Compile Creates One Long Run-On Paragraph

I think I’ve messed up the compile settings somehow. No matter what I do, all text appears as a single run-on paragraph. this applies to any text. I have tried different settings with no results. This never happened with v2.

Any help is much appreciated.

News. If I select the convert MultiMarkdown to rich text in text and notes, all the paragraph marks vanish. Is there a way to fix this?

Scrivener 2 had a compile option to convert markdown to italics and bold. I don’t see that option anymore. Have I missed something?

I’m having the same problem. Paragraphs are now run-on sentences after compilation (both mobi & epub 2 & 3). All paragraph breaks are gone.

Also unformatted/as-is documents (like front/back matter) are not obeying the formatting used in the editor. Instead of compling centered, the text is left-justified and loses return characters.

This happens on imported/converted V2 files as well as brand new files built directly from the default “Novel” template.

My imported Scrivener files are nothing fancy; an old V2 template…just simple folder chapters and text scenes. My converted files do appear to have mapped to the new format properly, but they still won’t compile correctly.

I’ve gone through the tutorial and followed all the instructions and yet I still cannot get an ebook to compile properly with any of my attempts. That said, at least multimarkdown italics work. :slight_smile:

I like the new compile approach, but unfortunately if I can’t compile an ebook then there’s little choice left for me than to revert back to V2 and call it a day. I’m currently running V2 side-by-side with V3, so it’s not keeping me from writing. It’s just disappointing because I was really excited about V3. :cry:

UPDATE: If I turn off “Convert Multimarkdown to rich text in notes and text” during compile, my formatting issues go away! I lose my markdown italics, of course, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Hope this update helps. Fingers crossed that this gets fixed and then I can move over to V3 after all!

The disappearing paragraph marks are a side effect of the Markdown conversion, which is more aggressive in Scrivener 3. The solution is to use a Replacement to replace single paragraph marks with doubles: the Markdown conversion will only remove one of them.

Katherine

Hi Katherine,

Thanks so much for the quick reply. I tested your proposed solution and it does work.

It’s unfortunate that Multimarkdown behavior changed from V2 to V3 because it had recently become useful to me. That said, I only used Multimarkdown to preserve italics when copying to/from grammar checking software that wouldn’t retain my native rtf formatting, so I’m not sure it’s worth adding extra new lines throughout to the manuscript to continue marking down italics. I can just manually replicate the behavior for what little italics formatting I use as a work around.

In the end, the new features of V3 outweigh a wee bit of formatting problems, so I’m officially switched over to Scrivener 3. :smiley:

Thanks again for your help.

Brian

I cannot get this solution to work! It looks like it converts to Markdown and then replaces the single paragraph marks with doubles. Is there a way to change the order of events?

Can someone who got this working share screenshots of EXACTLY what they did, perhaps?

Are you sure you got a single paragraph character in the “replace” column, and two in the “with” column? How did you enter those characters? Did you turn on/off any of the other replacements options on that line?

FYI, the replacements do go before it converts to MMD. It has to work that way for many of my custom compiles to work.

I gave up on “Convert Multimarkdown to Rich Text in notes and text” for just this reason. My experience is also that the substitution of two returns for one happens after the multimarkdown conversion has taken place, no matter whether I do so in the overall compile options, or within the compile format itself. The only solution I’ve found is to use double returns in the editor.

Really? I guess because I went a different route for that problem, I didn’t experience the MMD conversion being prior to the replacements tab kicking in…

What I did for myself, due to the adoption of styles, was to leave standard paragraphs unstyled. Then in a custom compile setting, I created a “body” paragraph style. Not in the main project; it’s not useful there…

I set the Body style to be “pure markdown”, and added a newline suffix for paragraphs.

With that “Body” style in the compile settings, I went to the section layouts I used for my main text. I then changed the text for that section layout to use the Body style.

Any text styled with some other style is ignored by the layout formatting. For instance, my lists have a style meant solely for making them look nice in scrivener; the Body style isn’t applied to that text.

Thank you, RDale. That is a different approach from using the Replacements tabs, and one that would not have occurred to me.

However, now that I’ve rebuilt my writing life to avoid converting multimarkdown to rich text :smiley: turning it around would be a pain in the anatomy. I hope the OP finds your method helpful!

I don’t think I’m Scrivener-savvy enough to understand what this means! Is there any chance you could share some screenshots? It sounds like exactly what I’m looking for, I just don’t know how to execute it.

It may take me a bit to get around to this; I have a trip coming up this weekend, and compiling screenshots and annotating them takes time that I’m rather short on.

If you haven’t already, look into the videos on the compile system, paying special attention to the customization video (the 4th one) here: literatureandlatte.com/lear … ategory=43

Being familiar with how you start creating your own custom compile settings is the first step. You may find that your particular mix of Scrivener Styles + MMD formatting may require other tweaks, so familiarizing yourself with compile customization will server you well. Also, are you familiar with the compile setup for version 2, or is Scrivener 3 your first Scrivener? I ask because once you get into the customization of compile, a version 2 user is on more familiar-looking territory.

Hi, Katherine.

This no longer seems to work in the current version of Scrivener. Do you know if this a deliberate change, or if there is a way to make it work with the newest build?

Thanks in advance.

Slàinte mhòr.

See rdale’s discussion, above, of the quirks of this method. – Katherine

Thanks, Katherine. I was hoping there is a way to get the simple replacements to work. Robert’s solution is somewhat different.

Robert, appreciate you’re unlikely to have time to read and reply for a while, but if you ever do, in the sample file attached, Scenes compile as Section Text, styled by a format called Body. I have added paragraph returns in the “Paragraph prefix/suffix” boxes, which are clear in the “Assign Section Layouts” window of compile. However, irrespective of the number of returns I use, I cannot get replacements to convert single returns in the editor into distinct paragraphs in RTF, Word, etc. What am I missing?

Thanks in advance.

Slàinte mhòr.

MMD.zip (82.9 KB)

I threw something together that I hope is helpful to Mac users at least. Feel free to use the screenshots and text in a post for anyone else (such as Windows v3 folks for instance). I put it all in a project (attached) that can be examined to hopefully fill in whatever gaps there are in my explanation.

JORO: The “Replacements” sections in the compile interface shouldn’t be needed for my solution to work. I suspect that you forgot to apply the style to the text of the appropriate document layout in the compile settings, or you forgot to apply that section layout to the right section types. Hopefully my example project will help clarify what’s going on.

RTF-MMD-2LF_example.zip (892 KB)

Hi, Robert.

Many thanks for the reply and sample file.

I wasn’t trying to use the replacements section with your method: was only trying replacements as a simple alternative.

I had applied the style and the section layout. Our two sample files are, I think, identical, save for one thing, where we all seem to be speaking about slightly different issues.

As mentioned a few times in this thread, people are looking for a compile format that incorporates the “Convert Multimarkdown to rich text in notes and text" setting. As a MMD-driven compile, your sample file doesn’t have this option available. Switch to another compile format, such as RTF or Word or PDF, where the option is available, and the paragraphs all get merged into a single block of text.

Or is there another setting that will keep the formatting intact with “Convert Multimarkdown to rich text in notes and text" switched on and only using single paragraph returns in the editor? According to the comments made by Ioa and Bridey in the thread linked below, I don’t think there is: double returns need to be used in the editor.

https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/mulitmarkdown-issue/39549/1

If only compiling to a MMD format, the styles-based workaround isn’t needed: returns added to the replacements section work to give the same output, which is simpler and quicker, yes? Or am I erring somehow?

Thanks again. Enjoy your trip.

Slàinte mhòr.

I think I’m confused. I wasn’t aware of the “Convert MMD to Rich text” compile option. I know of the one that does the opposite – “Convert Rich text TO MMD”, which is in the right pane of the compile window when you select a MMD compile output format.

If you’re not compiling using one of the MMD “Compile for” options, then please disregard my input.

So many options. So easy for us all to talk at cross purposes.

Thanks for clarifying.

Slàinte mhòr.

I just spent about two hours working on this, and I’m still clueless. I watched through all the videos, and I tried every “replacement” area I could - no matter what I do, it always applies replacements after Markdown.

If anyone can help with this, I’d really appreciate it. It would save me literally hundreds of hours of work. My only alternative is to go back to Scrivener 2, which would be a pretty disappointing course of action.

Here’s what I’ve tried:

  1. In the main “Compile” window, on the right-hand side (under the ab>ac symbol) I’ve replaced a single paragraph break (copied from the document) with two paragraph breaks (pasted twice). To make sure that it wasn’t an error in what I was replacing it with, I also tried replacing a single paragraph break (copied from the document) with a random word. Still no dice.

  2. Trying to implement the advice above, I created a custom style for the text (called “MarkDownDefault”). In the Format window (reached by double-clicking the name of the particular format in the Compile window), I added a Paragraph prefix AND suffix of an additional new line. To make sure that it wasn’t an error in pasting the new line, I also tried a prefix and suffix of random words. Again, these changes only occur after the Markdown changes have been applied.

  3. Under the Format window, I again tried the Replacements section, replacing a single line-break with two. Nothing, even when I tried replacing the line-breaks with other things.

It seems that Scrivener 3 have decided that if you’re using MMD, you’re not allowed to have paragraph breaks. As someone who used the previous version without issue for literally 5 years, I really really don’t want to have to abandon this software. Please help!