To add a file, the sequence is File=>Import=>Files.
Unless that file is an image.
Then it’s:
Why is there a difference? Is it because under the MacOS you can’t copy an image to the clipboard?
A file is a file is a file is a file.
No, it’s because the Draft/Manuscript cannot contain an image unless it’s embedded in a text document.
Mark
A draft should be able to contain an image. Lots of word processors have this functionality.
True, LaTeX does not. Nor does Markdown. But they are plain text. Scrivener is not.
Draft can contain an image. You can’t drag/drop it into the Draft section of the Binder, but you can insert it in an existing document, even an otherwise empty one.
That’s because they embed the image in a single text document. Scrivener’s Draft folder is not a text document and each document within it is a separate text document. But an image is not a text document, so it has to be embedded in one, just as it is in those word processors you mention.
And to be clear, word processors do not let you import .jpg files into the Navigator list either, which is the only thing even kind of close to how Scrivener’s binder works. So that statement is kind of confusing in general as you’re talking about a capability they do not have in the first place: inserting files of any kind into the “document” in some kind of list.
I bet if they did allow that though, they still wouldn’t let you put such files into the heading list, which is again the closest analogy to the Draft area of the binder, even though it can express outlining details that do not directly correlate to headings.
True, LaTeX does not. Nor does Markdown. But they are plain text. Scrivener is not.
You might say that from a certain perspective, but even then the best way to insert images in Scrivener is directly similar to how these tools insert images too: with a plain-text link to the image rather than dumping vast quantities of megabytes into the text file itself. So the only difference at that point is a matter of presentation, and some Markdown/LaTeX editors even go the point of showing the linked image thumbnail like Scrivener does. It’s the editor that matters, not so much the file format.
I.e. we can describe Scrivener’s RTF files in the same exact way: a plain-text file with markup in it that might contain pointers to images.
And back to how such Markdown/LaTeX editors also work: none of them will let you import a .jpg file into their ToC listing sidebar. With pretty much everything, Scrivener included, you need to point to where you want the image in the text and insert it (and with LaTeX it is of courses a more sensible declaration of: please put this image around here where it fits best with the text flow).
I put an image into a Word file and imported it into Scrivener. No problem.
Interesting.
I learned this LaTeX switch [H] which forces the placement of Tables. Doesn’t work for graphics or figures:
\begin{table}[H] % [H] forces placement of table
Sure, I don’t really know how that pertains though, since I am sure you imported it into the text rather than into the navigator view, which is closer to what the binder is. You can import images into the text in Scrivener too, though like I say, it’s most often better to link to them somehow.
You can Import images into the Research folder just fine.
The Draft folder is unique in that it can only contain text files. As others have noted, this is the same behavior you see in Word et. al.