Text style workflow in Publisher

[Old Bruce]

20 minutes ago, kevinslimp said:

What's strange about Publisher is that, if there's a character style in the palette, it automatically sets it as a "default" style, meaning it is somehow combined with the paragraph style selected. This can only be stopped by clicking on the menu and telling it to ignore the character style ... which negates the advantage of having character styles altogether.

I have the [No Style] Character Style selected the vast majority of the time I am inserting text or working with text selections and I do not see any sort of combining with the Paragraph style I choose. If I have Italic (my home made style) selected as a character style then everything is going to be italic, similar for bold etc.

I also have at least one Group Style (I call it Base) which I use as the base for the Paragraph Styles, I set most of the stuff in there and just tweak a setting or two in the paragraph styles. Do you have a Base Group Style? 

[Petar Petrenko]

1 hour ago, ProDesigner said:

When first importing and laying-out text I assign the Paragraph Style, noting if there's a plus sign. I investigate this to see if it's just some bold or itallic words that have prompted it, or some other reason for it. Then, if it's just a bolded word within the paragraph I'll leave it with the plus sign (no reset of characters), or I reapply the Paragraph Style, then re-bold the text (and the plus sign reappears. I leave it in place then).

And how many paragraph overrides you have to remember? And how often you have to reapply local character formating? In a book with 100+ paragraph styles and tones of local character formating. There are much more character formatings then bold and italic. What about kerning, tracking, baseline shift, underline, character color or outline...

[Petar Petrenko]

1 hour ago, ProDesigner said:

A Character Style is still reset if the plus sign is addressed isn't it?

Character style is reseted if you apply only [No Style] From character styles panel.

[Petar Petrenko]

1 hour ago, ProDesigner said:

I don't know what the practice is and can't help you.

In this thread you are asking for help and all others are trying to help you, not you to them.

[AllAppsUser]

38 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

In this thread you are asking for help and all others are trying to help you, not you to them.

On January 29, I said: "Thanks everyone for your input. Really good.". All done as far as I was concerned.

-------------------------------------------------

Since then @kevinslimp's continued it with questions. It's now @kevin's thread, and @kevin's questions you're answering.

Apologies, I suppose I should have suggested starting a new topic. I didn't think it would spring back into life like it has, tbh.

[AllAppsUser]

44 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

And how many paragraph overrides you have to remember?

Surprisingly few. Set the overides up initially, then forget about them. It's always worked. I know, I suspect you won't believe me, but it's true.

Plus signs against the Paragraph styles don't have to be removed.

[tomek_Q]

On 12/23/2020 at 5:45 PM, Pšenda said:

https://affinity.help/publisher/en-US.lproj/pages/Text/textStyles_remove.html

 

On 1/26/2021 at 12:31 AM, ProDesigner said:

 

Can an imported file mess with the default No Style?

If yes, it might explain my previous "It's worked! Uh-oh, no it hasn't." experience.

Yes. If a PDF was saved without all fonts emedded it probably uses default Publisher font…

 

 

 

[tomek_Q]

On 1/26/2021 at 12:36 AM, loukash said:

Yeah, I think that's what didn't work for me either, even though I thought that would be the logical thing to do.

What I eventually did was to adjust everything without having any object selected. Then Edit > Defaults > Save while double-checking each tool/panel until I got it all saved.

Confirmed, Loukash (Łukasz?). Same behaviour here.

[tomek_Q]

On 3/4/2021 at 4:53 PM, ProDesigner said:

I've always worked with Paragraph Styles only. (I choose font style and size, and that sits in the Paragraph style definition). I ignore Character styles.

This is because I've always understood Character styles are something separate, with a narrower scope. They have little to no relation to Paragraph styles in truth (though you can link one within the other just to confuse yourself).

Put simply: Paragraph styles apply to whole paragraphs. Character styles apply to little random and adhoc strings of characters.

Example: So a character style might be Bold Red. And the "Bold Red" Character Style could occur within text of any Paragraph style. Character Styles are like a local over-ride for a word or phrase.

Character Styles are used for emphasis essentially. Generally, I've found the need for Character Styles is extremely rare, because I only work with imported text. Nowadays export/import maintains bold and itallic by default (wasn't always the case in the early days). So emphasis has already been assigned at source., and it's rarely changed - and never wholesale. Hence I don't really use Character Styles.

This is my understanding of text Styles. Others might have a different view.

So... my own answer to your question above , @kevinslimp, is: I've never encountered the issue, sorry. However.....

Is the clue in how you're trying to use them?

I agree with @kevinslimp, character styles are messing a lot with paragraph styles. And I disagree with you. Charakter styles are essential in advanced typography. Just look how they work  in InDesign. Styled import from word processors is important for a fraction of users, as you can do simple jobs rigth there, without exporting them to layout app.

[tomek_Q]

Now, I did a strange thing: I added square brackets to "No Style" appearing in hte panel. I remember somebody complained about incosistency in UI earlier. And to my astonishment Edit>Defaults>Save seems to work correctly after adding brackets to "No Style"…

Edited May 28, 2022 by tomek_Q
Changed the order in a sentence.