Escribal
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Guide

Your first workflow

Two instructions and a press of Run, and the shape every workflow follows afterwards.

A workflow is an ordered list of instructions that you put together on a canvas. The program runs them one by one, from top to bottom, and the whole list produces the finished document. This guide builds the smallest one there is.

A text file in two instructions

  1. Open Escribal and choose Text file → Create txt file. In the panel on the right, fill in a name and a folder.
  2. Add Text file → Append Line .txt and type any text.
  3. Press Run.

The file appears in that folder. Documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDF, CSV, JSON and Markdown work the same way from their own menus.

The shape every workflow has

  1. Create or open a document. Every workflow begins with an instruction that creates a new document or opens one you already have. This is where you choose the file name and the folder it will be saved to. Every format except PDF can also be opened from an existing file; a PDF can only be created.
  2. Modify it. All the other instructions act on that open document: they add, change or remove content. They do not open or save files on their own.
  3. Save it. The document stays open in memory during the whole workflow and is written only once, at the end.

Because nothing is written until the end, a workflow that fails partway through saves nothing. Either the whole workflow succeeds, or the file is not created.

Where a new instruction lands

Click a line on the canvas to mark it. The panel on the right shows its fields, and the next instruction you add goes in right below it. With nothing marked, a new instruction goes at the end of the workflow.

A loop or a condition is one line like any other: marking its card adds the next instruction after the whole block. To put something inside, mark a line of the branch you want.

Saving the workflow is not producing the documents

A workflow is a file of its own, ending in .scriba. It holds the list of instructions; the .docx, .xlsx or .pdf it describes appear when you run it. Run always works from the file, and a workflow that has never been saved runs from a temporary copy, so trying one out does not force you to pick a name first.

A .scriba is meant to be passed around: your user folder is replaced by a marker when it is saved, so it keeps working on a colleague’s computer.

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