I am just getting started with scrivener and trying to get things sorted out. Going by what I read the program features presets for text formatting. Apparently they somewhat resemble styles in MS Word. Anyway, I can not find any reference whatever to presets in the program I am looking at.
The only current way that I can figure out to change the text and paragraph style is one item at a time. That would be the font, the points or scale of the font, paragraph type and so on.
This feature isn’t in the current stable version, but rather in the public beta. You can check it out from the beta test forum if you wish. There are a lot of other improvements as well, and it is still going through testing, so if you do try it, be a little extra careful with your data.
Basically it will let you store a set of formatting attributes together in a named preset, so you can click “Block quote” in a menu, say, and have everything about block quote formatting applied to the text. It’s not like stylesheets though. The result is not a paragraph marked as “block quote”, but a paragraph that looks like one, for most people that doesn’t really matter. If you expect to change what a block quote looks like later and have it fixed everywhere, however, that’s not what this feature will provide. Full stylesheets is a complicated can of worms for another time.
Can I take that to mean that it’s reasonably safe to use it, provided I save/backup frequently, and that there are no (known) issues backing up from inside the beta? Cos I’d really like to use it, but was steering clear while first learning the program.
Yes, there are no known issues with backup or saving or anything of that critical nature. There is a bug in the current beta where the compile formatting cannot be adjusted, so if you need to override formatting in compile you’ll have to switch back to the 1.6.1 release for that. It doesn’t lose any formatting you had set, just doesn’t let you update it.
It’s possible to have both the 1.6.1 release and the beta installed side by side, if you like, by installing the beta to a different location; a number of the beta testers do this. Note though they will share preferences, custom templates, etc. If you run the beta, we also recommend a thorough uninstall of all the versions before installing the new official release once it’s out. That won’t affect your custom templates, compile presets, etc. but will wipe your preferences; you can save them first using the Manage button in Tools > Options and then reimport them after installing.
Thanks, MM, for the info and for the suggestion to uninstall all previous version before installing the official new release. Being able to save preferences is a really nice thing generally, but in this particular case it really comes in handy.
I see that it’s possible to have 1.6.1 and the beta not only installed side by side, but to have them running simultaneously. That makes comparisons much easier, but is there any reason why it’s not recommended?
