Is it possible to set what format should be used when a new line is entered? For example, if the line I’m entering is a heading, I would like the format of the next line to be body when I press enter. This is one of the things I liked about MS Word. I didn’t see the option any where in the Scrivener options, but I may not be looking in the right place.
No, these aren’t actually styles in the sense that you might be thinking of in Word. They are just formatting macros, and so once you use them there is nothing that ties the text back to that particular macro you used—and thus there is no way for “line 37” to know that you once used “Heading” to change the formatting, and that “Body” should follow “Heading”.
What I do is type-then-style later on (even if only a few letters later) for cases where I do not have a shortcut set up for the formatting preset I wish to use or return to. I have most of them wired up with shortcuts though, so I hit Ctrl-I to indent for bullets, then Ctrl-B to return to default as I type.
No it’s not possible. The formatting presets are just that … format painters, if you like … not proper styles as in Word. The Apple text engine that Scrivener uses doesn’t provide proper styles.
This is something that has been coming up since Scrivener 1 was launched on an admiring public, but as has been made clear by Keith, to achieve it would require that he — a single developer — would have to write his own text engine.
Styles are on the road map, as we all would love them, but will have to wait until L&L have enough funds to hire a team either to write a proprietary text editor or to do a massive amount of hacking of the Apple text engine. Microsoft (and Mellel/Redlers) have taken the first route; Nisus have taken the second. But none of those are single individuals, and they’re (just 8) ) producing single document word processors, not a whole extremely flexible and powerful drafting environment like Scrivener.
So for the moment, after your lines of heading, you’ll have to remember to switch back to your base preset whatever that is, I’m afraid.
Mark
Edit: As so often happens, it seems Ioa got there first!
Thanks for the detailed responses. I see what you’re up against. It’s no big deal as it only takes a couple of mouse clicks to change it. Now I’ll just have to figure out how to switch back to my base preset.
Look into using keyboard shortcuts for oft used presets. Like I say, that’s what I do and it’s very nice. Just hit the shortcut at any point in the paragraph and you’re done.