I was under the impression that Scrivener 3.0 uses its own text engine rather than relying on the underlying Mac OS text engine. But:
trying to copy plain (UTF) text from another document.
There’s no “copy plain text” option.
Copying activated autonumbering, even though this is set to “None” on the edit bar.
There are no styles to turn off.
Is there a secret setting keeping autonumbering on?
I was under the impression that Scrivener 3.0 uses its own text engine rather than relying on the underlying Mac OS text engine. But:
trying to copy plain (UTF) text from another document.
There’s no “copy plain text” option.
Copying activated autonumbering, even though this is set to “None” on the edit bar.
There are no styles to turn off.
Is there a secret setting keeping autonumbering on?
I’m not compiling. Just drafting a document.
No, it does use the Apple text engine still. Have you tried “Paste and Match Style”, which matches the style, even “no Style” of your document, not the original—i.e. it is plain text paste?
Mark
Now compiling, and Scrivener has added unwanted numbers to the document.
Numbering was inserted manually in the draft. There is no automatic numbering.
In the Compile => Format section you referred to, there is nothing to turn off that references autonumbering.
The top image is pre-compile, the bottom post-compile.
imgur.com/gallery/Y7NgMJk
The internal Scrivener “Modern” compile setting to .docx still inserted unwanted paragraph numbers.
Tried the screenplay setting, just for the hell of it. Screenplays don’t have outlines or numbered lines, right? They are plain text documents, right? No matter. Scrivener still inserted unwanted paragraph numbers.
Tried the “Manuscript (Times)” internal setting. No matter. Scrivener still inserted unwanted paragraph numbers.
Tried the “Enumerated Outline” option–maybe two negatives would cancel each other? No joy. Scrivener still inserted unwanted paragraph numbers.
Tried Modern Outline, but unchecked everything. No matter. Scrivener laughed and added unwanted paragraph numbers.
Opened Word. Is there any way to remove these once Word has put them there?
No.
Same with Textmaker, a Word clone.
And people say, "why do you bother with LaTeX?
Because there you can figure out what is going on.
I haven’t used Scrivener for a while, because it just so happens that whenever I use it, “just so happens” that I have a fringe use case which causes, what? Seven compile efforts, two document openings, four forum posts/responses, two posts on a third party image posting site, a failed effort to make a collage. Still no answer. And that pushes me away.
A couple of additional experiments, with odd results.
Compiled to plain text. Scrivener would not be defeated so easily. It added the hated, unwanted, uncommanded paragraph numbers. Why??
Tried pandoc=>Word (docx).
Sending the document through a Haskell black box without even a graphical interface to Word where the autonumbering virus originated, would do what?
Still, the uncommanded, unwanted paragraph numbers were added. BUT
the carefully curated section numbers were all deleted.
Every.
Single
one.
What now?
To clarify:
- When drafting a document, is there any way to paste plain text besides copying the contents of the clipboard to Emacs/Vim to strip everything out (possibly problematic because I need UTF characters) and then selecting again, copying again, and then, and only then, copying into Scrivener?
1.1 This is during the document drafting process on and in Scrivener.
Hours later…the first draft is finished. Time to circulate the work amongst greater minds.
Try to compile–and unwanted paragraph numbers are added to the entire document.
What setting is causing Scrivener to add these during the compile process? They are not in the draft.
What setting can be turned OFF to insure that these numbers are not generated during compile?
Scrivener for MacOS 3.1.5, Mac v. 10.12.6 (“Sierra”)
–Compiling to Markdown didn’t work. Same issue.
–Compiling to LaTeX didn’t work. Same issue. But at least I could fix it. Doc looks like crap though, all the paragraph separators are gone (a paragraph separator is two carriage returns in LaTeX, which otherwise ignores blank space in a *.tex file. Scrivener stripped those out. Uncommanded.
I think at this point I’ve tried everything. SOMETHING in Scrivener is adding paragraph numbers and there doesn’t appear to be an (obvious) way to remove this already hidden, MCAS-like command.
(“They’ll never need it, so need to tell them about it.”)
Boring update: I can see from the compiled LaTeX file where Scrivener turned on automatic numbering. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to turn it off from inside Scrivener. In the LaTex file, it is easy. But then I’m stuck with a no-collaboration LaTeX file. The contract gods want Word.
ps: Just searched for the word “autonumbering” in the 910 A4 page Scrivener MacOs manual, December, 2019 Revision 3.1.4.1-01.
And
the word is not in the book. “Auto-numbering” is. Search reports an instance of that word on p.154. But it’s not there. Same with 179,180. Page 274? Auto-load is not “auto-number.” It would appear that RTFM doesn’t work here.
Finally, here’s something potentially useful:
" Theprefix is using the <$hn> auto-number placeholder to generate1.1,1.1.2, 1.2.4... style numbering to the title. It is surrounded in square brackets and is followed by a tab character. We could use that tab to space the number out from the title further if we wanted."
But alas! the <$hn> prefix is nowhere to be found!
Here’s a lead, from page 664:
“As demonstrated in some of our built-in formats, such as “Manuscript (Times)”, a number of captioning shortcuts have been added, so that you needn’t type in full auto-number codes every time you wish to caption or refer to a figure or table. This kind of utility will be useful to many projects.”
But in the Manuscript (Times) template, the wicked <$hn> is nowhere to be found.
Then on page 691, this:
Printing with Placeholders and Number Tokens
The basic document print tool will not evaluate placeholder tags or the more complicated uses of auto-number counters in your documents. If you wish to print with these evaluated, you should select the documents you wish to print, and then use File ▸ Compile… with either the Contents tab’s compile group set to “Current Selection”, or the use of “Current Se- lection” as a filter (subsection 23.4.1).
I don’t want to evaluate them. I want them off. Unfortunately, there’s no explanation in this nearly 1000 page document as to how to do that.
Help=>List of all Placeholders triggers a pop-up which consists of a catalog and a manual concerning how to put these in your document. Great. Now if only there was a way:
–to reveal these hidden characters, so they can be deleted
–a way to delete them from (a) (any) menu bar.
But still
no joy.
Maybe an export to hex; then the errant bytes could be deleted there.
But you would have to know the hex value of that autonumbering (excuse me) auto-numbering code. <$hn>? <$n> or…?
Surely there’s an easier way than a hex export.
Finally, a work around:
- Purchase Vellum. It’s only $250, no discounts.
- Rummage around and find the Scrivener Vellum Export template. This may come with Scrivener, it may be a Vellum add-on; I don’t remember.
- Compile document for Vellum. You will get a .docx file.Vellum can’t open anything else.
- Open document with Vellum. The conversion will, initially look bad. The title pages consisting of one word; there may be a few of them. Keep trashing these until, finally
- Your document appears as a chapter. Without the extra, uncommanded Scrivener autonumbering. The angels sing.
But you’re not finished.
- File=>Export to RTF (it’s the only export choice).
- Open the rtf file in Word.
- A little minor tweaking, but your original numbering has been preserved with no unwelcome, uncommanded additions.
One might well wish there was a less complex, less expensive alternative.
But there doesn’t seem to be.
If you haven’t yet tried it, "Edit->Paste and March Style" may do what you want. There’s a keyboard shortcut but I don’t have it memorised.
If you’ve already tried it, I apologise for taking your time.
Hope this helps!
Anyone? Bueller?
In Scrivener, select the problem text and assign Format -> List -> None.
Does that help?
(It’s a long thread; forgive me if you already tried that.)
Katherine
You’ve posted a lot of stuff here, so I may be missing something in the skimming…
From what I can tell, you have two separate issues.
First, you are pasting in text, and that text is numbering paragraphs as if it was a numbered outline.
Second, you are compiling the titles (and synopses/other metadata?) as an outline, and that compilation is numbering each entry as an enumerated outline.
It’s going to be very hard to get help if you mix the two issues, as the solutions will be very different and will confuse explanations and back-and-forth discussion about each.
For the first issue, are you sure the original text source wasn’t an enumerated outline to start? If you just delete the numbers, the invisible rich text metadata is still going to say “these paragraphs are numbered automatically”, and pasting them into a rich text editor like Scrivener will trigger it to “re-number” the pasted text from 1, causing those deleted numbers to re-appear.
Is that what you’re seeing when you paste text? It would be helpful know more about the source --what word processor-- for instance. Also, in the source editor, try selecting the problem paragraphs, and then adding outline numbering (in Word, that’s done with the numbered outline button in the toolbar), and then removing the numbering (again, using the same interface that adds automatic numbering).
If you want to also discuss compiling while still sussing out what’s happening with pasted text, I’d suggest starting a new thread devoted to that.