Scriptorium

Scriptorium Handbook

A guide to every part of the application, from your first verse to handing an IDML package to your typesetter. This page mirrors the in-app Help — print it, search it, share it.

Getting Started

After installing Scriptorium, launch the application and choose New Project. Pick a name (this is the title that appears on the cover of any export), select the books you intend to translate, and choose a starting source — a blank project, or a USFM import.

Projects are stored as a single .scrp file. You can save it anywhere — your Documents folder, an external drive, a synced cloud folder. Scriptorium does not require any particular location.

Your first verse

Open the book you want to start with from the left sidebar. Click any verse number to begin editing. Type your translation, then press Tab to advance to the next verse, or Ctrl+S to commit a revision without moving on.

The default state for a freshly-written verse is Draft. You'll move it to subsequent states as it advances through review.

Translating Verses

The verse editor is the heart of Scriptorium. It is a single column of verses, set in your project's body face, with the verse number, workflow state, and text on one line. Click a verse to edit it in place.

You can paste in plain text or USFM. Markup is interpreted live: \wj … \wj* renders as Words of Christ, \nd … \nd* renders as small-caps Lord, and the poetic structure markers (\q1, \q2, \qa) indent appropriately.

The Words panel

While you're editing a verse, the Words panel on the right shows the underlying Greek or Hebrew, word by word, with Strong's numbers, parsing, and a short gloss. Click any Greek or Hebrew word to pin it; pinned words stay visible while you move between verses.

Verse Workflow States

Every verse is in exactly one of five states. The state is shown as a colored dot beside the verse number:

  • Draft — A first pass. The verse exists, but the translator hasn't reviewed it.
  • Self-review — The translator has read the verse back and is satisfied for now.
  • Reviewer — Out to a reviewer for comments.
  • Revised — The reviewer has marked it; the translator owes a response.
  • Approved — Final.

States can be advanced or rolled back by one step at a time via Ctrl+↑ / Ctrl+↓. Every state change is logged with a timestamp.

USFM Inline Markup

Scriptorium supports the inline subset of USFM 3.0. The most common markers:

  • \wj … \wj* — Words of Christ (red in body, configurable).
  • \nd … \nd* — Divine Name (rendered as small-caps).
  • \add … \add* — Translator's addition (italic).
  • \q1, \q2, \qa — Poetry levels and acrostic markers.
  • \qt … \qt* — Quotation flag.
  • \f … \f* — Footnote (the editor expands inline to a footnote panel).

Block-level markers (book and chapter openers, paragraphs, headings) are managed structurally — you do not type \c or \p by hand.

Comments & Questions

Click the small margin tick next to any verse to open the comment thread. Type, hit Cmd+Enter to post. Reviewers post into the same thread. Resolved threads collapse to a single line.

A reviewer who is satisfied with a verse can mark it Revised from the thread itself — there is no separate review action.

Verse Revisions

Every time a verse is saved, Scriptorium stores the previous version as a revision. Up to 50 revisions per verse are kept (older ones drop off the bottom). Open the revision panel from the verse menu or by pressing Ctrl+R.

You can diff any two revisions, copy a phrase out of an older revision, or restore an old one to head. Restoring creates a new revision; the old one stays in history.

Section Headings & Parallels

Section headings live above verses, not as part of them. Click the gap above any verse to add a heading. Headings carry across to print and to InDesign export with their own paragraph style.

Parallel references (e.g. "Matt. 22:23–33; Luke 20:27–40") attach to a heading. They appear as a small italic line beneath the heading in the body text.

Validation

The Validate command (Ctrl+Shift+V) runs every check Scriptorium knows: missing verses, orphaned section headings, USFM marker mismatches, glossary inconsistencies, suspicious whitespace. The report opens in a side panel; click any row to jump to the offending verse.

Validation is also run automatically before any export. You can dismiss individual warnings, but you cannot export a project with structural errors.

Original Language Lookup

The Words panel is the primary lookup surface. For deeper work, open the Lexicon from the Tools menu — a separate window with the full lexical entry, every occurrence in the canon, and morphology charts.

Strong's numbers, parsing, and glosses are local to the install. There is no network call; the data ships with the binary.

Study Notes & Book Introductions

Each book has an optional Introduction (printed before chapter 1) and an optional Study Note set (printed inline as footnotes, or collected at the back, depending on your layout choice).

Notes are written in a small Markdown subset — bold, italic, links, blockquotes. They are not free HTML.

Glossary

The Glossary stores your preferred rendering for any source word. Add an entry from the Words panel by clicking a word and choosing Add to glossary. Each entry has a preferred rendering, any number of allowed alternates, and any number of forbidden renderings.

The consistency scan runs across the whole project (or any subset) and reports every verse where the source word appears but the preferred rendering — or an allowed alternate — does not.

AI Review

AI Review is off until you turn it on under Preferences → AI Review. To enable it, paste your Anthropic API key. The key is stored locally, encrypted with your machine's keychain.

To run a review, select any verse, chapter, or book, and choose AI Review from the Tools menu. Pick a brief — a short prompt telling Claude what to look for — or write a new one. The dialog shows you exactly what will be sent before sending it. Notes come back inline beside the verses.

Your verse text is sent to Anthropic. Nothing is sent to Straight Truth Press. If you want zero outbound traffic, leave AI Review off.

Front & End Matter

The Layout page lists every front- and end-matter section your project will include: Title, Copyright, Dedication, Foreword, Preface, Abbreviations, Translator's Notes (front); Glossary, Study Guide, Bibliography, Maps (end). Drag to reorder, click to edit.

Each section has its own structured editor — the Title page is not a free-text page, it is a small form. This keeps your typography consistent across the whole book.

Adobe InDesign Export

For a professional edition, hand your typesetter an IDML package. File → Export → InDesign Package produces a folder containing the IDML, all linked fonts, and a style-map document. Your typesetter opens the IDML and the project is laid out — paragraph and character styles are pre-named so they can drop in a house style without remapping.

Included styles: body, body-poetry-1, body-poetry-2, wj, nd, add, section-heading, parallel-ref, drop-cap, running-head-left, running-head-right, page-number, footnote.

Saves, Backups & Recovery

Projects live in a single file with a .scrp extension. Saves are atomic: a half-written file cannot exist. If the application is killed mid-save, the previous save is intact on next launch.

File locations

The project file is wherever you saved it. Beside it, Scriptorium maintains a .snapshots/ folder with up to 30 daily snapshots (one year on Cloud Sync). The snapshots folder is portable — copy it to a thumb drive for an off-site backup.

Crash recovery

If Scriptorium exited unexpectedly, your last keystroke is restored on next launch. There is no recovery dialog; the application opens where you were.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The shortcuts below assume Windows / Linux. On macOS, substitute Cmd for Ctrl.

Navigation

  • Tab / Shift+Tab — Next / previous verse.
  • Ctrl+G — Go to verse.
  • Ctrl+K — Open search palette.
  • Ctrl+1…9 — Jump to book group (Pentateuch, History, Wisdom…).

Editing

  • Ctrl+S — Save revision.
  • Ctrl+R — Open revision history.
  • Ctrl+↑ / Ctrl+↓ — Advance / roll back state.
  • Ctrl+' — Toggle Words panel.

Markup

  • Ctrl+B — Wrap selection with \add … \add*.
  • Ctrl+J — Wrap selection with \wj … \wj*.
  • Ctrl+L — Wrap selection with \nd … \nd*.

Export

  • Ctrl+P — Open Print Preview.
  • Ctrl+Shift+E — Export menu.
  • Ctrl+Shift+V — Run validation.