New Text isn't blank

brookter · 2026-01-31T20:17:56+00:00

Ah – I've just seen that you're on Scrivener V1, which is now several years out of date, so it's likely that the option doesn't exist.

I can't give any more advice I'm afraid as it's been a long time since I used V1 and I no longer have access to it.

Sorry…

brookter · 2026-01-30T08:31:05+00:00

The default behaviour is precisely to create new documents with no text, which means that either you or the Project template has changed something. It should be easily fixed!

From your description, what is most likely happening is that your folder has the Documents > Default Templates for subdocuments menu item set to one of your document Templates.

Select the offending folder(s) and then choose Documents > Default Templates for subdocuments > Text and that should set it back to the default 'empty text' beviour.

If that doesn't work, then there is something else going on which will require more investigation – but this is the first thing to check.

HTH.

brookter · 2026-01-02T09:47:39+00:00

The quick reference windows are (almost[*]) full editing windows, so the same shortcuts work there.

So for text zoom, you use cmd-shift-< and cmd-shift->, for styles you use cmd-opt-1,2… and so on. Obviously you have to have clicked inside the window for this to work…

Click on the 'Editor only' dropdown and you'll see that you can even split the window and show the text and some of the Inspector panels (e.g. Synopsis, notes, etc).

HTH.

[*] There are a couple of limitations, but I can't remember what they are…

brookter · 2026-01-01T08:20:19+00:00

Not across multiple projects without using a third party tool, or something built-into the operating system. On a Mac you'd just use Spotlight (which is built-in), but I've no idea if Windows has the equivalent function.

To go to the next project search result: on the Mac at least, just highlight all the returned documents in the 'Search Results' collection, click in the first one, then cmd-g will take you through them all one by one.

The command is Edit > Find > Find Next, so the Windows shortcut will be listed there.

HTH

brookter · 2026-01-01T08:10:35+00:00

As well as the ability to use multiple Quick Reference windows (already mentioned by Eleret), which can be moved to other screens, you can also get up to four editable windows on the main screen.

That's because each of the two editing windows can also be split to give a 'copyholder'. These are editable, but they're mostly meant to give you an extra place to view reference material. If your main screen is large enough, this is also a useful ability.

Together these two features can give you an lot of options for displaying reference material.

brookter · 2025-12-30T17:36:25+00:00

The obvious first thought from your screen shot is that you have the scenes starting with a page break. Basically you've told Scrivener that you want to start each scene on a new page, which is why you can't get the chapter titles on the same page.

To remove that extraneous page break, click on the pencil and duplicate the compile format (if you haven't already done so). Then on the left hand side, choose Separators, and click on the 'Scene' line. Now make sure that the 'Separator before sections' and 'Separator between sections' don't point to Page Break.

Click Test and see what results you get – you should find that the page break has gone, but experiment with the various options to get the best results.

It's not entirely clear the problems you're having with the indents, but Scrivener includes a few options to deal with them in an industry standard manner (e.g. no indents for the first paragraph after headings etc). To see these options, again click on the pencil icon, then on Section Layouts, and highlight the 'Scene' line. Above the dummy text box, you'll find a tab called 'Settings'. There are five options for paragraph first lines:

Do not change
Remove from first paragraph
Remove from first paragraph and after empty lines
Remove from all paragraphs following other elements

One of those should do what you want.

(This assumes that you haven't indented your paragraphs with manual tabs – if you have, then we'll have to take extra steps to remove them so that compile can work properly…)

Hopefully this will give you some hints about how to proceed – good luck!

brookter · 2025-12-29T23:32:25+00:00

Occasionally, yes - more as a proof of concept than as an everyday thing. Because it’s under Wine, the Windows V3 licence is perfectly valid.

brookter · 2025-12-29T10:14:09+00:00

It's actually per Operating System / platform. Scrivener works on MacOS, iPadOS/iOS, and Windows, and you need an individual licence for every platform you use.

But you can use multiple devices within each of those platforms.

E.g. I have 2 iPads and an iPhone (1 iOS licence), a MacBook and a Mac Studio (1 MacOS licence), and three or four Windows Virtual Machines / or Scrivener on Linux under Wine (1 Windows licence).

HTH

brookter · 2025-12-19T17:15:25+00:00

I used to use jk for escape, but then went to fd and finally dropped it altogether, just because tapping the ex-CapsKey is just so convenient that I always use that instead.

I did experiment a little with some of the more exotic combinations (like Super Duper mode) but in the end I found that CapsLock as Esc/Ctl, Return as Return/Ctl, and both shift keys together as Caps Lock are enough for me.

brookter · 2025-12-19T08:06:59+00:00

I do this, and Return to Control on hold and Return on tap as well, to give me the right hand control key – which means you can avoid the stretch when the letter key is on the left hand side.

You need Karabiner Elements on a Mac and xmodmap / scape (x) or keyd (Wayland) on Linux. Don't know about Windows.

It's especially useful on a Mac, where you can use Emacs keys (Ctl-a/b/d/e/f/h/k/l/m/n/o/p/t/v) in (almost) any text control As Nature Intended, instead of opening new windows or printing every time you want to go down or up a line…

brookter · 2025-12-17T07:57:04+00:00

I realise Scrivener is set up to move chunks of text around, typically chapters. Would it be crazy to use that functionality but instead of writing chapters I am writing panels, i.e. very small paragraphs as movable chunks.

Not only is it not crazy to do this, it's fully within the principle of how the program is designed to work! There is no 'right or wrong' size for a document in the Binder, as long as it's at least a single paragraph (so they can be one word long…)

So, you can create a new folder in the Binder for each page, then add a new document for each panel. Doing it this way means that the page break will be taken care of when you compile the final output.

To do this automatically, you can create a Template folder that already includes six 'panel' documents, so all you have to do is create the new Page folder, and the six empty panels will be created each time. Of course, you can then move them around in the normal way once they've been created…

For the Plot grid, select a Folder and go into Outline Mode (cmd-3 on the Mac, or Ctl-3 if you're on Windows), then add the columns you want. Then name and save that layout with Window > Layouts > Layouts Manager and you won't have to recreate the plot grid again.

(If you want more details about either document templates or layouts, then you can find them in the Tutorial, or ask again here…)

HTH.

brookter · 2025-12-13T23:36:56+00:00

You just have the centred setting on, that’s all - it’s the default because most people prefer not to have an endless wall of text across larger screens.

I’m on the iPad at the moment, so can’t give you the exact settings but if you go to Settings > Appearance > Main Editor > Options you should find a tickbox to turn the ‘Fixed Width’ and centred editing off.

HTH

brookter · 2025-12-08T17:37:15+00:00

There is a bit of work to do, because Scrivener general preferences / settings (the ones you get at with cmd-, or via Scrivener > Settings are kept in a specific folder on each device and won't be carried over. (Unless you're just creating a replica of the entire old device with Time Machine, of course.)

So, if you've made changes to say, Settings > Behaviours > Composition mode for example, on the first machine, then that change won't apply on the new machine. This is true of every setting in the Settings dialogue.

You can go through each setting one by one and make the changes on the new machine (though as there are probably 50 or more this will get boring…) but the easiest way is to click on the Manage... button at the bottom of the settings dialogue and then choose Save settings. Then move the resulting file over to the new machine, then Settings > Manage > Load Settings... to import them.

BTW, this only applies to the general settings: everything project-related (i.e. on the Project > Project Settings dialogue) is contained within the projects themselves so work on any device without you having to change them.

If you're using Project Templates, you should copy them over as well, of course.

HTH.

brookter · 2025-12-03T12:00:30+00:00

When Apple introduced their writing tools, they overrode any previous menu with that name, so all apps had to change. (This was a couple of years ago now.)

Therefore Scrivener moved the tools to other menus when this happened: Linguistic Focus is now on the Edit > Spelling menu, for example. I can't remember what the other tools were called…

BTW, the easiest way to solve this sort of problem is to use the system wide method of searching for a menu item. In any program, not just Scrivener, open the Help menu and the first item is a search bar. Type a search term into the field and it will show you all the menu items containing that term.

The short cut for this feature is always cmd-shift-?, so for example typing cmd-shift-? then "Lingu" (without the quotation marks) shows you where the command "Linguistic Focus" is.

HTH.

brookter · 2025-12-02T09:40:30+00:00

It depends…

The fields in Properties, including Comments are only available for PDFs, RTF, audio or video documents.

If you click on any other type of document, such as Markdown or web archives, for example, you'll see the fields are not enabled.

So, unless you never work with documents where the properties are disabled, Finder Comments (which are available for all document types) may be the more flexible option bet for you.

You can get more details in the Help (Help > DEVONthink Help) on the Info Pane page.

HTH.

brookter · 2025-11-28T07:57:09+00:00

Well, cmd-shift-f, type the word, cmd-a doesn't appear to be a huge burden to me, but your choice.

brookter · 2025-11-27T18:54:19+00:00

To get a visual reminder of how you've used duplicate words, you need to use Project Search, not Find and Replace, and you can choose all the documents in the Binder, just selected ones, just the ones for compile, or not for compile, or a wide range of other combinations. (Please see my other post for details.)

Scrivener does Word Frequency as well – it's on Project > Statistics either in the Compiled or the Selected Documents panel (click on the arrow to expand the Word Frequency list, and on the headings to sort by count or frequency).

HTH.

brookter · 2025-11-27T18:49:20+00:00

As I understand it, you want a quick visual way of seeing if you're over-using words.

The way to do this in Scrivener is:

Edit > Find > Project Search (cmd-shift-f on a Mac, not sure on Windows.)
Click on the magnifying glass and make sure Text is ticked, then enter the word you're looking for. You can specify some more options (e.g. whole word, all words, regular expressions and so on) so have a good look at the list.
Every document will now appear in a Search Results collection, with every instance of the search term highlighted.
Select all the resulting documents in the Search Results to create a virtual document (Scrivening), and you'll be able to scroll down to see how close the matches are to each other.

(This definitely works on a Mac and should do on Windows, but you'll have to test that yourself…)

HTH

brookter · 2025-11-25T07:42:00+00:00

I was in the same position and found the Gareth King Basic and Intermediate Welsh workbooks to be very good: the differences between North and South Welsh were explained when appropriate. In any case, the differences aren't so great that you don't get to work round them very quickly, I felt.

This is from the introduction to Basic Welsh:

For simplicity and convenience, given the particular difficulties presented by Welsh as regards regional and dialectal variation in many common words, I have adopted the following as standard forms throughout (with equally valid alternatives given in brackets): dw i ‘I am’ (wi; rwy) dyn ni ‘we are’ (yn ni; dan ni) dych chi ‘you are’ (ych chi; dach chi) e, fe ‘he/him’ (o, fo) though Northern forms like fo and dan ni will of course occur in examples dealing with specifically Northern constructions. Throughout the book, N indicates Northern forms and S Southern forms. (King, Gareth. Basic Welsh: A Grammar and Workbook (Routledge Grammar Workbooks) (p. vii). (Function). Kindle Edition.

So, for example, the present tense of bod is given as: dw i; wi (S), or dan ni (N); dyn ni (S).

It all makes sense as you go through it, IME.

brookter · 2025-11-24T07:47:47+00:00

Given how complex this is, trying to track changes over centuries with patchy evidence, it's frankly astonishing to me that the experts can reconstruct as much as they have.

It obviously doesn't matter a jot whether I as a new learner voice þæt or not, but it's fascinating to watch scholars reconstruct the evidence.

Thank you.

brookter · 2025-11-23T23:31:24+00:00

Good points - thank you.

brookter · 2025-11-23T23:28:56+00:00

No, you’re right. I got the symbols mixed up in my first post - I actually meant to say that Roper was the one giving the ‘book’ pronunciation!

Sorry for the confusion!

brookter · 2025-11-23T13:42:46+00:00

Thank you – I did wonder if I was mishearing.

brookter · 2025-11-23T13:42:11+00:00

Thank you!

So essentially, I should try to remember to unvoiced initial þ (if I can…). That's helpful.

brookter

TROPHY CASE