Is it possible to create a second compile group that isn’t a collection? I have some chapters of backstory that I don’t want in my actual novel, but I want to be able to compile out. So I made a folder at the top level between the “draft – named after my book” folder and the Research folder. I would like to be able to select that as a compile group. I could make a collection, but this seems awkward as the backstory has multiple chapters in it is well, it just isn’t part of the main book.
I couldn’t find anything in the manual that gave me much insight. This is all 2.0 (209x build).
Why not make it a collection? A collection can include documents in the binder which are not necessarily part of your novel, and including them in a collection does not automatically incorporate them into the novel.
I have collections in a current project which include documents I’ve already decided to omit, but which I want to be able to access for comparison, or background.
You can just compile subdirectories of the Draft folder. So, move the files in your Draft folder into a subfolder (“Main Draft” or whatever) at the top of your Draft folder, then move your other folder to the bottom of the Draft folder. Then you can choose which you want to compile in the “Contents” pane of Compile - the “Main Draft” folder or the one below it (or selecting the “Draft” would compile both).
I made a collection but it feels “awkward” as they already have a place in the binder and a hierarchy, and if I modified that I’d have to keep rebuilding the collection. I don’t want them in the draft folder either because they aren’t really part of the book and I don’t want them in the WC or anything like that.
So I take it there is no automatic second compile group, I had assumed since there was a compile group there would be. But I guess this is slightly similar to my thinking about hierarchical collections that we discussed a couple months ago. I’m a programmer, so I like to think of things “less manually.” In my mind collections that included folders in a meta way (in that anything inside them would also be in the collection dynamically, but shown in the normal binder way) is part of how I think about it. But this does require a distinction between a “dynamic” collection element and a “static” one. I’m not really sure that a static one makes much sense to me – as I can’t see having a folder in a collection without it’s contents, or with different contents, but I guess someone might.
Sorry, but what exactly is wrong with my suggestion of using subfolders of the Draft folder? That is the intended way of doing this sort of thing. You can have as many compile groups as you want. The Draft folder is just the place that contains anything you want compiled. Rename it “Drafts” and have several “Draft” subfolders…
Just select “Compile ignoring levels outside the current compile group” in processing options and any subfolders selected get treated as though they were the root, so you don’t need to change anything.
An option to include the contents of folders in Collections in the compile is a good idea, though. I may put a checkbox next to the pop-up button for collections for this purpose.
