Default/global justification settings

[Aardo]

Hi Everyone,

How to set default (or global) justification settings in Affinity Publisher?

I mean minimum, prefered, maximum letter and word spacing. So that it is set for all new documents, new text frames and new paragraphs be default.

Is it possible? I can't find it in the preferences.

I'm only aware of the justificaiton settings in the Paragraph panel and the Paragraph style dialog window. But this I have to set repeatedly for every new paragraph or style I create, because the default values are not optimal for my needs.

See image:

 

 

[GarryP]

I’ve not needed to do this myself yet but there is a menu item in the Text Styles Panel named “Save Styles As Default”.
You could try to alter your “No Style” paragraph settings and then save the styles.

[Aardo]

6 minutes ago, GarryP said:

You could try to alter your “No Style” paragraph settings and then save the styles.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to edit a No Style paragraph style. There is no Edit option for this style. I suspect it's not a style at all, it is literally No Style.

Ok, but this gave me an idea. I could create a top level Group Style and set only the justification settings, not changing any other settings. Save this as default styles. And later base all my new styles on this Group Style.

I just tested it. And this doesn't work. It doesn't inherit the justification settings from the Group style. In the child style, the justification settings are back to default.

[GarryP]

Ah, sorry, I think I meant Base instead of No Style.
I just did a quick test of making the Justification changes to Base and it seemed to go okay with the changes rippling to the other styles that are based on it.
(I don’t explicitly use Group Styles myself so I don’t know much about them.)

[Aardo]

When I create a new Publisher document, I don't have any styles. The list is empty, only No Style show up. Where do I get Base from?

Anyway, I created a Base style manually and set the justification settings. Then I made a child style, based on the Base style. And it works, it inherits the justification settings.

I think that it should work also for a Group Style parent/child relationship. Somehow it doesn't inherit the justification settings from a Group style. I suppose it's a bug.

[GarryP]

I’ve attached a document that should have all the standard text styles in it.
You should have these by default on new documents so I don’t know how yours have gone missing.
You can import the text styles from the hamburger menu in the Text Frame Panel.

As for the Group Styles, I don’t know what they are supposed to be used for. I can inherit things from a non-group text style so I don’t know why I would do otherwise, but maybe I’m missing out on some good functionality.

blank-document-with-standard-text-styles.afpub

[Aardo]

Thanks for the file. Now I see, that your Base style is in fact a Group style. Group styles are exactly for this purpose, you can set some base settings and create Paragraph and Character styles, that inherit these common settings. You can create hierarchical parent-child relationships between styles. But you can't assign a Group style to a paragraph or text directly I think. They are only for grouping.

PS. Odd enough, when I changed the justification settings in your Base Group style, the child Body style did inherit it. So it works as expected.

Thanks for help.

Edited April 10, 2020 by Aardo
Minor edit

[GarryP]

You’re welcome.

I probably need to get to grips with how the Text Styles really work from the ground up.
I’m probably missing out on some good stuff that will let me make changes really quickly.
(The software I used prior to Publisher had Character Styles and Paragraph Styles – which let me do everything I wanted to – but not Group Styles, so their introduction to me was a bit of a mystery.)

[P_Bellefeuille]

In Version 2.1.1 go Edit/Default/Save. I don't know if it is available in version 1.

Any modification you do, choice of fonts, Hyphenation and Justification, etc, will be saved and available as is with any new document. When you create a new document and when you create a new text box, then all your default settings will be displayed as you would like.

Edited August 21, 2023 by P_Bellefeuille