Chapter 12 · The Editor
Focus Mode, Typewriter Scrolling, and the View Tab
The View tab changes nothing about your manuscript. It changes what sits on the screen around it: how much chrome, how big, how bright, and whether something else is open beside the draft. This chapter covers every control on it, and which of them your browser remembers rather than the document.
What is on the View tab
View is the last of the ribbon tabs, to the right of Review. Chapter 9 maps the whole editor; this chapter is the one tab in detail. Every format gets the same core: a Zoom menu, a Focus Mode button, Typewriter and Dark checkboxes, and at the far right Print / PDF and Shortcuts. A novel and a video script each add a pair of their own, covered below.
Shortcuts opens the authoritative key list for the format you are in; Chapter 10 is the same material in print. Print / PDF belongs to Part VIII, since what it produces is a file you hand to somebody else rather than a way of looking at the screen.
Focus Mode
Click Focus Mode and the page keeps the manuscript and drops the rest: the site navigation and footer, the document bar with its title and save state, the ribbon tabs and the ribbon, the navigator on the left, the findings rail on the right, the status bar, and the marks in the corners including the feedback pill. The manuscript then takes the height of the window.
Two things deliberately survive:
- The find bar. ⌘F still opens it, above the manuscript, and only when you ask for it. See Chapter 11.
- The reference pane, if it was open. A second document beside the draft is the other half of what you are reading. On a wide window the two sit side by side; on a narrow one the reference stacks under the draft and takes at most a little under half the height.
That button is the only way in. There is no keyboard shortcut for it, and it is not remembered between visits.
Leaving, and what Esc does first
A pill appears at the top right reading Exit focus · Esc. Click it, or press Esc, and everything comes back exactly as it was.
One Esc does one thing. The key is claimed in order by whatever is in the way: a character-name autocomplete list, an open dialog, or the find bar when your cursor is on it. Focus mode is last in that queue, so if the first press closes a list, a second one leaves focus mode. While focus mode is on, Esc does not do its usual job of moving the cursor out to the ribbon tabs, because there are none on screen to move to.
Focus on the outline board
The same mode exists on a project's outline board, where a Focus button sits at the right of the Beat cards and Treatment tabs. It hides the page heading and the line under it, narrows the column, and fades the two view tabs until you point at them. Those tabs stay on purpose: cards and treatment are two halves of one outline.
Entering puts the cursor where the work is: the treatment if that is the view you are on, otherwise the first beat card's title. The same pill and the same Esc get you out. The outline board itself is Part V.
Typewriter
Tick Typewriter and Skarvia keeps the line you are typing at a fixed height on the page rather than letting it walk down to the bottom edge. The cursor is held a little above the middle of the writing area, and the page scrolls up under it as you go.
It moves the page only once the cursor has drifted more than a few pixels from that line, so ordinary typing does not twitch on every keystroke, and it skips the adjustment entirely when the cursor is off screen rather than fighting you for the scroll position.
Dark
Dark switches the theme for the whole of Skarvia rather than for this editor alone: the Studio, the outline board, the manual you are reading now. The View tab is the only place the theme is set.
The choice is stored in the browser you made it in and applied before the page paints, so there is no flash of the wrong theme on the next load. A different browser, or a different machine, starts light again.
Zoom
The Zoom menu offers 90%, 100%, 110%, 125% and 150%. It scales the paper on screen. It does not change the type size of your manuscript, the page count, or anything about a file you export or print.
At 125% and 150% the page can end up wider than the space it has, particularly with the reference pane open. The paper then anchors to the left instead of staying centred, which is what makes the overflow reachable: a centred page that spills on both sides puts its left margin somewhere no scrollbar can get to.
Reference: a second pane
On a document you own, the View tab carries a Reference checkbox. It opens a pane beside the draft with its own small bar: a picker labelled Choose something…, an ↗ button that opens the same thing in a new tab, and an ✕ that closes the pane.
The picker is grouped. Documents in this project lists your other documents, prefixed by their folder where they sit in one. Research shelf lists what you have filed in the project's research library: pages, PDFs and images. With neither yet, it reads Nothing to show yet.
The pane reads, it does not edit. Two live documents would mean two save loops and two sets of unsaved state, and what the pane is for is having the map open while you write the chapter. Click ↗ to open the other document properly when you want to change it.
| Situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| You pick a link off the research shelf | It is shown as a link with its note rather than loaded into the pane. Most sites refuse to be framed, and the ones that agree would then be running inside Skarvia's own page. |
| The document you were showing has been deleted | The pane says That document is no longer here. Pick something else. rather than showing an empty rectangle. |
| A shelf file has gone | That file is no longer on the shelf. |
| You close the pane | What was in it is unloaded, not merely hidden. Reopening fetches the document as it now stands rather than as it was an hour ago. |
| You reopen the document later | The pane comes back showing the same thing, unless that thing no longer exists, in which case the choice is forgotten rather than reopening broken. |
The checkbox is not drawn at all on a document shared with you. Roles are Part VII.
What your format adds
| Format | Extra controls |
|---|---|
| Novel | Auto-headings, which promotes detected chapter lines to real headings as you write. It is off by default, and the navigator offers the promotion instead. Manuscript pages adds a second, labelled page figure to the counts at 250 words per page, the number agents and publishers mean by "pages". |
| Video script | Two-column script switches to the broadcast layout with visuals on the left and audio on the right in locked rows. Timecode adds a running clock down the left showing where each row starts. |
Both video script toggles change the document rather than only the view of it, which is why they are saved with it. Page and word counting is a chapter of its own later in this Part.
Where each setting is remembered
This is the distinction that explains most surprises here.
| Setting | Remembered |
|---|---|
| Zoom, Typewriter, Dark, Auto-headings, Manuscript pages | In this browser, for every document you open in it. A second machine starts from the defaults. |
| Reference pane, and what it is showing | With the document, on Skarvia's side. It reopens wherever you open that document. |
| Two-column script, Timecode | With the document. |
| Focus Mode | Nowhere. It lasts until you leave it. |
If a setting that belongs to the document fails to save, the document bar's save-state slot reads That setting did not save and clears itself after a few seconds. Treat it as you would any other failed save: check your connection, then set it again.
Updated 2026-08-19 · Full contents · Something wrong or missing?