greyed out override text and notes formatting

[RonJeffries]

I'm writing a document in Scrivener. When I go to compile it, I want to override the formatting for various sections. The check box at the top of the formatting table is greyed out.

I am trying to compile to MultiMarkdown. If I compile to, say, PDF, the box is available.

I need to do things like remove the literal **Synopsis** and the like. How can I get this done?

Please advise! Thanks!

[MrGruff]

You can't override the formatting because, being a plain text system MMD doesn’t recognise any RTF formatting in your Scrivener documents.

That being the case, how do you exclude sections of text from compile? (I think that's your question.) A few suggestions:

• At a macro level, put the synopsis text in the document synopsis, rather than leaving it in the document itself. Similarly, put any notes in the document notes. That keeps them out of the way, but you can always include them in a compile if you want to later.
• At mid-level, split the document to get the synopsis or whatever on its own (at the same level in the binder), then when compiling, untick 'include in compile'.
• At micro-level, turn the fragments you want to exclude from compile into annotations: select then Cmd+Shift+A.

Which method best suits your case will depend on the amount of stuff you want to hide.

[RonJeffries]

Hi, Mr G, thanks for the reply ...

I understand what you're saying, and it doesn't quite fit my intention.

What I had intended to do was include, at least at some levels, Title and Synopsis, which are basically the corkboard card / binder title, and the corkboard text.I use the synopsis as a sort of subtitle to the document, like a starting quotation in a chapter or such.

When I click to include those items, the plugin does include them, with something like

# Title #

**Synopsis**
Synopsis text. lorem ispum blah blah

Main text. more lorem ipsum blah

I don't want the word Synopsis and of course I'd like to have the text tabbed in and styled, so I need:

# Title #

>*Synopsis text. lorem ipsum blah blah*

Main text. more lorem ipsum blah.

This would render as something like:

Title

Synopsis text. lorem ipsum blah blah

Main text. more lorem ipsum blah.

So, yes I don't need to put any RTF in the styling. I do need to change what text it presents and to add some markdown marks.

There's no doubt, of course, that I can include all this in the text of the document. I might get away with pulling the titles from the notecards and putting in the text.

What I'm trying to do is figure out if there is any viable way of using Scrivener with a Leanpub book. So far, Scrivener's closeness, plus this plug-in's inability to be modified, is driving me in another direction. But I really like Scriv and want to use it. Grrr

If I could get at whatever underlies the plug-in and tells it to say # Title #, I could change it there. Something tells me that when my purpose is to write a book, that's heading in the wrong direction.

Further thoughts welcome. Thanks again!

[robertdguthrie]

You might try the Replacements tab in the Compile window. I just tried it on the Windows version as was able to replace "Synopsis" with a space, but not with a completely empty replacement field.

[RonJeffries]

woo, good idea. i'll try that. might work just fine, the way markdown ignores blank lines. thanks!

[RonJeffries]

Hmm, well, almost. It still insists on displaying ** **, and a bunch of blank lines, so I don't think that's likely to really look right.

I may be stuck with putting everything directly into scriv paragraphs. Or writing some kind of post=processor. Or my own plug-in? No, stop me before I stop writing my darn book ...

What I want is to be able to edit that text just a bit. wonder if I can find it somewhere ...

[robertdguthrie]

Aren't the ** **s supposed to be for bolding? Check if the word "Synopsis" in the Formatting pane is set to bold, and turn that off if you can (not at my Mac, or I'd test this stuff out to see if it actually works/gives the same output. For that matter does putting **Synopsis** in the Replace field take care of the asterisks (I'm assuming not, but sometimes I overlook the really obvious stuff when I have writer brain).

Are the blank lines right before/after the Synopsis? If so, then the replacement field can contain paragraph characters (and tabs, and other "invisible" markers) by holding the OPT key while pressing ENTER in the Replace field.

[MrGruff]

Right, I understand what you are doing.

As you don't want this for every document the easiest thing might be to abandon using the actual synopsis, and instead put that synopsis text in a normal document. You can then set up three documents for the start of a chapter:

1. The title. All this has is the right title.
2. The synopsis. This contains the synopsis text. At compile, make sure it is marked 'compile as is'.
3. The main text. Yup, the main text. Again, make sure it is marked 'compile as is'.

The main thing 'compile as is' does when using MMD is suppress the document title, so it doesn't appear in the output. Therefore, when you compile you'll get your title, followed immediately by the synopsis then the body text.

[RonJeffries]

Yes, Mr G,

I think I'll have to do something like that. Not quite the structure I'd like in the book but maybe with some nesting that I'm not used to yet, it'll be OK.

I sure don't see why one can't be allowed to type into that section, but life is what it is.

Thanks,

R

[robertdguthrie]

Forgive me if my "help" is not so helpful, but couldn't you use either folders, or stacked documents, and put the "synopsis text" in the folder or the parent of the stacked documents? Confused?

In the formatting pane, you'll see 3 different icons. A folder, a single page, and an icon that looks like two stacked pages. You get the stacked pages by dragging a file or files "onto" another document, effectively treating the target document (let's call it the parent doc) like a folder. Note that every document, stacked/parent document, and every folder too can have it's own text, and each of those objects' text may be styled differently.

So, if you can organize your binder so that either folders or parent document contain what was formerly the synopsis text, then you can have different styling for that text from the text of the main documents without formating as-is, or having separate documents just for a title.

Hope that's not too opaque or off from what you actually wanted.

[RonJeffries]

Hi Robert,

I can surely do that. I just successfully generated a book from Scriv with the "synopsis" embedded in the individual files. Could do it spread over many, of course, as you suggest.

One of Scriv's nice features is the cards and I've had some success keeping the real title and synopsis on the cards, for other articles and such, but I can certainly live putting them in the text one way or another.

I'd like to have the option to include that material in a reasonable way. It seems like the fundamental "intention" of Scrivener is to be able to include that extra material and in fact format it, and I'd hoped the MM bit could do so as well, within the limits of plain text. Just opening up that flag would have done it. That said, the payoff may not be there for Fletcher to do it. I understand that.

Anyway my current test says to me that I can probably make the Scriv to Leanpub workflow good enough to be better than TextMate or Sublime Text 2 -- for me.

Others of course may prefer other ways.

Thanks,

[RonJeffries]

Further to Robert,

HOWEVER, as far as I know, please correct me if I'm missing something, the way the MultiMarkdown plugin works is that I can't impose any formatting at the various levels, because it won't let me go in and change what shows up in the formatting window.

I get that I couldn't use RTF. But I could go in and type >* and things like that, or even other valid markup. Except that I can't because the check box can't be checked.

I hope I'm missing something, but fear that I'm not.