Subject: Styles (was Re: Upcoming releases)
From: ROBERT CAMPBELL (RCAMPBEL@suss.com)
Date: Tue Feb 13 2001 - 10:54:22 CST
>>> Randy Kramer <rhkramer@fast.net> 02/13/01 11:11AM >>>
>On Word's standard toolbar, they include a drop down menu (combo box).
>It normally displays the current style (name) at the location of the
>cursor. If text comprising several different styles is selected,
this
>is shown blank. You can drop down the menu to apply a different
style
>to the selected text (or for text that you are about to type).
In fact, because styles are applied by default at the paragraph level,
it is not necessary to select an entire paragraph to change its style.
Simply place the cursor in the paragraph and select a new style, by any
method (the drop list, the Style dialog, etc).
>On a slightly different point, within a paragraph with a named style,
>you can apply extra style attributes, like applying bold or italic to
a
>specific word or phrase. This text still has the underlying named
style
>that the original paragraph has, so that is the named style that is
>shown in the drop down menu even if, for example, the entire
paragraph
>is selected.
It is even possible to apply a different style to selected text withing
a paragraph. For example, the Normal style may be applied to a
paragraph. The user may then select text within that paragraph and
apply the Emphasis style. This would override only the character
formatting of the Normal style for the selected text. If the Emphasis
style had paragraph-level formatting that conflicted with Normal style's
(for example, Emphasis is right aligned and Normal is left aligned), it
would have no effect.
It is possible to have derived styles. For example, there may be a
Normal style that defines font, point size, paragraph justification,
etc. There may also be a Normal Emphasis style derived from Normal,
which only specifies the differences between the two. For example,
Normal Emphasis may add the bold attribute; it would not duplicate the
font and point size attributes of Normal. Therefore, if the font and
point size of the Normal style is changed, these changes would also
cascade to any text that was Normal Emphasis.
Styles (in MS Word) can also have a Followed By attribute. For
example, the Followed By attribute for the Heading 1 style may be Normal
Paragraph. When the user types a heading (using Heading 1 style) and
then presses enter, AbiWord would automatically switch to Normal
Paragraph style. This is just a convenience feature. The user can
select a different style for the next paragraph, if desired. And the
automatic reformatting that takes place after a change to a style
definition does not (or, at least, should not) affect the style of the
following paragraph, even if the Followed By attribute was what changed.
There is no (easy or infallible) way to tell whether the user had
overridden the Followed By attribute in the first place.
In the absence of a non-NULL Followed By attribute, the style should
not change when the user presses ENTER.
I hope to implement RTF style-import, soon. To me, this is one of the
most important missing features, because I use styles all the time in my
legacy documents (resumes, reports, etc). I think you will find that
most businesses do as well.
Rob Campbell
rcampbel@suss.com
Robert J. Campbell Jr.
Mechanical Engineer
Karl Suss America
Phone: (802) 244-5181 ext. 314
Fax: (802) 244-5757
rcampbel@suss.com
E-mail: rcampbel@suss.com
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