Storyist & Importing formatting

[obsidiandragon]

hey everyone.

 

I've just downloaded Storyist -- this software seems to be really neat.

 

However, I'm running into an issue.

 

After reading through these posts, I figured out how to get Storyist to recognize & automatically sub-divide my chapters & sections (that alone puts it several notches above a couple similar programs).

 

However, Storyist does not want to recognize or import my ms's formatting. I used Mac MS Word for the bulk of this ms. Storyist strips out all the italics, underlines & bold in my manuscript when I import it in. Whether I check the "when importing section text" line or not, it strips everything out. When I check the "importing section text" line, it gives me choices for alternate styles, and I can't seem to find anything that tells me what type of format those styles will apply, and it doesn't seem to matter what I select anyway, all my formatting disappears. I've tried saving my doc as an RTF (thinking that maybe it was a Storyist/Word issue), and Storyist presented me with even more bewildering format choices, and no reference to what those choices were or would do...and also stripped out all my formatting.

 

Any ideas?

 

 

(edit: the issue seems to go away temporarily when I delete the storylist plist from my preferences folder, but comes right back if I close/reopen storyist. huh)

[Steve]

hey everyone.

 

I've just downloaded Storyist -- this software seems to be really neat.

 

However, I'm running into an issue.

 

After reading through these posts, I figured out how to get Storyist to recognize & automatically sub-divide my chapters & sections (that alone puts it several notches above a couple similar programs).

 

However, Storyist does not want to recognize or import my ms's formatting. I used Mac MS Word for the bulk of this ms. Storyist strips out all the italics, underlines & bold in my manuscript when I import it in. Whether I check the "when importing section text" line or not, it strips everything out. When I check the "importing section text" line, it gives me choices for alternate styles, and I can't seem to find anything that tells me what type of format those styles will apply, and it doesn't seem to matter what I select anyway, all my formatting disappears. I've tried saving my doc as an RTF (thinking that maybe it was a Storyist/Word issue), and Storyist presented me with even more bewildering format choices, and no reference to what those choices were or would do...and also stripped out all my formatting.

 

Any ideas?

 

Hi Chris,

 

Welcome!

 

There is a bug in versions 1.3-1.3.4 that causes Storyist to ignore the "When importing section text, apply the style named:" checkbox in certain circumstances when importing Word files, which means that your formatting will be lost if you trip this bug. This bug is fixed in 1.3.5 (which is currently in testing). If you'd like to try the beta version, send me a PM and I'll forward the instructions on how to download it.

 

To work around this in 1.3.4 and earlier, save your Word file as RTF (as you did), and when you get to step 3, be sure to leave the "Substitute new styles for imported styles" check box unchecked.

 

As you correctly guessed, Storyist can get import more information (e.g. style sheets) from RTF files than it can from Word files.

 

I'm sorry the options were confusing and any suggestions on how to make them less so would be greatly appreciated. I'd especially appreciate feedback on the Help file that is linked to the assistant for these steps (i.e. the question mark button).

 

-Steve

[obsidiandragon]

Thanks for the help, Steve. I had been unchecking the "substitute" box when I tried the RTF way, and still got the formatting stripped (I tried it both ways, unchecked and checked).

 

I ended up repairing permissions on my Mac, trashing the storylist plist file from the Preferences folder, and then trying the RTF import again with the box unchecked. Worked perfect this time, thank you.

 

As I noted above, trashing the plist file also seemed to temporarily fix the .doc import/format issue, too. However, when I tried to save the file after that, Storyist crashed (beach ball of death). It saved fine on the RTF import, but crashes on the .DOC import/save. Hmmmm.

 

Just something in the help documentation that lists what the specifics of those styles are would help a lot (what the heck are "Hidden" styles?), or have something similar to MS Word that opens up a toolbox showing the specifics of the various styles & allows one to edit them to personal preference.

[obsidiandragon]

Um...sorry, Steve, I'm going to have to take back the "Worked Perfect" in the prior post.

 

After walking away from this a bit, I went back & looked closer at the RTF import, and realized that it totally ignored my chapter/section breaks. Actually, it picked up on the chapters, but there's weird parts that are outside of the chapter sections, if that makes any sense -- when I checked closer, I realized that Storyist had read the "--" character (and en-dash and em-dash replacements, when I experimented) as chapter/section breaks, as well. Every single part that Storyist had placed into its own separate section outside of a chapter section, the first line ended in a "--".

 

Uh-oh.

 

I should note that importing the regular DOC didn't have that issue (though importing a DOC won't let me save the file). It's just on the RTF import.

[Steve]

Um...sorry, Steve, I'm going to have to take back the "Worked Perfect" in the prior post.

 

After walking away from this a bit, I went back & looked closer at the RTF import, and realized that it totally ignored my chapter/section breaks. Actually, it picked up on the chapters, but there's weird parts that are outside of the chapter sections, if that makes any sense -- when I checked closer, I realized that Storyist had read the "--" character (and en-dash and em-dash replacements, when I experimented) as chapter/section breaks, as well. Every single part that Storyist had placed into its own separate section outside of a chapter section, the first line ended in a "--".

 

Uh-oh.

 

I should note that importing the regular DOC didn't have that issue (though importing a DOC won't let me save the file). It's just on the RTF import.

 

Hi Chris,

 

This must be frustrating.

 

There are a lot of import options, so let try to get to a baseline. When importing, try with the following:

1. Chose File > Open and select an RTF file.
   
2. Select the Blank template.
   
3. In Step 1, of the import assistant, chose the "A paragraph containing only the # character" option for section separators.
   
4. In Step 2 check the "Apply heading styles to paragraphs..." check box. If your chapters start with something other than "Chapter", enter the text there.
   
5. In Step 3, make sure the "Substitute new styles for imported styles..." and "Preserve style overrides" check boxes were unchecked.
   

From your comments above, I'm assuming that this is close to what you did, and what you are seeing is this:

• The formatting is preserved when importing RTF and not overriding the styles.
  
• But even though you checked the check box in Step 2 Chapter Titles, Storyist did not recognize your chapter breaks.
  
• But it did consider paragraphs ending in "--" as chapter breaks.
  

The last point is interesting as there is no logic in the code that looks for the "--" character sequence. Perhaps there are control characters in your text.

 

I'd be happy to take a look at your file for you. You can obfuscate it if you want, by using the following steps (Word 2002).

• Open the file in Word
  
• Bring up the replace dialog.
  
• In the Find field, enter "[a-zA-Z]" (this is a regular expression that will match all alphabetic characters.
  
• In the Replace field, type any character, say "x"
  
• Press the disclosure button to reveal the advanced features.
  
• Check the "Use wildcards" check box. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
  
• Click Replace All.
  

The file is now obfuscated but the styles and any special characters are preserved. Save as RTF and email it to me. I'll PM you with my email address to avoid the spammers.

 

-Steve

[obsidiandragon]

Ok, THAT'S what you meant by "obfuscated file". I was confuzzled; I did not see this post, as I got your PMs first.

 

I followed the exact steps you outlined with the blank template and got the same result. However, it *is* recognizing chapter breaks and seems to also recognize the actual scene breaks -- it's just adding extra breaks where there shouldn't be any, and some of the scene breaks are under the extra breaks, instead of properly under the chapters (if that makes sense). In the sample I sent, it seemed to be based on the emdash or --, though when I replaced those characters with ellipses as a test, the same thing happened.

 

I'm really really hoping that the issues can be worked out and I can be patient -- that should tell you a lot of what I think about the potential usefulness of your program, Steve.

[Steve]

Ok, THAT'S what you meant by "obfuscated file". I was confuzzled; I did not see this post, as I got your PMs first.

 

I followed the exact steps you outlined with the blank template and got the same result. However, it *is* recognizing chapter breaks and seems to also recognize the actual scene breaks -- it's just adding extra breaks where there shouldn't be any, and some of the scene breaks are under the extra breaks, instead of properly under the chapters (if that makes sense). In the sample I sent, it seemed to be based on the emdash or --, though when I replaced those characters with ellipses as a test, the same thing happened.

 

I'm really really hoping that the issues can be worked out and I can be patient -- that should tell you a lot of what I think about the potential usefulness of your program, Steve.

 

Hi Chris,

 

I just posted 1.3.6, which fixes the em dash issue you were experiencing as well as the slow saving (you were seeing the beach ball) the first time you saved after importing. Thanks for sending the example files!

 

Note for the archives: It turns out that the strange breaks Chris saw in the imported document were in the source RTF document as well (some paragraph were marked with an outline level). If you're experiencing a similar problem, try viewing the outline of your document in Word. If the outline isn't quite right, it is probably easier to fix it in Word and then import. This is a common enough issue that I'll add it to the Help file.

 

-Steve