that the lists aren’t a little flakey. Unfortunately we currently rely on the OS X text system for lists and tables, and both were introduced in Tiger and haven’t been updated since, despite their many flaws. (Off in the future we’d like to soup up these things, but it’s a massive job.)
It’s a little hard to understand the OP’s description of the problem, but I think it’s the same one I’ve been having. Here’s my best attempt to describe it:
Normally in Scrivener, after typing a paragraph and hitting return, the next line is autoindented. This is the case up until I insert a list. I can enter bulleted list items as one would expect, but after the last list item, as soon as I try to go back to normal paragraph formatting, this functionality is lost. As precisely as possible, here is what happens:
(1) On a new line, I go to Format->List and choose a bullet style.
(2) I enter a series of list items, hitting return after each one and getting a fresh bullet in front of the empty next line, as one would expect.
(3) When I want to finish the list, I hit return after the last item. The next line is displayed with a bullet. Getting rid of this bullet should terminate the list
(4) I hit RETURN or DELETE to get rid of the bullet. The bullet disappears, and the cursor moves all the way back to the beginning of the line-- it is NOT at the autoindent level with the rest of my paragraphs.
(5) Hitting RETURN more times is to no avail. Now every time I hit it, the cursor goes all the way back to the start of the line rather than to the autoindent level. Here is a screenshot:
Well, I’m no expert, but I would assume that the OS X text engine has no way of “remembering” what paragraph formatting you were using before you changed to a list, and it is reverting to whatever default is set in Scrivener’s preferences for the new paragraphs, but I may well be wrong. If you mainly want indented first lines, I would have thought it would probably be as well to set that as the default in the main and the project text preferences, if they are not set to that. But as I say, I’m no expert. There may be subtleties I’m unaware of.
Try using Shift-Tab instead of Delete to remove the bulleted list (Tab increases the level by one, Shift-Tab decreases it by one, so if at the first level it removes the list).
Martin is pretty much right here. The bullets themselves often get entered in a different font, too. Basically, OS X switches to list formatting and then, once you leave list formatting, you often end up with left-indented, Helvetica formatting. The best way to work around this is to hit return a couple of times before creating your list, then move the cursor back and create your list, so that there are a couple of return characters preserving your paragraph formatting after the list. Then, once you’ve finished your list, hit the right arrow key to go past the newlines and carry on typing. This is a workaround, of course, but unfortunately there’s no real way of Scrivener overriding the default text system to fix this particular issue, as it goes a little too deep (it’s an issue with the OS X text system that Scrivener uses).
