Somehow, I have a project set up so that whenever I go into cork board mode for most containers, it’s in freeform mode. I’d prefer that it default to the standard grid layout corkboard, but I can’t figure out how to reset this default for the project. Help? 
I don’t think there is such a switch anywhere, it should always just be linear mode by default for new folders, but persistent on a per-container basis once set. Have many of the containers in this project perhaps been created either by duplication or the document template feature? That is a setting that will carry over.
Unlikely. Some of the documents I have in this project date back to Scrivener v1.
Is there a way to reset this all this en masse? It seems to affect every single file (even files that have never been containers, as far as I can recall) and folder in the project, except for the ones I’ve explicitly changed to linear mode.
I’m reasonably comfortable with any solution that involves a VIM session and some regex fun, if I know what to look for and in what file(s), if that opens up some possibilities.
Very weird, maybe there is a setting for that somewhere. Could you drop me a copy of the project to take a look at? Anyway, yes it would be easy to wipe these out: do a global search and replace to remove all instances of Yes from the .scrivx file.
At least that is how it should work. If there is a deeper issue that may only temporarily solve things, if at all.
It’s been a busy couple of days, but sure. I’ll PM you with a Dropbox link shortly.
Take a look at the ‘leaf’ nodes at the tips of the binder tree. Even regular documents, when selected and switched to corkboard mode, show freeform. You’ll find some of the oldest text documents (possibly dragged in from another project) in the Ideas folder.
FYI, there were 454 items with a Yes setting. There’s a slim chance that some of them were created from a template with that setting, but as I said, some were from a project I had in V1; and I can’t imagine there was a time that I selected every document individually and set it to FreeForm mode. Is it possible this was a global setting in some 2.x version, and that the setting was removed later?
I noticed that on a test copy of the project, if I deleted the Yes bit, it left a lot of empty
[code]
</CorkboardSettings>[/code]
blocks. Should I be worried about that?
Also, I found some entries like this:
[code]
<FreeformCorkboardDocuments>
<IndexCardBinderID Position="0.093333,0.043333" TimeStamp="2015-02-06 12:12:36 -0600">597</IndexCardBinderID>
</FreeformCorkboardDocuments>
</CorkboardSettings>
[/code]
…and like this:
<CorkboardSettings>
<FreeformMode>No</FreeformMode>
<FreeformCorkboardDocuments>
<IndexCardBinderID Position="0.066667,0.056667" TimeStamp="2014-11-11 14:20:54 -0600">8</IndexCardBinderID>
<IndexCardBinderID Position="1.166667,0.096667" TimeStamp="2014-11-11 14:20:54 -0600">12</IndexCardBinderID>
</FreeformCorkboardDocuments>
</CorkboardSettings>
Should I have just changed Yes to No instead of deleting the “yes” lines? Or should I seek to obliterate the entire block wherever I find it?
It’s okay, you can leave a bit of a mess behind, it will clean this up for you, but if you really want you could remove the whole CorkboardSettings leaf—I didn’t suggest that in the case that you did have some freeform corkboards you meant to have. Wiping out the whole thing would remove any card positions. It doesn’t hurt to leave them, that is exactly what happens when you toggle back to linear for a while. When you return to freeform, everything would be how you left it (barring any cards added during linear usage, of course).
Hmm, maybe there was a beta feature? It’s been so long since all of that was finalised that I don’t really remember if there was an experimental option to prefer freeform always.
What is strange is that it seems to keep doing that with newly created items as well. I’ll see what Keith things about that.
Be careful that those new files are produced via the Default New Subdocument setting for the container; That project has seen it all.
Edit: I didn’t remove the XML freeform tag from the project I shared with you.
I have a few like that. 
I’m pretty sure the poor user manual project has been through nearly the entire 2.x development cycle, from the “1.6 beta” that never happened, on through alphas, 2.0 and up to 2.6. It gets a little cranky sometimes. 
Well, I’m not getting freeform on new folders and files, this is something you definitely see? I mean, I do if I use any of the templates, naturally, because those have been affected by whatever happened to mass enable the feature, but just hitting Opt-Cmd-N in Research and then Return seems to produce a normal pair for me.
Well, no. Now that I make sure to create a file without using a template, it’s not set as a freeform corkboard type container. It’s mostly a question of how the hell did I manage to make all the previously created files act that way?
The xml search & destroy works well enough for me, so I’m happy with the solution from this point forward. I may end up wiping out all the corkboard settings; leaving all that cruft behind makes me twitchy, now that I’ve seen it with my own two eyes.
Okay, we figured out the culprit! As I was going through the package files, I noted that it had been opened in the Windows version at some point, as it had some INI files. So we double-checked, and it turns out the Windows version is inserting that code whenever it can. Presumably it was a piece of test code, from an earlier alpha, that went unnoticed and is now chugging along in a broken state, setting everything to “Freeform Yes!” as it goes. 
So, that’s on the priority bug list now, thanks!
Please pass along the stink-eye to Lee & Tiho for me, would you.
I’m glad that mystery is solved. I guess I’ll “need” to clean up my projects once the bug is fixed then?
Yeah, when it gets annoying again, clear them out with a text editor.