This is another “find and replace” bug, but with more detail …
So, my text uses the font Georgia (no judging …). I want to replace a directional phrase in the text (e.g., <click>) with a non-pronounceable icon from the Symbol font; this allows me to keep action notes in my document, but not have the read out to me when using text to speech.
The problem is, I can’t. I copy the symbol from the character map, but I can’t paste it into the text (it shows up as question mark. And I get inconsistent and unfortunate results when I use the find-and-replace functionality.
The only work-around I can find is to paste the symbol into MS Word, copy it from there and paste it into an unused document in Scrivener (mine is in the research folder), then copy it from there and paste it into the documents that need it. This in inefficient.
Why not use inline annotations which can be stripped out when compile. Or use comments but a specific color for your issue/ edit points. If then view documument in scrivenings view can see all comments in whole project at once. If click on your special color will take you to that place in your document. Make changes -and delete comment and move on. Can strip comments out when compile
Unfortunately, Regular Expression can only Find and Replace strings of characters. It will not change formatting. So you can replace “<click>” with “8”, but only when assigned the font Wingdings the “8” will show up as the “Computer Mouse” glyph.
Maybe you can give the “8” an non-functional Editor Style with a striking Highlight color and replace it during Compile with Compile Style that assigns it the font Wingdings (or Symbol), so Scrivener outputs the glyph you need.
Crickey! This actually works. Now I have to write instructions…
Find the character in Symbol and determine the character in a readable font. Say it’s: 8.
Replace the phrase you want to replace (<click>) with the character you found in step 1.
Give that character a Character Style in the Editor with only the Highlight color, no font family or font size
Compile to Word.
Double-click the Format you’re using (Copy and Edit your Compile Format when asked for) to open the Compile Format Designer.
Import the Editor Style with the button at the top of the Styles page:
Change the font for the Compile style to Wingdings (or Symbol) and set the font size and line height for best results.
Click Save and Compile (you can compile only a selected Binder Item for speedy results).
Scrivener transforms the character you typed to the font you’d like to see in the output:
It’s not completely automagical, I’m afraid, but it works…
Maybe replacing the string of characters with a specific Character code with RegEx is better, but you still have to assign it the Wingdings (or Symbol) font for it to show up as the glyph you want.
A symbol font character messes with line spacing in the editor, especially when the symbol is not part of the font family you’re using.
A consideration if consistent onscreen editor spacing is important to you.
Especially if you have lots of these replacements to do, it would be worth your while reading this thread. Although it relates to Mac, and seems to be working the other way round, it essentially concerns the same problem.
Something else to try is adding a document to your binder called “Scratchpad” or something, right-clicking on it, and choosing “Add to Project Bookmarks”. Now you have global access to the contents of this item in the inspector sidebar’s Bookmarks pane, which you should be able to copy and paste out from as needed. I tend to have such a “tool” in most of projects, as common notation phrases and such emerge.
If you copied and pasted it into Scrivener once, then once it is there you should be able to copy and paste it around just fine, but maybe I’m missing something.
So that’s one idea, but for this specific task, that isn’t one I would use myself, rather I would delegate this to a text expansion utility. In particular for your purposes, you would want one that can expand rich text so that the font and the symbol are inserted together. This is the kind of tool that never makes sense to install for one problem, but once you install it and start playing with it, will find all kinds of things you can do to make your typing more efficient, across the entire system. Just be wary as some are plain-text only and that won’t help you out in inserting a strange Unicode character that is only addressed by a few special fonts.
… this allows me to keep action notes in my document, but not have the read out to me when using text to speech.
So, with this I agree with what @GoalieDad said above. It sounds to me more like you are in want of a dedicated feature for adding meta commentary to your text that isn’t going to be exported, and isn’t going to be considered a part of it for the purposes of word counts, speech, and so on. That’s Comments, and you can say as much or as little as you want in them, rather than having to come up with code words and symbols.
That dodges the whole problem of finding unpronounceable symbols and trying to work with them efficiently (which is always going to be tough). But if you really want to go that route, there are symbols available in most fonts that should meet that criteria. Dashes, for example, are ignored by and large. Putting .,. into an inline annotation probably won’t change how the phrase around it is stated, for another example. It’s something that can mean something to your eye, but it can be typed almost anywhere with no special technology.
