Grouping text styles in Publisher 2 for a text heavy book

[Iela]

Hello.

I am designing a template for a book in Affinity Publisher 2 which requires many paragraph styles. For ease of use, I would like to group the paragraph styles of each section together (around 6-8 sections total), similar to how paragraph styles can be grouped in InDesign. Since the styles need to be grouped by section, each group will contain a variety of styles such as titles, sub titles, body etc which will not be based on one another. It seems that the grouping option in Publisher is geared to only grouping styles which are based on each other, am I right or is it just confusing me? Can someone explain how I can group styles together as I explained? I have looked at various tutorials and I have not found anything useful yet.

[AndyWh]

I may have misunderstood your question as I am not an InDesign user, so my apolgies if this does not help.

The list of text styles in the Text Stles panel and drop-down selector are arraged in alphabetic order. One slightly clunky mechanism that can group styles is adding a prefix ahead of the main style identifier. For example:

01a - Title
01b - Heading 1
01c - Heading 2
...
02a - Title
02b - Heading 1
02c - Heading 2

The prefix number is the section selection, and the lower case letter controls the display order of the style in the listing of the numeric grouping.

 

[Iela]

1 minute ago, AndyWh said:

I may have misunderstood your question as I am not an InDesign user, so my apolgies if this does not help.

The list of text styles in the Text Stles panel and drop-down selector are arraged in alphabetic order. One slightly clunky mechanism that can group styles is adding a prefix ahead of the main style identifier. For example:

01a - Title
01b - Heading 1
01c - Heading 2
...
02a - Title
02b - Heading 1
02c - Heading 2

The prefix number is the section selection, and the lower case letter controls the display order of the style in the listing of the numeric grouping.

 

yes you did understood my question, and in fact what you just described is the only work around that I could think of, but as you said it is quite clunky.

Do you know of any other ways of achieving the same results? As my groups of styles would ideally have names (such as "initial pages" "section dividers" etc to identify them easily)  rather than numbers, and if I add "group names" as well as number to keep them in order, the full style name will be so long that it either takes up half the screen or gets cut off making the naming pointless.

[AndyWh]

There is a style group feature available in the text styles panel. It is called show hierarchical and is enabled or disabled in the text styles options ("hamburger" icon at top right of text styles panel).

You need to define several (mostly empty) styles, which are the equivalent to "Base" that is part of a default new document. As you create each working style set the "Based On" property of the style to one of the group names. When the heirarchical display mode is active the styles are grouped. This should allow you to have group names such as "Initial Pages", "section dividers" etc.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Iela said:

It seems that the grouping option in Publisher is geared to only grouping styles which are based on each other, am I right or is it just confusing me?

Yes, in Affinity, style groups are styles, too (not just visual organizer/separators/folders) and they can get assigned as style (via the burger menu).

Nevertheless, you can create a group style without specific attributes assigned and bases on "[No Style]", displaying "[No change]" for its single attributes. If you then create a nested (grouped) style based on this parent Style the nested one has no specific preset, too, and you can start to define the required attributes only without being influenced by attributes of its parent style.

To create such a 'blank' group style based on "[No Style]" use the 's' icon (right of 'p' and 'a') at the Text Styles panel's bottom and choose "Based on: "[No Style]"". Its editor window will be empty in its summary section (the entry "[No changes]" excepted).

For new child styles of this group you have the choice again for "based on:".

[Iela]

2 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Yes, in Affinity, style groups are styles, too (not just visual organizer/separators/folders) and they can get assigned as style (via the burger menu).

Nevertheless, you can create a group style without specific attributes assigned and bases on "[No Style]", displaying "[No change]" for its single attributes. If you then create a nested (grouped) style based on this parent Style the nested one has no specific preset, too, and you can start to define the required attributes only without being influenced by attributes of its parent style.

To create such a 'blank' group style based on "[No Style]" use the 's' icon (right of 'p' and 'a') at the Text Styles panel's bottom and choose "Based on: "[No Style]"". Its editor window will be empty in its summary section (the entry "[No changes]" excepted).

For new child styles of this group you have the choice again for "based on:".

If I created group styles as you described, and at a later stage I changed the font and size of one of the styles would this mess the other styles in that style group since they are all based on the same style group? The reason I ask is because I want my template to be as easily editable and user friendly in the future. And also because, I did create a template a while ago using a similar method and now all the styles seem to be messed up and I wondered if it was due the way I created the group styles maybe.

[MikeTO]

9 minutes ago, Iela said:

If I created group styles as you described, and at a later stage I changed the font and size of one of the styles would this mess the other styles in that style group since they are all based on the same style group? The reason I ask is because I want my template to be as easily editable and user friendly in the future. And also because, I did create a template a while ago using a similar method and now all the styles seem to be messed up and I wondered if it was due the way I created the group styles maybe.

Not necessarily. The group style doesn't have to define any attributes so it can be just a grouping mechanism if you like.

[thomaso]

23 minutes ago, Iela said:

If I created group styles as you described, and at a later stage I changed the font and size of one of the styles would this mess the other styles in that style group since they are all based on the same style group?

The dependency between styles always and only depends on their "Based on:" setting. See the options on the unfolded menu in my second screenshot above. So, if "subhead" is based on "head" then a change of head can influence "subhead" for those attributes that aren't specified in "subhead" but use/say "[No change]".

Additionally you can create dependency with the "Next Style" / "Next Level" options, which works like in ID but does not cause a dependency of certain style attributes which would change in one style if it gets changed in the other.