[Suggestion] Almost a Bug: A couple of Essential Compile Options Missed

[biblioman]

So far as the Compiler has been or at least next to be ready for release, any proposal about missed options in it sounds a little belated. I do believe, however, that the following matter is not only practically, but (even more) conceptually important, and in a way should be considered as a bug.

I must say here, I rarely use the Compiler and almost never its settings. I do not need much from it because what I do in Scrivener is mostly organizing my sources, writing, editing, and moving fragments. When writing is done, all I need is just a correct final .ODT-file. (Just in case, I do not think I am the only one with this approach.)

The ‘correct’ means that all the parts of the text are in place, including ‘body’, quotes, headers, etc., and the style structure is preserved. The latter is essential: each style is first of all a functional part of the text (quotation block, or emphasized word, etc.) and only then a collection of some typeface attributes.

In practice, it means I can open my file in LibreOffice, load previously defined set of styles from other .odt-file or template, and the document would be perfectly re-formatted—in just a couple of mouse clicks.

The idea of ‘No Style’ paragraphs still seems doubtful in this context, but it’s not a problem at all: the ‘unstyled’ paragraphs end as ‘Normal’ style in LibreOffice: there is some text and its specific style. The real problem I have just found is that all footnotes get the same ‘Normal’ style as the main text, which is obviously incorrect, and I found no option to correct it.

So (1): While there is a special tab for ‘Footnotes and Comments’ options, I am sure the option to assign all footnotes (and probably endnotes) a special style—built-in or, better, user-defined—is obvious necessity and hopefully not a fundamental technical problem.

In direct connection with that is (2): in ‘Transformations’ tab there is equally obvious lack of converting all italics (optionally underlines too) to ‘em’ (or maybe some user-defined) font style. It is actually of great importance because you can lost all your italics, and underlines, and any other ‘direct formatting’ when you apply a command like ‘Clear Direct Formatting’ to a paragraph in a word-processor (and, by the way, layout system like InDesign).

I think it is just important enough and (I hope) not too expensive in technical terms—so decided to place it here.

Just in case—I am not sure the points have never been discussed on the forum before–if so, my sincere apologies for this unnecessary long-read and repetition.

[rwfranz]

@biblioman

So (1): While there is a special tab for ‘Footnotes and Comments’ options, I am sure the option to assign all footnotes (and probably endnotes) a special style—built-in or, better, user-defined—is obvious necessity and hopefully not a fundamental technical problem.

In compile you can override the footnotes font. Just tested it and it works. so if you want your footnotes in 24-point bold Arial, you can do that (provided it’s installed on your Windows machine). Some few other things with footnotes, you can change in compile.

[biblioman]

@rwfranz

@biblioman

So (1): While there is a special tab for ‘Footnotes and Comments’ options, I am sure the option to assign all footnotes (and probably endnotes) a special style—built-in or, better, user-defined—is obvious necessity and hopefully not a fundamental technical problem.

In compile you can override the footnotes font. Just tested it and it works. so if you want your footnotes in 24-point bold Arial, you can do that (provided it’s installed on your Windows machine). Some few other things with footnotes, you can change in compile.

Thank you, rwfranz. Of course, I’ve spent some time to explore available compiling options, and am aware of the one you mentioned. It is by no means what is necessary, just because it is, firstly, another direct formatting over a wrong style (so there is no chance to update it via Style parameters in the final document), and, secondly, it is about fonts only, but the footnote is a special paragraph with specific parameters, and we have no way to set them effectively in this situation.

To feel it better, just try to format exported footnotes in LibreOffice (I suspect if you play with MS Word instead, it won’t be easier.) As long as you don’t utilize special Footnote style, you will have to change each footnote manually, and, what is even worse, you will probably have to apply this special style to each Footnote individually. And on top of it, you will probably have to remove (manually) direct formatting set by Scrivener too. It is hardly a pleasure if you have a dozen footnotes, not to say about 200+.

Last not the least—some general note. The current situation is perfectly all right in terms of Scrivener 1 for Win, where styles were just a collection of formatting attributes to apply but did not exist as such. Scrivener 3 is a great step forward, and what I am writing about is just setting some local options in accordance with the new conception of styles.