Sometimes, if I select a folder in the Binder, what is displayed in the Editor is just the text (if there is text) directly in the folder. Other times, what is displayed is that text plus all of the text in all the documents nested within that folder.
I must be doing something different, but I have no idea what. I would prefer it to always display all nested doc text. But sometimes I have to select all the nested docs to get it to do that. Other times, I don’t.
My screenshot is from the Windows beta, but the relevant controls are also in the Mac version.
Which mode do you have selected? In this shot, I have outline mode selected for this group (the folder that is currently selected):
Scrivenings mode, corkboard mode, outline mode from left to right. And it is possible to have no mode selected, so that you only see the contents of the selected folder.
And in particular, the leftmost mode button can toggle between Scrivenings mode or single document view mode. For a folder, the former will make the editor show the combined text of the documents contained in the folder, whereas single document view (for a folder) shows you the textual content of the folder itself (supposing it has any).
It sounds like we’re getting somewhere. I should have narrowed the focus—I am only speaking of Scrivenings mode.
And yes, that concept is pretty basic. Apple refers to these as ‘radio buttons’, as if they were push buttons on a car radio (last century) that means you push one and it unpushes the others and dominates.
Where it becomes less basic is Scrivenings mode, which apparently can be single or multi-document, depending on what the button icon shows. A highly non-intuitive function for a ‘radio button’ used to invoke a highly unintuitively-named mode. What would actually be intuitive would be to have a fourth button.
I have no idea how to change that mode from single to multiple-doc. Yet unless there are gremlins, I must be the one changing it. Ideas?
And it seems to change on it’s own. It was selecting just the encompassing folder when I closed the laptop last night. This morning I opened the laptop, and it’s selecting the nested documents as well. But I don’t think I did anything to change this.
If you click on the Scrivenings mode button when it is already selected (highlighted), it will turn off entirely. You see the contents of the selected node in the Binder and only those contents. Click it again, and you turn Scrivenings mode back on. So it is intuitive in the sense that it’s a set of radio buttons that don’t have to have one selected. (Just like you could half-push one of the mechanical radio buttons to pop them all out and not have a preset station selected.)
This mode setting (single, Scrivenings, corkboard, outliner) is remembered at each node in the binder. If I have my Manuscript folder that contains three Section folders, and each Section folder contains 8 chapter folders, Section 1 and Section 2 can have different remembered settings for this mode, and same with the chapters, and same with all of the documents within them.
I puzzled over this assertion – which seemed contrary to how I understand Scrivener to work – only to discover yet another Scrivener feature I did not know of!
Generally, when one clicks on a folder in the Binder and then toggle single/Scrivenings view mode, one essentially sets a preference for what one wants to see when clicking on any folder in the Binder. The same is true for other view modes. As the manual puts it “switching to a particular view mode is preferring that view mode.”
But, lo and behold, it is possible to Lock the view mode of a particular folder (or even a group). User Manual 12.2.1.
