Thought I will share the way I use scriptwriting to add missing formating functionality to Scrivener.
Since I started to use Scrivener I missed the ability to apply formating styles to the text I enter. For instance, to have one style for my own writing and another style for quotations which I like to be indented on both sides, single spaced and justified. It can be very useful to be able to tell instantly what part of the document is a quotation and what part is not. This became even more of an issue since I discovered that I can copy parts of PDFs into Scrivener as editable text. I use Skim to open a PDF, highlight a section I want to copy then hit Return which opens the text in separate window, then copy and paste into Scrivener. The problem was that the copied text looks the same as the rest of the document which can be confusing. My solution is to use the Scriptwriting menu (Text, Scriptwriting, script settings) to set up several styles. I defined the quotation style (paragraph tab) as such:
Once it is defined and scriptwriting enabled Return-Y brings up the styles menu and hitting the assigned keyboard shortcut applies the style. It is possible that there are other ways of using styles that I am not aware of, but this slightly strange way does exactly what i need, adding a useful word-processing functionality to Scrivener.
You can create styles for all programs using the Apple TextEngine (like Scrivener does) and set keyboard shortcuts in the OS preferences.
Then you can apply them by keyboard shortcut in any of theses programs as long as the ruler is visible (important!).
It is not very comfortable to do so but once it is set you can use it cross applications which is great.
Beside from that I find this thread very interesting. Just recently I played around a little with a script project to see what you can do with it. I have never used it as I haven’t written a script (yet?) but I was curious like you if I could find a use for it.
Hi. I’ve been trying to find a way to assign keyboard shortcuts to styles in OS but keep hitting dead-ends. Any tips on where this can be done? Thanks.
Did you check out the tips here? They can be applied to setting up style shortcuts too. They work for anything that has a menu in a Mac program. What you have to be wary of though is that the menu must be visible. If you have the ruler hidden, then the style shortcuts you have set up will be unavailable.
Ahhhhh…I get it… I didn’t realise the style drop-down list on the ruler was technically a menu. Thank you for that - I think you just made my note-taking about 5% faster!
Nice idea, but a 52cm right indent?!