I’m trying to change the font in a project (actually, 4 different projects).
Maybe I’m doing this wrong? I selected everything in the Binder when all docs were expanded and showing, then selected all text in the Editor, and changed the font in the bar at the top.
That appears to work. One would think Scrivener would obey that command, right? The old font should be now on the dustbin of history.
But if I happen to revise a line of dialogue or something into a different style, it changes back to the old font, like a ghost font that keeps returning to haunt me. What in the world is up with that?
My styles include the option ‘save paragraph style’, but now I wonder if I should redefine them to ‘save all formatting’. I’m reluctant to make a change with a possible collateral damage effect in the entire 230K-word project.
I also tried to change the font in the global and project settings. I want to use one font, but I want it to remain the same font, everywhere.
It doesn’t seem to make sense that a style change would blindly change the font to a font I don’t want anymore. Is there a setting I’m missing? Or is this a bug? Or a feature?
I believe you did the right thing at the step where you went and also changed the font in the default formatting settings (Options or per project, depending on which your projects are set to use), only, you seem to have missed the step where in order for this to have any effect on pre-existing documents, you also need to convert them to default formatting.
(Without this crucial step, your documents still have the old formatting as their “no style”.)
Once the default formatting is set as you want it, select your documents in the binder, then : Document / Convert / Text to Default Formatting.
Make sure to have a backup first, in case.
Also note that any and all formatting tweaks you had previously done to “no style” text in the editor in order to have things looking the way you want them to was unnecessary. Next time, skip that. – Converting your documents to the new default formatting does it.
!! → If you tweaked “no style” text without the use of a style, this will be lost in the operation, just like it would have later at compile, to the exception of compiling with the formatting as-is.
In other words : if you formatted your documents as if Scrivener was WYSIWYG, you might prefer to endure your current pickle. (Just don’t do it again.)
. . . . . . . .
It can be seen as a feature, as proper manipulation allows to create templates for documents with different formatting as their default.
Thanks for that, Vincent. You’re always a big help, and I appreciate this.
It turned out to be quite an adventure. My styles were a mess. I had a dozen that were not relevant to the project, so I had to search for them one-by-one in ‘Find by Formatting’ to make sure, then I deleted all that were not relevant.
Then I had to redefine all the ones I’m using to ‘save all formatting’ including the font size, bc when I tried to convert text to default formatting, it would blow up the font size. This is likely bc I changed the font size to 12 about a year ago, and while I converted the text wholesale to 12, the styles they came from might have had some legacy font size that was larger.
Although, when I invoke a style directly, it keeps the text at its current 12 pt., so I’m not sure what was going on.
There is this one odd thing I’ve seen often, which is when I redefine a style, sometimes, while it apparently does take the font and embed that in the style, it also defaults the passage I’m defining it from, to Helvetica. That, I’m pretty sure is a bug, and it’s been there for a long time.
I have to admit that I am quite confused by your answer.
I take it I misdiagnosed your issue, but… if your styles were “paragraph formatting”, all you’d then have to do is uncheck the boxes to include font family and size.
Making them “save all formatting” only added character attributes to their parameters, and I can’t see how that’s useful in any way, in the current situation…
There are three things at work determining what font a piece of text displays in the editor:
The default paragraph setting (for Scriv and for the project)
The defined style (if any) associated with the text.
Any ad hoc alteration you make to the text (as you did by selecting all and manually changing the font setting of the selected).
It sounds like your initial problem was that you had an unholy mix of these things and were not clear where the font specifications were coming from.
I agree with VV that the way you resolved to gain control is probably not the best – and is likely to give you trouble later. You are really better off not baking the font choice into every defined style – or to bak it in at all unless you have a very special style you are defining. (Also, why save all attributes anyway when there is a checkbox specifically for preserve font?)
I suspect Vincent was on the right track. You did not change your default font setting, so the old font came back to haunt you, because it is still set as the default. It will still come back to haunt you!