Run-in titles

[ptram]

Hi,

When writing synopsis for the movie, I usually use this kind of formatting:

Ulysses and Minnie. Then Ulysses reaches Topolinia, and meets Minnie.

This is even more common with technical documents:

Open. This command lets you open an existing document.

As seen in another thread, this can easily be done in Mellel, by using an Auto-title that recalls a character style, and not a paragraph style.

However, there is a problem when importing text from an external outliner, for example Scrivener. Here, the text (composed of chapter title and body text) is converted in Mellel this way:

Ulysses and Minnie
Then Ulysses reaches Topolinia, and meets Minnie.

What you must do to have the initial type of paired sentences, is replace or apply all styles, then manually remove the carriage return between the auto-title and the body text, then add a dot and a space after the title.

What I would find useful would be a paragraph style option called "Run-in", where the carriage return after the paragraph is automatically replaced by a dot and a space. This way, as soon as you apply an auto-title flow to the title, and the linked paragraph style is automatically applied to the title, you end with paired sentences in the same line.

So, from:
Ulysses and Minnie
Then Ulysses reaches Topolinia, and meets Minnie.

to:
Ulysses and Minnie. Then Ulysses reaches Topolinia, and meets Minnie.

with the single operation of applying an auto-title to the title sentence.

Paolo

[cyberbryce]

What I would find useful would be a paragraph style option called "Run-in", where the carriage return after the paragraph is automatically replaced by a dot and a space. This way, as soon as you apply an auto-title flow to the title, and the linked paragraph style is automatically applied to the title, you end with paired sentences in the same line.

I guess Mellel could in theory support this as a paragraph style attribute, much like CSS supports it with the "display" attribute. However ...

It seems like it should be possible with Mellel's current find and replace functionality.

(That said, I just crashed Mellel trying to do this...)

[nicka]

It seems like it should be possible with Mellel's current find and replace functionality.

It may be, but I can't see how. You can search for things inside an auto-title, but you can't search for auto-titles, so I don't see a way of putting anything after each auto-title (although you can put e.g. a full stop at the end of the auto-title text inside the auto-title), or searching for an auto-title plus a return character.

There's a slightly odd difference in find and replace with citation objects, which are otherwise similar. You can search for them, so you could put (or remove) a return after each one if you wanted.

(That said, I just crashed Mellel trying to do this...)

Impressive. How did you manage it?

[cyberbryce]

It seems like it should be possible with Mellel's current find and replace functionality.

It may be, but I can't see how. You can search for things inside an auto-title, but you can't search for auto-titles, so I don't see a way of putting anything after each auto-title (although you can put e.g. a full stop at the end of the auto-title text inside the auto-title), or searching for an auto-title plus a return character.

Yes, what I meant was: (1) do the find and replace first to get the titles to run-in the way you want, (2) insert the auto-titles.

A requirement for any of this to work is for the auto-title to have no paragraph style.

(That said, I just crashed Mellel trying to do this...)

Impressive. How did you manage it?

I was trying to do the required search (with bold-faced formatting):
[paragraph boundary]{0 or 1 times}[paragraph boundary negation]{1 or more times}[paragraph boundary]

Bryce

[cyberbryce]

I was trying to do the required search (with bold-faced formatting):
[paragraph boundary]{0 or 1 times}[paragraph boundary negation]{1 or more times}[paragraph boundary]

This turned out to be a very stupid search and nothing like what I ultimately came up to make run-in headings...

I guess PM me if interested, because it looks like you cannot post attachments.

Bryce