HeikeT

Thank you guys! @lacerto idea is a nice hack that would work. @GarryP fiction books use either symbols (text) or decorative elements (images) between scenes or to mark POV changes. It is usually the same symbol used up to a couple of hundred times. Fiction authors write in writing tools like scrivener and import the text into Affinity Publisher for print layouts. In scrivener the scene dividers are placed automatically using rules on export compile, but how they actually look is part of the print design ... so it would be nice to have a clever hack to replace the dividers with automated rules rather than placing 100+ symbols. One possible way to do this would be a text style because styles come through with the compile :). In short, what @lacertosuggests would work if you choose a text character as a divider. I'll investigate a bit further. If anybody knows a hack to add an image using a text style, or how the replace a string of characters with an image symbol that would be awesome! Ta!

This topic is closed. There is no easy solution for the issues but quite a few useful tips above!

Hi Ramu, this topic is not about manually placing an indent. It is more an automation question, and there are solutions described above :). Ta

Hi there, Happy Easter everybody! Is there a way in Affinity Publisher to create a text style that has a predefined symbol or even an image attached to it? I am looking to create a re-useable element to use as a separator between scenes in a non-fiction book. So that if I change my mind I only have to adjust the style? Ta, Heike -- Some scene /end of scene. *** Start of next scene --

Ah and I see you could run such a script only once ... unless you add some nifty 'But you already changed me' exceptions ... 😇

@pbasdf mostly what @lacerto suggested above ... something like ... IF paragraph EQUALS 'body style' BUT paragraph before IS NOT 'body style' THEN change paragraph = 'body style' TO paragraph = 'body style first' (sorry for the 'not so much code') Thank you @lacerto I'll look into those options. I am just glad I am not the only one ! Thank you everybody!

@Old Bruce That would outdent 'Hey...' not indent 'Tayl' And it is only one example in 20k lines. I try to stick to standard formatting for dialogue, dialogue tags, and dialogue surrounds ... I guess it's a case of just going through the manuscript and make the changes as @GarryP suggested. For other migrating manuscripts form #Scrivener to #AffinityPublisher to create the print pdfs for KDP ... it actually is totally fine on import (text place using an RTF), and the indents are 'flattened' as you defined in Scrivener. It's when you start to tweak styles in Affinity that Affinity 'unflattens' the first paragraphs ... so there is a lesson to be learnt here, but I am not yet sure what it is . I'll write this all up in a blog once I am finished.

@tudor thank you for letting me know ... very strange indeed. Book designers must have endless patience or curse a lot .

@GarryP Hmmm ... I have come to the same conclusion ... this is really bad. It's so basic typesetting for books that even Scrivener (not a layout app at all) has found a way to do this ... Ah well ... now I need to change the first paragraph styles in about 244 places in a 146k words manuscript ... on an old Mac book Air ... using 3 different body styles ... That will teach me . @GarryP thank you very much for the tips on how to set up the styles!

Just to give some context this is how the setting looks in Scrivener ...

That would change the first line indents in all the paragraphs using that style. I only need to remove the first indent after a scene or POV change. Usually you would expect to find something like this in "flow" settings ...

Hi there, I searched the forums for "hanging indents" but the topics I found all seem the refer to lists, indexes, and tables. What I am after is "hanging indent" in the sense that the first paragraph in a new scene is not indented and subsequent paragraphs within the scene are indented normally. That is a very basic task in typesetting for fictions books, and I know it must be somewhere but I can't find it . This is an example: The word Tayl after the scene change (Tayl stared ... ). Should not be indented ... Help? Thank you . The word