Still struggling to finish this tutorial. I’m on Step 20, which is pretty much gobbledegook to me.
"Now we’re going to tell Scrivener that the documents inside the ‘Sheets’ folder should be treated as document templates—that is, that we want to be able to create new documents based on them:
Click on the “Sheets” folder to select it.
Go to the Project menu and choose ‘Set Selection as Templates Folder’.
“After turning the ‘Sheets’ folder into a Document Template folder.
The icon of the “Sheets” folder will change to be a white ‘T’ against a blueprint, and the ‘T’ will appear in the corner of each document inside it.”
Followed these instructions, but the icon of the ‘Sheets’ folder has NOT changed to be a white T against a blueprint when I clicked ‘Set Selection as Templates Folder’.
‘Set Selection as Templates Folder’ is no longer displaying in the Projects menu - see screenshot - presumable because I’ve already selected it? So why hasn’t the icon of the ‘Sheets’ folder changed to be a white T? (And what does this all mean anyway?)
Can anyone tell me where I’ve gone wrong this time?
Incidentally, I have NO idea what this option is all about.
“Document Templates”? “New From Template”? “No Template Folder Set”??
And then: “Don’t choose anything — we’re not going to add anything, we just want to take a look” Followed almost immediately by: “We’re going to add a few different types of documents to these menus”.
You obviously have selected the right folder as the Templates folder, because you’re seeing the ‘Clear Templates Folder’ menu item in your screen shot. Not sure why the icon isn’t showing, but it’s not the important thing here. Try looking in the Project > New From Template menu. You should see the documents in the Sheets folder – here, Character sheet and Location sheet.
If you don’t, try redoing setting the templates folder.
a) select the Sheets folder in the binder.
b) choose Projects > Clear Templates folder
Then try it again
a) confirm that the Sheets folder is selected in the binder.
b) choose Projects > Set Selection as Templates folder
What happens?
The basic idea behind the document templates is simply to provide a way of having standard text in a new document.
For example, if you have a blank character sheet format, complete with headings (Name: Height: Sex: etc), but no other content, you add it to the template folder you have selected, and the character sheet becomes available in the Project > New From Template menu. Then whenever you want a character sheet, instead of having to copy the blank sheet manually, you can simply select Project > New From Template > Character Sheet.
Taking a look at the first screenshot, in the right split you will see that “Step 20” has a blue T icon. This means that you ran the menu command with that file selected instead of the “Sheets” folder. Anything at all can be a templates folder (yes, even text files since text files can act like folders in Scrivener), save for the special folders like Trash and Draft.
The instructions provided above, to clear the current assignment off of “Step 20”, and then reset it to “Sheets” should work fine.
I’m actually working on the tutorial right now, so I’ll take a look at this section and see if anything should be cleaned up. Thanks for the feedback.
Since you’re working on the tutorial… it does get a bit confusing just after the instruction to split the window. Things happen in the wrong window, and you have to keep selecting the right window (for example, when Sheets is selected in the Binder, the focus goes to the window on the right, and the page changes to a page called Sheets. Which means you can no longer read the tutorial. Unless you click the back button - which un-highlights the Sheets option in the Binder. Confusing or what?).
That bit where it says “we’re not going to select anything” and then immediately tells you that you ARE going to select something is also confusing.
Also where it says: “First let’s see what things look like without them:” Without WHAT?
Also… " To see what I mean, select the “Location” document and then click on “Add” in the toolbar so that a new blank document gets created. Name it to anything you want, and then type something inside the document."
I can create the document, but I can’t see any way to type something in it. It doesn’t open when clicked, or double-clicked.
And… “Now we’re going to tell Scrivener that the documents inside the “Sheets” folder should be treated as document templates—that is, that we want to be able to create new documents based on them:
Click on the “Sheets” folder to select it.”
When I do this, the window on the right changes.
In fact this part is confusing, period. Even though I can see where I went wrong, now that you’ve pointed it out to me, I still have no idea what that feature is all about - ie, how and why you would use it in a real document. To create characters - but didn’t we cover that in an earlier part?) What IS a templates folder anyway? It’s way more confusing to describe a function without explaining its purpose. There are several places in the tutorial where an example of how and when you would use the feature in question would make things a lot more clear.
Thanks again for your help. You have the patience of a saint : )
Did you see my explanation in my previous post? A document template is simply a ‘pro forma’ document that you can use for standard tasks.
Instead of writing out
Name:
Age:
Sex:
Interests:
Shoe-size:
every time you create a new Character sheet, you can create a Character Sheet Template, which has these headings already included. Then when you want a new Character Sheet, you simply select Project > New Document from Template > Character Sheet.
You don’t have to use the template feature for Character Sheets – you don’t have to use document templates at all. But if you have a recurring need for the same text in a document, then it’s a candidate for being a document template.
The templates folder is simply the place in which you keep your document templates. Any document placed in the templates folder automatically becomes a document template, and thereafter is available from the Project > New Document from Template menu.
