Subject: Re: Commit: Styles dialog does something useful now.
From: Randy Kramer (rhkramer@fast.net)
Date: Mon Apr 23 2001 - 08:15:29 CDT
Martin,
Wonderful!
Martin Sevior wrote:
> Also I want to add a feature to save/load current styles to a file so
> users can build up useful collections of styles that can be applied to
> arbitary documents. No need to re-invent the wheel if a user has gone to
> the trouble defining a useful set of styles for one doc.
>
> Randy is that MS Word style sheets are?
I'll start with "yes" and then explain a little more -- in older
versions of Word there was a file specifically called a stylesheet and
that was exactly its purpose. In Word97 (and maybe Word95) the
stylesheet file no longer exists, but there are template files, which
serve much of the same purpose but may also include a template for a
document. (A template for a letter might include text for your return
address, fields for the current date, the "Dear ______", (is that the
salutation?), "boilerplate text" like a closing paragraph, and the
"Sincerely Yours, _______ ________".)
There is a standard template, called Normal, which is opened whenever
you open Word (unless you do something to force a different template to
open, like open a document with a different template applied, or specify
a different template in place of the Normal template (I think you can do
this, I'll have to confirm). There are functions in word to create new
templates, to create new styles and assign them to a specific template,
to create a named style from the formatting applied to a paragraph, and
to copy styles from one template to another, and others (like the
formatting brush icon, which allows you to copy the format from one
paragraph and apply it to other paragraphs).
Word also has a dialog called the style gallery (Format | Style
Gallery). One function of the style gallery is to let you preview the
effect of a different template on your current document. (There may be
other functions which I don't fully understand right now.)
(Sorry, I went a little further than you were expecting, I'm sure, but
didn't cover everything either.)
Randy Kramer
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