Character, paragraph and text styles - thoroughly confused

[joost]

C, P, and T styles seem straightforward but have me thoroughly confused. To get a better handle on it, I looked at how these are applied in the example docs; specifically the "Lifestyle Magazine Poise". On page 16 there is a text frame with regular text as well as two bold lines the first one being "Why did you create Juic?"  This is where I have questions.

With the C, P and T studio dialogs open and cursor placed on the regular text, the selections for CPT are character style 'Placeholder", paragraph style "Body+" and the text style shows "Placeholder" and "Body" selected. What is "Body"?  Why not "Body+"?

When I place my cursor on the bold line "Why did you create Juic?", the CPT studios show no (freakin') change! Yes, the text style studio shows that this is a bold text but its selection remains "Placeholder" and "Body". What is happening?

The bold line has space above and below, where is that set i.e., which CP or T option is driving that?  I poked through all the settings and nothing is different between the regular text and bold text.

I keep thinking that text styles are in essence a grouping of character and paragraph styles i.e., one defines a C, then P style and group them together as a Text style with its own name - but this is not how it works (right?). It seems a text style is something all by itself but it does not have its own name and has some vague link to already defined character and paragraph styles.

Nobody is asking these questions so I must be dummy (certainly feels that way), humbly ask for your time to sprinkle a few wise words on this to get me out of this rut.

[joost]

10 minutes ago, anto said:

Perhaps it's related to this topic:

Perhaps ... but reading that is even more confusing. No answer to my questionS in that thread as far as I can see.

[Old Bruce]

You need to forget about using the Paragraph Character panels. Use the Text Styles to set up Paragraph Styles and Character Styles. Use the Paragraph Panel to apply overrides to individual paragraphs (one of the most common uses I have is to change the Flow options in a paragraph style set to be unbroken, good for stanzas in verse). Same for the Character Panel.

I am not familiar with the file 

26 minutes ago, joost said:

When I place my cursor on the bold line "Why did you create Juic?", the CPT studios show no (freakin') change! Yes, the text style studio shows that this is a bold text but its selection remains "Placeholder" and "Body". What is happening?

What is most likely happening is ... [expletive deleted] if I know. I think this is one of those helpful features coded to make our lives easier. Frequently the Paragraph Style will have an Initial Words Character Style applied, the character style won't show that the text is bold. But it is bold, I can see it. Initial Words and Drop Caps always get a dedicated and exclusive Character Style in my work, most times the defaults are fine.

Get into the habit of using the Text Styles instead of the Paragraph and Character panels to make and modify the styles, makes your life a lot easier in the medium and long term. Think of it as a backhoe instead of a shovel, each has their uses, but when I am digging a hole for a building's foundation I know which will get the most work done quickly and easily.

[sfriedberg]

I'm with Old Bruce.  Define the styles using Text Styles, where both character and paragraph styles (as well as groups, which need not concern us now) can be defined.  Apply ad-hoc overrides to particular spans of text using the Paragraph and Character panels.  If there's a particular ad-hoc override you are using a lot, define a Text Style for it.

[joost]

5 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

You need to forget about using the Paragraph Character panels. Use the Text Styles to set up Paragraph Styles and Character Styles. Use the Paragraph Panel to apply overrides to individual paragraphs (one of the most common uses I have is to change the Flow options in a paragraph style set to be unbroken, good for stanzas in verse). Same for the Character Panel.

This... is ... confusing!  Whether one approaches the CP panels directly or through text panel, is the same and (expletive) confusing and inconsistent. Considering also the thread mentioned above I see;

a) the toolset does not consistently and uniquely identify the styles of "text" ("text" interpreted in the most broadly possible sense). Landing the cursor/caret on any particular part of a character/word/paragraph may or may not update the various panels to indicate what is under the cursor/caret. 

b) Text styles is a conjumbling of a suggested link between character and paragraphs - it is not a link, yet it sorta is as the manual attempts to make one belief. Text styles themselves have no names that can be used as shortcut to invoke them, groups do and seem to work more/better as a single application entity.

Item a) is a bug - big one in my opinion. Item b) is UX mistake.   The *big* problem with a) is that I cannot use the cursor/caret position to learn where my styles are off/need correcting i.e., the program does not explain itself. Thats a big no no.

Quote

Get into the habit of using the Text Styles instead of the Paragraph and Character panels to make and modify the styles, makes your life a lot easier in the medium and long term. Think of it as a backhoe instead of a shovel, each has their uses, but when I am digging a hole for a building's foundation I know which will get the most work done quickly and easily.

Truly, I have no idea what you meant by this.

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, joost said:

Whether one approaches the CP panels directly or through text panel, is the same

No; the three panels are different, and used for different things, and you cannot "approach" the Character and Paragraph panels "from the Text Styles panel.

9 hours ago, joost said:

a) the toolset does not consistently and uniquely identify the styles of "text" ("text" interpreted in the most broadly possible sense). Landing the cursor/caret on any particular part of a character/word/paragraph may or may not update the various panels to indicate what is under the cursor/caret. 

I don't think I understand that. It always seems to work for me. (Note that anto's thread mentioned above is about a different issue than you describe in (a). Can you provide screenshots and a sample document to illustrate your issue?

[Wosven]

You should understand the use of the 3 panels first.

There's 2 panels to modify the proprieties:

• Character panel will modify the properties of a portion of selected text, at the character level (for example space between characters, width or height of those, etc.)

• Paragraph panel will display and permit to modify a paragraph properties: leading, drop caps...

Those modifications will apply "locally", only to the current selection, or paragraph.

When working on a document, instead of modifying all the text locally, you'd rather use Styles, that retain thoses properties and are easy to apply to selected text or paragraphs. And easily be modified later (for example, to get all the Header red instead of black, or using a different font).

Those styles (Paragraph and character styles) are added/listed/modified in the Text styles panel.

Other apps usually use 2 distinct panels for Paragraph text styles and Character text styles).

 

[joost]

6 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

No; the three panels are different, and used for different things, and you cannot "approach" the Character and Paragraph panels "from the Text Styles panel.

I don't think I understand that. It always seems to work for me. (Note that anto's thread mentioned above is about a different issue than you describe in (a). Can you provide screenshots and a sample document to illustrate your issue?

See image below. The green is a heading 1 "style", the black is "body". I placed my cursor at each of the 4 lines and copied the text style box to show you what AP thinks the cursor is on. (ignore the small boxes with numbers). The intended behavior is the first two lines; space between H1 and body and then between body and H1 (3rd line). 

Clearly, there is no space between 3rd line and 4th even though these two are both "header 1" and "body" as are line 1 and 2. But wait, the text style box associated with line 3 does show "Heading 1 + Space after: 0 pt".  Perhaps something I messed up?  Fine, but reapplying the "header 1" style does nothing to change this i.e., the "+ Space after: 0 pt" continues to be applied automagically. Also poking through the header and body styles you can clearly see that the body has 11pts after (as I desired) but the header 1 style has "no change".  I have reviewed every aspect of that text style and there is no difference between the "header 1" of line 1 "3. RESULTS" and the "header 1" of line 3 "4. DISCUSSION".

I have found no way to fix this, nor do I understand how or what I did that might have started this.

[MikeTO]

It might be easier if you just uploaded this test document. You can achieve the spacing you want when Body is followed by Heading 1 by adjusting the 'space before' value for Heading 1. You could also adjust the 'space after' setting for Body but that would have other impacts.

BTW, if you find the behaviour of the Text Styles panel confusing, you might consider clicking the hamburger menu icon in the upper right of the Text Styles panel and choosing Sort By Type. That will separate the paragraph and character styles but not change any functionality. I prefer to sort by type because I use the paragraph styles constantly and the character styles only for limited overrides. You might also expand the Current Formatting box at the top of the Text Styles panel by clicking the > symbol to its left. Doing this will provide more room for information.

[Old Bruce]

The no change in the Space Before/After may be inheriting a value from what ever the Body and Heading styles are based on.