I never said it was a bug.
Then I’d complain to the moderators, because somebody using your name posted this:
But here’s the kicker: in both compiles, the default format is Cherry Cream Soda … but that’s not what Compile used for the paragraphs. If that’s a bug, it’s a peculiar one.
OK, you’ve had your questions answered as best I can. If you have anything sensible to ask, please do, but otherwise, I shall leave you to it. Life’s too short for silly games.
Thank you.
Don’t you see if before that’s a bug?
It would be a bug, if the claim is true that no style is default formatting. It is not.
Do you have an answer to that question?
To sum up:
I have seen multiple members say no style represents default formatting (in some way).
It does, in one way (point #1), but otherwise, it doesn’t:
no style to existing text, it changes to match the project or global default format.no style text.no style at the style dropdown in Compile’s Formatting text.no style applies to the text (by default, apparently), but it doesn’t match the default Editor format.In short, no style is an Editor-only preset (a la Scrivener 1 or 2) for the default Editor style. Nothing more, nothing less, in Scrivener 3.2.2 (Mac) at least.
All that aside, I wonder what determines the default text format in a Compile layout? In my project, it seems to be a former Editor default, but not the current default.
“No style” is not a style and is not (necessarily) the default format. “No style” simply indicates that the text does not have a named style applied. That is, it means exactly what it says.
The new text in a new document will use the default formatting, whatever that happens to be, and the format bar will indicate that there is “No Style.” You can then use the format bar to change the current or new paragraphs to whatever formatting you want. All of these will be “no style” unless and until you deliberately apply a named style. None of these will change the project- (or Scrivener-) wide default formatting, which means that new documents will again revert to the default, whatever it happens to be.
Then, when you’re ready to Compile the document, you have several options:
You can leave it alone, in which case the output will look like what you see in the Editor.
You can use Section Layouts to normalize the formatting on a document-by-document basis.
You can use the global font override to normalize the entire output file.
So to answer the specific points raised in this thread:
“No Style” is not a style and does not behave like one.
The Editor “default” formatting has no bearing on the Compile command, except to the extent that the actual text being Compiled reflects that formatting.
The Compile command, by design, can override all Editor formatting settings. Whether it actually does so depends on the settings you use. The “Compile default,” to the extent that there is one, is defined by the Section Layout(s).
As far as I can tell, everything described in this thread is expected behavior.
To see what’s happening, try creating a brand new format from scratch — don’t duplicate and edit, just create a new one.
When you look in Section Layouts, you’ll see that it already has certain layouts predefined. Click on Section Text and you’ll see that the dummy text already has a format (Times New Roman 12, no indents, no line spacing etc).
AFAICT that’s the ‘default’ default compilation text format. If you do nothing else, your editor ‘no style’ paragraphs will be compiled to this format.
But most compilation formats provided will already have changed this by ticking the ‘override’ box. (Don’t forget, just like Project Templates are only a predefined configuration set, Compilation formats are only saved configurations put together as convenient defaults to start us off. There’s nothing special about any of them.)
So, whoever initially created the compilation format you’ve been using decided to override the original Times New Roman 12pt no line spacing etc to be whatever it is you’re seeing.
I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that (I could be wrong, of course) – it has nothing to do with any Editor default at all, unless you or someone else has deliberately set it up that way.
This is not correct. Unless you check the “override” box, Compile will output what you see in the Editor. It will not change the Editor formatting unless you tell it to. (You can see this most clearly in the supplied “Default” format.)
Ah, ok? Thanks for the correction!
But the essential point remains that all no-style editor paragraphs are mapped to the overridden section layout format irrespective of what they look like in the editor – and any of the section layouts which provide in built-in compilation formats which show dummy formatted text have already been overridden.
Thanks…
I agree with all of that.
Yes. The whole point of the Compile command is that you can use whatever bizarre formatting you like in the Editor and still produce whatever output your (human) editor wants. If you want to protect non-standard text from being overridden by the Compile command, use a Style.
Quite… I’ve been trying to get that across…
Only if the “override” box is checked.
So have I. Many times.
… which by definition they have been, otherwise they’d show the ‘based on the editor’ message in the dummy layout. Exactly.
Cheers
Ah, we’re talking about two different locations.
There will always be dummy text in the Section Layout Editor’s formatting pane, which is what I was talking about. But it won’t be reflected in the Section Layout preview/assignment screen – which you were describing – unless the override box is checked.
That text has a format, whether the override button is checked or not, and that format takes effect if we check it. I wonder where that format comes from. If it’s in a template, fine, but that’s not where my Bookerly example came from.
It’s ok — I understood what you meant 
.
Because it’s rich text, it has to have some formatting, and that’s what the developer picked.
Maybe the text I didn’t format isn’t Bookerly, then … but it sure looks like it. Or maybe the layout is a copy of a layout where I did set the font. Oh well, doesn’t matter.
I never would have wondered, if I hadn’t gone down the rabbit hole trying to figure out if claims I’ve seen (or thought I saw) for no style vs default formatting were correct.
People often equate “no style” with the default formatting. It’s a useful shorthand, especially when trying to persuade Word refugees that they don’t need to Style everything. But no, it isn’t strictly true.