Text-based Scrivener links for printed works?

Scrivener Wish List
1

tl;dr version: I want to have automatically-maintained cross-references within my text, preferably including page numbers, e.g. “For more information, see Life, the Universe, and Everything on page 42.”

[size=85][i]Side Note #1: If this already exists in the program, please please tell me how to access it. I am a very new user, attempting NaNoWriMo for the very first time, and while I have tried to locate this information via Google and the forums and the manual and the tutorial… Let’s be honest, the problem might still exist between the monitor and the chair…

Side Note #2: If this already exists in a thread here in the Windows forums, please feel free to provide a link or suitable search terms. I tried browsing the numerous results for “reference”, “link”, and “Scrivener link” with no great success. My terminology may be faulty.[/i][/size]

So the project I am attempting is a campaign for a table-top game (think Dungeons & Dragons, even though you’ll be thinking wrong). As such, my work has a very “Choose Your Own Adventure” feel to it, and I need to be able to direct the reader easily to another document within the text (e.g. when the character party travels to a new city). I would expect this to be a fairly common use case in non-fiction works, in terms of “For more information, see X.” I cannot find this feature.

Google suggests that I should be able to insert a <$p> placeholder in the main text and somehow associate it with a Scrivener link to automatically compile with the page number the linked document appears on. This must be a Mac feature? The Windows manual clearly states that <$p> is only valid in the header and footer, and my test cases agree.

The Windows manual suggests that I should be able to use Edit > Update Links to Use Target Titles to at least compile with the document title (which I suppose I then combine with a hand-generated table of contents of some sort for page numbers?), but no such menu item appears to exist. Nor can I find the “Replace with Title” button also mentioned when using Project Search.

Does this functionality really not exist?

[i]P.S. Since you are clearly an avid reader to have made it this far into my frustrated* ramblings, would you care to explain also how different page number systems can be used in the footer of different sections (e.g. “front matter” using Roman numerals while the main manuscript begins with the numeral “1”)? I only see one place, in the Compile window, to enter page header and footer, but the manual (which boasts being written via Scrivener) does use this feature, and it conveniently changes the header structure based on the even/odd page layout, keeping page numbers to the outside of the “book”. Is this Mac-only as well?

  • I say frustrated, but you should know that my frustration is evidence of how wonderfully well-designed and well-implemented I have found Scrivener thus far. As a software engineer, I am accustomed to being annoyed by the design decisions and shoddy workmanship I see in the programs I must work with. Scrivener is quite simply a delight. It. Just. Works. :smiley:[/i]
2

Firstly, the stuff you see employed in the user manual could almost be done with the Windows version, but you’d have to do a little configuration to get it working. Here’s the score, the manual is written using the MultiMarkdown system, which is now available on Windows as well. The main thing that would make it difficult to compile the user manual as a project right now on Windows is that I started writing it back when MMD was at version 2, not 3, and version 2 would require some UNIX type stuff to be installed. That said, if one were to rewrite the manual with MMD 3 in mind, everything you see in the user manual can be done, via the LaTeX typesetting engine. So my caveat is mainly pointed at the “User Manual.scriv” project that exists today. One of these days when I have some spare time I’ll be updating it to MMD3 because that’s the future, and it would be nice to have a project that can be compiled on Windows without any messing about with Perl installations and whatnot. One could even forgo LaTeX entirely, using .fodt and LibreOffice on Windows. That would give you a word processor file with the flexibility to do most everything you see.

Okay, as for the non-MMD, non-LaTeX approach, you are correct in your conclusion that these link tricks do not yet work. Once implemented, you’ll be able to type in the “<$p>” thing where the page number would be, and add a Scrivener Link to that text pointing to the thing it would link to. Likewise linking to something with its binder name will keep it up to date in the compiler (if, for instance the name were changed to “12.3.2 Some Sub-Section”, you would see “Some Sub-Section” in the editor but when compiled the prefix woudl get added if the compiler adds it).

I’ll have to check the references you mention in regards to updating the title of a link. It sounds like those were mistakenly added as I don’t believe those features are implemented yet.

So how to accomplish the style of link you want: you’d probably just have to do what Mac users did for years before this function was added, and that is to use placeholder text that is easy to search for, and create those links in a word processor after you compile. Maybe someone has a Word macro for helping with that, it might be worth asking in the usage forum.

Or learn MultiMarkdown. It’s not that hard, and like I say there is a perfectly good word processor route these days via LibreOffice. In fact I’d say it’s in some ways even better than the standard outputs because it assigns everything to stylesheet values, making generating a table of contents much, much easier, and you can have live links to sections that can be styled in any fashion you prefer after compiling.