I have a book manuscript that has been divided into separate documents in the Draft section of the binder. I’d like to to have two things happen when I compile the draft:
I’d like there to be a page break between each of the “documents.”
I’d like to preserve the formatting of my block quotes.
I can’t seem to do the first one. There’s a check box for “pg break before” (both in the Inspector and in the Compile Draft dialogue). That would seem to be exactly what I want, but when I write it out (to an RTF or DOC file), the whole thing is run together. I can’t seem to change it.
I can do the second one if I “preserve formatting,” but I don’t really want to do that. I need the manuscript, as per the publisher’s instructions, to look like it was done on an IBM Selectric in 1954 (double-space, straight quotes, 12 pt Courier, etc.), but I really don’t want to compose the text that way. Am I right that this is either/or?
The book I’m working on goes to press in a week and half, so I’m busy trying to get all the formatting stuff correct. If I can get Scrivener to export from lovely to dumb automatically, I’d be just delighted.
As for 1), this should work using “Page Break Before” as you mention, but what you see will depend in which text editor you open it. If you open it in Word, the page breaks should be there. If you open it in TextEdit, you will need to make sure you choose Format > Wrap To Page to see the page breaks. Pages doesn’t recognise them at all, as Pages is absolutely dreadful at reading RTF.
With 2), you are right is that at this time you have to preserve the formatting. OR you can select to only override the font in Compile Draft > Formatting. The next update makes Compile Draft a whole lot more flexible, so it will be a lot easier to do what you want, but that won’t help you at the moment as it won’t be out for a couple of months.
Ah, that is almost certainly the problem, since I’m using Pages.
I look forward to a more flexible Compile Draft, but I can wait. It’s eash enough to impose the changes I need once the document is in a regular word processor.
Thank you so much for the speedy reply. Scrivener has been a pure joy for me as I wrangle this book into shape.
Thank you. I really wish I could provide better Pages support, too, but Apple make it very difficult at the moment, unfortunately. One thing that might help is that, whilst at present the .doc export is really a disguised RTF file (fine for Word, but Pages doesn’t like RTF), the next update uses true .doc export if there are no images, headers and footers, comments or annotations in the document. You can also export to .docx in the next update. Which means that Pages should respect the page breaks for such formats in the next update (I hope).
All the best,
Keith
Perhaps I spoke too soon. After reading your message,I assumed that I could solve the page break problem by opening it up in something else, but that seems not to be the case. Bean doesn’t honor the page breaks, and neither does OpenOffice (fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t have Word on my system. I’m actually a convert to Scrivener from LaTeX).
It sort of feels like one of those situations where I’ve hit just the right combination of switches to make things go terribly wrong. Are there any other options that might influence whether the page breaks are honored or not?
If the page breaks is your only problem when opening the exported version in Pages, can’t you just add the page breaks in Pages itself? Not an ideal solution, I know, but surely the most foolproof for now.
All of those programs should most certainly respect the page breaks. Can you zip up the project (by ctrl-clicking on it in the Finder and selecting to compress or archive the file) and send it to support AT literatureandlatte DOT com? That will be the quickest way for me to see what is going wrong. I’m pretty sure it will just be a wrong setting somewhere in your project rather than an actual bug, but either way, given your deadline, its’ best if I just take a look. I’ll delete the project from my machine once I’ve located the problem.
Thanks,
Keith
I’m having the opposite problem: when I compile my draft, the page breaks between chapters are perfect, but the whole document is also loaded with unwanted page breaks between random paragraphs. Any idea how to prevent that?
Could you explain more? Do you mean that suddenly halfway down a page there will be a page break? Did you import from Word or somewhere else? It may be that the text had page breaks in it when it was imported that you cannot see inside Scrivener itself - if so, just look at where they are in your export and go back and backspace them in your Scrivener text.
All the best,
Keith
No, that’s not like to be the culprit… One thing you can try to see if there is any invisible page break characters lurking in the text is copy a chunk of text that gets split across pages (unexpectedly) when exported and then paste it into TextEdit, making to sure to switch to Format > Wrap to Page in TextEdit. If the material breaks across two pages there, then you know that it contains some invisible page break characters that need to be deleted. If not, then you might want to zip up the project and send it to me at support AT literatureandlatte DOT com so I can look at what is going on.
Best,
Keith
I really wish I could provide better Pages support, too, but Apple make it very difficult at the moment, unfortunately. One thing that might help is that, whilst at present the .doc export is really a disguised RTF file (fine for Word, but Pages doesn’t like RTF), the next update uses true .doc export if there are no images, headers and footers, comments or annotations in the document. You can also export to .docx in the next update. Which means that Pages should respect the page breaks for such formats in the next update (I hope).