It certainly is no surprise. There is no right answer where it comes to defaults though. If you trawl through Windows threads, where there is no fixed width editor mode, you’ll find threads of people trying to figure out how to make it so the text isn’t as wide as the screen, doing such things as making the inspector or binder as wide as possible, etc.
However it is presented by default. there will be people trying to change it, and if the option isn’t there at all, people will go to great lengths to try and achieve it.
Ohh, thank you so much! I found the huge white margins and narrow text incredibly distracting, and after struggling to write for a while I took to the forums. Much better now.
Had I known there was a What’s New appendix to the documentation, I’d definitely have read it, but well, I did not
I’m relatively new to Scrivener, but I relied upon the word wrap feature in the previous version.
I’ve unticked the box for “fixed page width,” but nothing seems to have changed. I also tried changing the margins from the preferences pane, etc, but the display does not seem to update.
Are you referring to Page View? That’s a separate option; a little more aggressive than fixed width editing view even. You can enable it with View/Text Editing/Show Page View.
Granted, it kind of sounds like you’re describing how things work with that feature already enabled—as fixed width doesn’t modify how it works and thus changing the setting or adjusting the margin settings would have no effect on it.
Yep, looks like Page View was enabled… and thus the word wrap workaround was a moot point.
Really seems silly that they got rid of that nice little button for word wrap. If they wanted a cleaner display, even putting a word wrap on/off tick in the view menu would’ve been neater.
If so, you can set up a macro (which obviously you can give a short cut) which you can set to open preferences, go to the Appearances tab, click on Main Editor, and toggle the Fixed Width tick box, before closing preferences.
A bit fiddly to set up, but after that it’s easy to use and worth the effort if you want to do this regularly. You can set it to record your actions and turn it into a macro, which simplifies things, though.
If you don’t have Keyboard Maestro yet, it’s really worth exploring — I use it all the time. E.g I’ll put this new macro on a ‘palette’ (KM floating menu), which I pull up with opt-M. It has several useful macros on triggered by a single letter, so I don’t have to remember all the keystrokes. E.g opt-m r invokes a macro Reset Find Options to set the standard Project Search menu dropdown to the default options so I don’t have to use the mouse after I’ve used a Regex search, for example.
I have four of these palettes, just for Scrivener alone. I’m not an employee or affiliate — but I do recommend Keyboard Maestro for anyone who wants to save time with regular tasks. You can set it to sync between Macs, so you don’t have to mess around repeating shortcuts – I almost never use System Preference shortcuts now — much easier to keep them in KM and then they’re there forever.
Under what conditions are you finding it useful to toggle that setting so frequently, out of curiosity? I’m the sort that has had it enabled 100% of the time for over a decade, so it’s not something I’ve anticipated.
I just like to make changes as I work, forcing me to view text in different ways. I regularly/hourly (or more) switch font faces, spacing, colours, zoom level, etc. Also switch between wrapped and unwrapped text, and, for me, it would be ideal if we could use one icon to scroll through wrapped, unwrapped, and fixed-width. Too odd?
I’m another writer who’s very grateful that Istara has asked and answered this question. I was also on the point of reverting to an older edition of Scrivener so I could see my drafts in the way that I’m used to - filling the full width of the screen.
I found this topic quickly because my instinct was to search for ‘wrap text’ as well - I’m familiar with the term from using Excel spreadsheets, and I casually define it as ‘switching between filling a space and using short lines’ - which obviously isn’t a technical definition at all. Thankfully, it’s seen me right this time.
I prefer to have text stretching across the page because the high contrast between a central column of text and the enormous white margins is very distracting for my eyes and my brain. Evidently other people don’t experience this, but I do, and I’m sure I’m not unique. I can re-read my work far more efficiently if the lines spread across the page than if they’re confined to a relatively tight vertical column in the middle.
As Istara notes, the command to undo this formatting default is quite deeply hidden; and if commonly-used phrases like ‘wrap text’ aren’t currently recognised by Scrivener’s help/search options, then it could easily be made more accessible.
This is obviously no disrespect to Scrivener, which is a great program - it just seems like a number of people have been affected by this, and haven’t found the solution as easily as Scrivener might have anticipated.
I have to re-learn this trick after every update. It’s such a hidden option that I’ve just been carrying on for ages with the standard Scrivener layout - but I really dislike it! It’s a relief to have it back looking the way that works for me.
Could this layout option just be placed under ‘View’? It’s so unintuitive the way it is at the moment.
