Scribe is the most powerful and flexible text and writing stack available for RapidWeaver.
When we write, we want to concentrate on the content; breaking the flow of creativity by the continual insertion of fresh paragraph and header stacks is just about the worst thing that we can do. The alternative is that we just keep bashing the enter key and inserting line breaks into one paragraph stack. Apart from the fact that this will break the vertical spacing (rhythm) of the page, it also prevents fine control of the paragraph styles and does not allow for widow/orphan control.
On top of this, our pages become progressively more difficult to read in edit mode and the number of stacks proliferates. with headers, paragraphs, lists and even spacers/shims (the utter scourge of text - bad enough generally but in the flow of text, absolute amateur crimes against humanity).
What about if we could make a page with a single text stack that would handle large quantities of content and furthermore handle a detailed range of styling and features. These features may be newspaper columns, drop capitals, floating images, read more areas, stylish block (pull) quotes and book style formatting. This is, not surprisingly exactly what Scribe can do but in the spirit of the best TV advertising, "wait there's more"....
Scribe can do all these things on multiple paragraphs, headers, images etc etc, all within the one stack. If you stop and think about this it is pretty radical, so radical in fact that it means that we could make an entire web page with meaningful content layouts using JUST ONE STACK! Scribe can even do this without a theme just to demonstrate that it will handle all the typesetting, spacing and fonts.
To prove the point, you can view and even download the demo page showing how its done.
Click to View
This page has one Scribe stack containing all the text. Using the powerful options, we can insert the floating images, drop caps and columnize areas of the content at will. The page uses Joe Workmans Blank theme which is truly blank - it contains absolutely nothing. Other blank themes out there are only "content blank" they usually contain a framework of some sort to handle spacing, text fonts etc etc.
Scribe wil work in any theme and use the theme text settings unless you tell it otherwise. It is though capable of managing any or all of settings itself.
Scribe uses Stacks 3 built in Markdown processor. This means that it doesn’t need a PHP page, it puts zero load on your server but most importantly it works in Edit Mode (Yes! Edit mode, not preview. Your formatted content is right there in edit mode as soon as you click away from the stack).
Don't think that you need to be a Markdown expert to use Scribe; in fact you can make multiple paragraph text without knowing or using any markdown - just hit the Enter key to separate paragraphs. This will make proper HTML paragraphs and WILL NOT insert line breaks.
With just a couple of simple Markdown characters: a `#` , a `-` and a `>`. you can make headers, lists and quotes. This is not coding by any means and is super super simple, even for the least technical users. Remember though, if you just want a paragraph replacement stack then you don't even need to remember these three.