I’ve put together a preference file (compatible with Scrivener 3x for Mac, and 1x Windows) which changes a few of the defaults to better suit a plain-text driven authoring environment. If you have already made considerable modification to your settings, it may be counterproductive to overwrite them all with this basic set; thus the following list itemises the changes so that you can make them individually as you see fit:
- The preferences below use the Inconsolata XL font which has been included in the zip file. You should install this font first, before using the preferences file, if you’d like to try it out. Otherwise you could change the default formatting to use Menlo, Consolas, or whatever font you prefer.
- All pseudo-spacing at the paragraph level has been disabled. There will be no first-line indents or extra spaces following a carriage return.
- Tab stops are set to every 29pts, which closely emulates four spaces.
- All typographic substitutions have been disabled in the Corrections pane, so as to produce valid ASCII txt on output. You could reenable these and then add Replacements in compile to turn them into XML or HTML entities, though.
- A 12pt block cursor has been enabled. This will work best with fixed-width fonts.
- Mac Only – Fixed-width editing settings are modified to closely emulate an 80-column width text editor. For those who are coding, this can be useful for keeping your code readable in a context beyond Scrivener.
Also included, for Scrivener 3, is a project template with a stylesheet that has been modified to present a less flamboyant and more “syntax highlighting” style approach to marking text. It also includes three editing character styles (Addition, Deletion and Highlight) which will by default generate CriticMarkup when using our provided Markdown-based compile formats. To bring this stylesheet into your working project:
- From your project, use the Format ▸ Style ▸ Import Styles... menu command.
- Locate and open this project.
- Confirm any overwrites or duplications of styles if need be.
Download for Mac
To use these preferences, download the zip file above, decompress it using the Finder by double-clicking on it. Then load up Scrivener’s Preference pane, and use the Manage... drop-down menu to “Load all preferences…”. Choose the .pref file with the file chooser, and click Okay.
Download for Windows
After downloading, if necessary open the .zip window using your browser’s download list, or File Explorer. Drag the *.prefs file to your Desktop, or somewhere else handy, and switch to Scrivener. Open the Options window from the Tools menu, and use the Manage drop-down menu to “Load Preferences…”. Select the .prefs file you extracted from the zip, and click the Okay button.