I use Scrivener for academic writing. Thus, when I heard that Scrivener let you see ‘pages’, I was excited! However, I don’t think I’ve figured it out yet. Here’s what I want to do.
I like writing in the font “Optima,” single spaced. I want this to be the default when I’m in non-wrap mode.
I need to occasionally see how many pages I’ve written (so I don’t go under or over). However, I need to see this with a 12pt, Times New Roman font — the font used to compile.
In other words, is there a way to make ‘wrap’ mode show the document how it will be compiled? I thought I found it with the “Base printed page size on ‘compile settings’,” but I can’t get it to work (Wrap and unwrap both show Optima).
No, wrap mode is just a view mode for those who like writing on virtual pages. There is no way - and will be no way unless the OS X text system radically changes - to switch to a view that allows you to edit the document seeing exactly how it would be compiled. There are various reasons for this, including:
• Font changes are permanent in OS X, so there is no way to edit a document in one font and then switch back to a version of the text using the other font, especially if you were using multiple fonts and wanted to view it all in a consistent font (possible with Compile).
• Various elements can be included in compile, including titles, synopses etc - having all of these appear in Scrivener’s text view for editing would be highly problematic.
• Even if Scrivener could do any of these things, the “compile mode view” would only be able to show you have the text would look when exported to RTFD or for printing; but Scrivener can export to a wide variety of formats, and compile mode would have no way of replicating the exact look of an epub, or even how it would look in Word.
So no, this is not the intention of wrap mode at all - to preview your text, just select “Printing/PDF” in the Compile sheet and generate a preview in Preview.app.