Narrow No Break Space and footnote marker

[xiamenese]

Does anyone know how to insert the 'Narrow No Break Space', Unicode U+202F/UTF-8 E2 80 AF, into the 'Before Text' space in the Footnote pane of the stylesheet in such a way that it will be saved.

Screenshot 2022-07-09 at 15.16.08.png (121.17 KiB) Viewed 4588 times

I wish to use it in at least one of my style collections that I apply to an existing document via a macro. If I insert it directly into the document's stylesheet it seems to apply, but when I try to insert it by editing the style collection, it doesn't seem to survive the saving of the style collection.

Thanks,

Mark

[xiamenese]

24 views but no suggestions. On the other hand I have solved the problem.

As I found, modifying the style in an actual, content-containing document seemed to preserve the space on saving, closing and reopening, where modifying the style collection—an RTF document with no content but with a stylesheet—did not preserve the space.

So I started from a document with a footnote, ran the macro to apply the relevant style collection, then modified its stylesheet to include the "Narrow No Break Space". Having checked that the space survived the save-close-reopen routine, I went to the stylesheet, selected Footnote and selected "Save to Style Library" and chose the relevant collection.

I then took a different document with a footnote, ran my macro, and the space was there before the footnote marker.

I'll leave it to Martin—if he thinks it's worth his while—to work out why I failed to add it directly into the style collection document when adjusting other aspects of styles works without problems.

Mark

[martin]

Hi Mark!

I created a Footnote style using a narrow non-breaking space and saved it to my Style Library. I then imported that saved style into another document and replaced the existing footnote style. Everything worked as expected: the imported style enforces the narrow non-breaking space.

A few points:

1. You mentioned macros. I didn't follow that too closely, but if you do whatever you're trying to accomplish without any macros, does that make a difference?

2. When you saved the Footnote style to your Style Library, did the destination style collection already have a Footnote style? I'm seeing some weird behaviors in situations where a style collection already has a footnote style. This is almost certainly due to the constraint that each file (and thus style collection) can only have a single footnote style. In this situation it looks like saving a footnote style to the style library may fail to replace the existing style.

[xiamenese]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for coming in.

My problem was when editing my style collection directly — e.g. ~/iCloud Drive/Nisus Documents/Style Library/Standard.rtf — by opening it in NWP. When I modified the Footnote style in another (normal) document and exported it to the style collection to replace the existing Footnote style, it worked perfectly as I said in my second post. I tested the resulting style collection on both the iMac and the M1 MBA. It was editing the style collection itself that didn't seem to work for this, even though doing other things like changing the "Normal" font was not a problem.

On the macro question, my work flow is as follows:

• Write the text in Scrivener (for its organising capabilities) using a standard set of styles … Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. Block Quote, etc. to match the set of styles in my NWP style collection;
• Compile to RTF to open automatically in NWP;
• Run my macro — most of which you created for me over 10 years ago, which I always acknowledge when I mention it — which asks me which style collection to import, imports it, makes the changes, marks any Chinese text in terms of language, and so on.

If I need to change the fonts — e.g. for my own purposes I'm now using Libertinus Serif, but to send the document to a collaborator in China I change it to TNR — I can simply edit the "Normal" font in the document and it cascades down through the other styles based on Normal.

I keep trying to persuade other Mac+Scrivener-users to use NWP, but most of them seem totally hooked on Word. To me one of the huge advantages of NWP — apart from PowerFind/Pro, the macro language, existing macros and your and other users expertise in it, multi-character shortcuts… — is the way NWP uses style collections you can import. From all I've understood, Word is template-based and it seems not easy to import a document into an existing template, where importing a style collection to an existing document in NWP, whether by macro or not, is dead easy. If you're interested, there is a variant of my Standard style collection and associated macro I created for @Tacitus in viewtopic.php?t=12053&start=15 — though I see you contributed to that thread.



Mark

[Amontillado]

Ditto on NWP's styles. Most what you do in Scrivener's compile, at least when compiling to word processing formats, is easier and quicker with Nisus style sets.

If I were to wish for a change, it would be to have page styles included in the style set. That would make documents complete chameleons.

Personally, I like to keep my notes in Devonthink or Curio. Nisus's navigator serves the role of Scrivener's Binder well enough for my needs. I know the Binder functions add features, like document type and you can do conditional inclusion. I just find life remains good in Nisus.

[xiamenese]

Ditto on NWP's styles. Most what you do in Scrivener's compile, at least when compiling to word processing formats, is easier and quicker with Nisus style sets.

If I were to wish for a change, it would be to have page styles included in the style set. That would make documents complete chameleons.

Personally, I like to keep my notes in Devonthink or Curio. Nisus's navigator serves the role of Scrivener's Binder well enough for my needs. I know the Binder functions add features, like document type and you can do conditional inclusion. I just find life remains good in Nisus.

The only paragraph styles I use while editing in Scrivener are: 'Block Quote'; 'No Indent'; 'Hanging Indent'; and for recipes, 'Ingredients', I also have a 'Chinese' character style. I have shortcuts to them all, so it's no more onerous than in NWP. Heading styles are applied during compile, using the binder hierarchy. I could just leave it at that, but I prefer to reassign the styles from an NWP collection—these are named identically—the difference being they are cascading in NWP.

I'm not sure how page styles would work in NWP, other than in a page layout app like Affinity Publisher or InDesign.

The thing about Scrivener that got me using it (since January 2007!) is the ability to split a long document into small sections for writing/editing rather than having say a whole 100+ page document open and having to navigate through it; that and the ability to have 2 (or more) documents open at the same time in the same window… Chinese source text and English target I'm editing, for instance.

Devonthink, I couldn't get on with, and I've never tried Curio, but I have no need for them now.



Mark

[Amontillado]

The time I most wished for page styles was when I was participating in two writing groups. Each group had its own very strict style guidelines, including header and footer layout. I always thought those rules were a bit much, but I was a guest and conformed without comment.

Swapping style sets did everything needed except header and footer layout.

Scrivener is wonderful. If it allowed me to use Nisus as its document editor, it might be perfect.

As it is, Scrivener has three editors with different capabilities. There's the main edit window, the copy holder, and the quick reference editor.

On the other hand, I'm not sure why I'm so fussy. My favorite work environment in Nisus is draft view without palettes and with the toolbar hidden. I want all the features behind those things. When it's time to write, I just want me and the words in a simple view.

[xiamenese]

On the other hand, I'm not sure why I'm so fussy. My favorite work environment in Nisus is draft view without palettes and with the toolbar hidden. I want all the features behind those things. When it's time to write, I just want me and the words in a simple view.

And that is more or less precisely what Scrivener is about… concentrate on the writing, knowing that the layout process will be handled by Compile. In reality, I could pretty much abandon NWP, but I love it equally with Scrivener and, for me, the combination is perfection, as NWP does have incredible features that Scrivener hasn't… and I prefer to do spell checking in NWP.

If it allowed me to use Nisus as its document editor, it might be perfect.

I seem to remember that way back, in 2008 or thereabouts, I put forward the suggestion that KB should try to licence Nisus Writer—no Pro version at the time—as the editor, but it fell on deaf ears. I guess it would have put the price of Scrivener much higher.

I also have other projects in Scrivener that don't go through NWP, rather through MMD → Marked2 → HTML, with the projects serving as repositories for non-related documents for the web.



Mark