Publisher: What is the "Show in both panels" option in Edit text style panel for?

[bbrother]

Could someone explain to me how this function works and in what cases it is worth using it?
I don't really understand how it works or how it would be useful.

 

[NathanC]

Hi @bbrother,

Checking this will show the text style in both the Character and Paragraph Panel style dropdown menus and on the dropdown menus for Text/Paragraph styles on the context toolbar.

One use case could be to use the character styling properties only from a particular style without using it's paragraph style properties, for example I could use the 'Bullet 1' default style as my paragraph style to use Bullets & Numbering but use the 'Body' style for my character style properties to separately define the font, colour etc.

[bbrother]

Ahh i see.

Nathan but why it is posible to check it when you create paragraph style but when you create character style this option is greyed out.

[NathanC]

8 minutes ago, bbrother said:

Nathan but why it is posible to check it when you create paragraph style but when you create character style this option is greyed out.

A Paragraph style can define both Character and Paragraph properties, however a Character 'type' style cannot control Paragraph properties, so the option is disabled if you set the type to 'Character' since there is no paragraph attributes.

Although MikeTO found a bug where it is possible to have this enabled on a character style if it was was originally assigned to paragraph first (info below).

 

[bbrother]

Thank you Nathan for your comprehensive explanation👌

I must admit that this is the first time I have encountered such an option in a desktop publishing program, and I have already used several of them.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, bbrother said:

how it would be useful.

A related feature is the ability to apply a Paragraph Style as Character Style, means to apply only the character properties of a paragraph style and leaving the paragraph properties in that paragraph unchanged. For instance:

Alternatively you could create an extra character style for the two single words within the first paragraph above. While this options reduces the need for character style creation, it also may appear confusing: the Text Styles panel then highlights correctly two paragraph styles for the related text but no character style (as there was none created) – while the assigned styles get reported as usual with the + symbol, indicating a local formatting.

[bbrother]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

While this options reduces the need for character style creation, it also may appear confusing

Damn right @thomaso . I'll stick to creating an additional character style because it's more readable and less confusing way.