Apply Novel Styles to Additional Manuscript?

[omegaman]

OK. I'm using the Novel template which has certain styles such as Chapter Title, Section Text etc.

 

If you add a new Manuscript by importing some text that you wish to convert to Chapter Titles and Section Text etc these styles are unavailable to use. Why?

[marguerite]

Hi, Omegaman:

Storyist applies certain styles on import by matching text, and if you click on "Run Import Assistant after importing" in the first window after choosing File > Import, there is a point where you will see a list of all styles in the document and can specify which Storyist style goes with which original style. (Note that all imports work best in Storyist if you save the file as styled RTF before importing. That means save it through Word or OpenOffice, not Pages or TextEdit, which do not recognize RTF styles.)

 

But even if the style is already applied, I'm not sure why it would be unavailable to you. Where is the file coming from?

Best, and welcome to the forums,

Marguerite

[omegaman]

Hi Marguerite

 

Thanks for that info. I was using TextEdit to draft a series of Chapter Titles and dummy section text and importing that. I'm still experimenting with Storyist.

[marguerite]

OK. I tried to duplicate the problem using the fewest options possible (for simplicity's sake). No styles were unavailable to me. Here is what I did.

 

1. Opened an RTF file in TextEdit. Saved it under a new name. Cut it down so that it contained three sections and two chapter titles. Added # as needed to separate the sections (including # before the second chapter title, although that is not always necessary—it just protects you in case you decide to move the section somewhere else inside Storyist). Saved the RTF file.

 

2. Opened Storyist. Chose the Blank template (Novel would also work). Clicked on Documents and chose File > Import. Selected my file. Unchecked "Run Import Assistant After Importing" to avoid any input from me that might change the import. Clicked okay. Told Storyist to open the file as a novel manuscript, not the default of "Notebook Entry." Clicked okay.

 

What I got was a bunch of paragraphs marked as Section Text (including the # and what were destined to become chapter titles). The paragraphs retained the font set in Text Edit but were marked as Section Text. If I clicked on them and chose the style from that little list at the bottom of the main window, I could apply any of the styles and the formatting changed to reflect the new style. Same if I went to Format > Style > Apply Style or used the Inspector.

 

I'm not doubting that you saw what you saw, you understand. But perhaps something in that description will help you figure out what went wrong. Could you test it and see if the problem recurs?

Good luck!

Marguerite

[omegaman]

Everything works fine after using the import assistant and the Novel Template.

[marguerite]

Good! Glad it worked out.

M

[Steve]

Good! Glad it worked out.

M

 

Me too.

 

BTW, you can also import styles from other documents using the Format > Style > Import Styles command. This is useful if you've already got a stylesheet in the atext document.

 

To get the styles from the Novel template:

 

1) Create a new project from the Novel template and save it to disk.

 

2) Open the text file you want to transfer the styles to.

 

3) Choose Format > Style > Import Styles

 

(Yes, it would be nice if you could just select the internal template rather than having to save the Novel template to disk). Already have it on the list

 

BTW, many RTF files (including RTF files generated by Pages, believe it or not) don't have stylesheet information. This is a limitation of the RTF converters that Apple supplies with OS X. The Storyist RTF converter does support stylesheets, and the importer will supply the default ones if none are available in the source document.

 

 

-Steve

[omegaman]

Me too.

 

BTW, you can also import styles from other documents using the Format > Style > Import Styles command. This is useful if you've already got a stylesheet in the atext document.

 

To get the styles from the Novel template:

 

1) Create a new project from the Novel template and save it to disk.

 

2) Open the text file you want to transfer the styles to.

 

3) Choose Format > Style > Import Styles

 

(Yes, it would be nice if you could just select the internal template rather than having to save the Novel template to disk). Already have it on the list

 

BTW, many RTF files (including RTF files generated by Pages, believe it or not) don't have stylesheet information. This is a limitation of the RTF converters that Apple supplies with OS X. The Storyist RTF converter does support stylesheets, and the importer will supply the default ones if none are available in the source document.

 

 

-Steve

 

Did the import styles trick yesterday as a matter of fact. Worked fine.