If you only want to get an idea of what your text looks like on the page, I have a feeling that you don’t need Compile yet (not that I’ve ever ventured near the thing). But you can set up the document you’re using in Editor to your desired requirements via the formatting bar at the top (which looks like the one in an ordinary word processor, and offers font, point size, bold, underline, italics, line spacing and all the usual goodies). Just put it into single line spacing for working purposes (if that’s your preference), with your chosen font & size, etc. You’ll need to click on the text in the main body of the document for the format bar to activate.
Bottom line, Editor and Binder are your friends. Stick with them until some of the dust settles. (It’s still settling for me too.) I loaded in a bunch of dummy pages ripped from GutenbergOrg to experiment with - thus does Alice in Wonderland hang out with Huck Finn and Ebenezer Scrooge and Dracula. I’ll miss them when I graduate to Real Work.
I’ve also read (don’t ask me where: my brain is a giant bowl of mush from information-overload) that it’s probably best at this tenderfoot stage to choose “No Style” (click the drop-down menu of Styles to the left on the formatting bar) which presumably keeps things as uncomplicated as possible.
Once you’re happy with your page settings, if you wish to make this a blank template for all your pages, first clone a copy of the DOCUMENT* in your Binder which you’ve been using: Right click on its icon in the Binder’s sidebar, then hit “Duplicate”. Rename the new copy “My Template” or something generic like that, open it up, and strip all the text out. You’ll probably also want to set a half-inch indent tab.
Then go to the Format menu, scroll down to “Make formatting default” and click on it. You’ll be asked whether you want this to apply only to the project you’re currently working in, or all of them; so just pick whichever option you like. This means that any time you create a fresh page, it will be set up the way you want it (though you can always change things on an individual new page, which won’t affect the template).
To see your work as it would look on the printed page, from within the Editor:
Go to Page View (View > Text Editing > Show Page View) which displays either one page or a double spread, depending on which you select.
From this you can read your work on your screen, or print it out (File > Print Current Document), or save a PDF of it. (I’m on a Mac so I’m not sure how Windows does that these days, but I seem to recall it’s through its print command.)
To get back out of Page View, retrace those same steps cited above, but now you click Hide Page View.
Speaking of the File menu, make sure you have your page set to “US Letter” if you’re in America, or A4 if in Britain/Ireland - not sure what the rest of Europe does. So: File > Page Setup > Paper Size and choose from its drop-down menu.
- (I shouted “document” in caps above because you need to beware of “Save As” in the File menu, for reasons I can’t even remember - but they were pretty daunting so steer clear for now.)
Whew… guess that’s enough bombardment for now! Hate ta tell ya what time it is here…
PS: I love that word Gack. My new fave.
