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A_B_C, no need to feel sorry about your comment. It is far from the most obvious thing in the UI!

 

Besides, to be honest about it, I had never even used the Text Styles panel until it was mentioned in this topic (& I finally understood what was being discussed)! If not for that, I never would have read the help topics or been aware of the style options or experimented with them.

 

That is the primary reason I participate here -- there is always something new for me to learn. So I am grateful to all who commented about this.

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If we get modifier key functionality and some indicators the usability of the text styles grows and strange claims like “completely confusing and unusable” hopefully will end.

Or maybe just encourage users to read the help topics when they are confused about something?  :o

 

<running, ducking, putting on my flame resistant protective gear  :lol: >

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Actually, I must agree with Petar. I think the whole conception – as well as the user interface – is muddled. No offense, R C-R, but your attempted explanation doesn’t make sense at all. 

  • Unless I am doing something terribly wrong, it is simply not true that you can apply a paragraph style to a string within a paragraph without affecting the paragraph as a whole. Forget about the Help files, go ahead and test it yourself (see my video below). So this whole talk of “predominant” use is idle. A “Paragraph” style will always act as a paragraph style in the traditional sense of this word.
  • Furthermore, as I pointed out earlier in this thread, you cannot apply paragraph attributes like leading, space before, space after etc. etc. to strings within a paragraph, and so for obvious reasons. Once again, there is no “flexibility” in actual use.

So the only reason for abandoning the traditional – and sensible – distinction between paragraph and character styles seems to be the fact that you can easily transform one style type into the other. However, a simple menu entry would suffice for that (“Copy relevant style attributes”).

 

We need not advocate a new solution simply because it is new. And rather than reinventing the wheel in this case, I would suggest that we keep a longstanding and useful interface logic. I would really like to hear the arguments of the developers in the present instance.  :(

 

Cheers, Alex

 

As R C-R says, you can apply paragraph styles to a character selection with the menu options. A second use is to have the same style listed in both the paragraph styles and the character styles, by ticking Show in both panels. A third use is to have both paragraph and character styles be based on a common base style.

 

For an example where you might want common formatting, consider captions for illustrations. The caption itself probably wants the formatting to be a paragraph style, because it applies to the whole caption. When referring to the caption in body text, you will probably want it to be a character style. It may be that you want to share some elements of the formatting, such as colour and font, but not others, such as pointsize. Similarly with headings; you may want to refer to a chapter title from body text using some of the title's formatting. I am thinking of text like, "For details, see the chapter How to Change a Wheel". Another example is if you have verses of poetry offset from the main text with a paragraph style that also sets a font, and elsewhere you want to quote a fragment of the poem in body text using the same font. Part of the purpose of text styles is have consistent formatting across a document, and that sometimes means you want body text to be consistent with the text it refers to.

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@Dave Harris:

 

If I want to apply paragraph style I will create it.

If I want character one, I will also create it.

It is not a hard work but it makes things clearer.

No need of switching or paragraph to character style at all.

It is simple as that.

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If I want to apply paragraph style I will create it.

 

It is not a hard work but it makes things clearer.

 

If we want to apply a style we don’t create a new one, we just use it. With a shortcut or selection, automatically or with one click. No need of switching. Really simple!

 

What is unclear?

 

David just explained the enhanced capabilities. If somebody doesn’t need them, he can ignore them.

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@Dave Harris:

 

If I want to apply paragraph style I will create it.

If I want character one, I will also create it.

It is not a hard work but it makes things clearer.

No need of switching or paragraph to character style at all.

It is simple as that.

 

Well, you can do that. If you don't want to apply paragraph styles to characters, don't. It's fine if you don't need the extra flexibility. As far as I can tell, the only downside for you is that when defining a Character style you are shown some paragraph formatting options that you don't want to use. Just ignore them.

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Well, you can do that. If you don't want to apply paragraph styles to characters, don't. It's fine if you don't need the extra flexibility. As far as I can tell, the only downside for you is that when defining a Character style you are shown some paragraph formatting options that you don't want to use. Just ignore them.

 

Only time will tell if this flexibility of text styles will resolve more issues than it creates. For people like myself coming from a long history of layout, it may be more confusing and more difficult to manage and having something hidden in a hamburger menu doesn't help the confusion.

 

Further, there are oddities. For instance, consider the screen shot below.

 

post-255-0-18014900-1489508464_thumb.png

 

I decided to try the apply the paragraph style from the Heading 1 style to a selection in the body. I would have expected it to inherit the point size. Of course I was wrong. But it was an honest expectation.

 

So I decided to create a character style that changes the TNR font to Arial as per the heading. The create a new style came up not with the point size of the body text--12 pt--like every other layout or design application. Instead it shows 5 pt. I knew I didn't want it to be 5 point but accepted that to see what would happen (well, I knew what was going to happen). And yep, it is 12 point like the body paragraph definition and just swaps out the font.

 

So I decide to edit the character style and it still shows 5 pt.

 

I simply do not understand how the above has greater flexibility than a tradition method of creating and applying text styles. I only see confusion and obfuscation in aspects of text styles.

 

I'm all for better methods of working with text and, in the case of AD, drawing capabilities. But so far I can only conclude changes for the sake of "flexibility" as implemented in AD is something only a programmer can love.

 

Mike

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Well, you can do that. If you don't want to apply paragraph styles to characters, don't. It's fine if you don't need the extra flexibility. As far as I can tell, the only downside for you is that when defining a Character style you are shown some paragraph formatting options that you don't want to use. Just ignore them.

 

I can't see here any extra flexibility. BTW there is also a new term unseen up to now in styles terminology -- Group styles. Can you explain this? I've read the Help file but it wasn't of any help at all.

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My only comment about Publisher …". 

 

I would think a name like Affinity Layout or Affinity Pagesmith would set it apart a bit more. 

 

Welcome here, dbacoreworks.

 

It is called Affinity Publisher since years. Not Publisher.

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I decided to try the apply the paragraph style from the Heading 1 style to a selection in the body.

 

We don’t really know if “to try the apply the paragraph style” and the rest means the same for all and what you did exactly or not. Here everything is working very well. Perhaps because we don’t use “Base” and “Heading 1”.

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We don’t really know if “to try the apply the paragraph style” and the rest means the same for all and what you did exactly or not. Here everything is working very well.

 

Even the most complicated things can work very well, but they are still complicated.

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My only comment about Publisher is that I've mentioned it to more than a handful of people since I learned of it and every one of them said "oh, that Microsoft app?" or "I've been using it for years". 

 

I would think a name like Affinity Layout or Affinity Pagesmith would set it apart a bit more. 

 

Yes, I like it and Photo & Designer can be joined and named as Affinity Design. This is because they share a lot of features and great percentage of designers use only those two kind of applications. But, even there is no chance for this it is not so bad to develop our imagination.  :)

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We don’t really know if “to try the apply the paragraph style” and the rest means the same for all and what you did exactly or not. Here everything is working very well. Perhaps because we don’t use “Base” and “Heading 1”.

It worked. And probably as expected. But if how it works...applying the heading 1 paragraph style to text in the body as can be seen in my screen shot, I cannot see that it has any practical value compared to simply creating a character style in the first place and applying that.

 

I cannot think of an instance where it would be beneficial to apply a paragraph style to a text selection that is using a different paragraph style.

 

That aside from the mis-reporting of the point size I got when I created a character style, as can be seen in the dialog box in that screen shot.

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@MikeW:

 

I am unclear on what you were doing or what your screenshot shows. In it, I assume from the style name showing as "Style" that you were creating a new (paragraph?) style, not editing the Heading 1 style (because that would still have the style name "Heading 1"). Is that what you were doing?

 

Regarding the items hidden in the hamburger menu, if you don't open it & just click on the style, the behavior for a paragraph style is the same as choosing "Apply {style name} to paragraphs" from the menu, which I assume is the behavior you expect -- the style is applied to the entire current paragraph or all paragraphs selected. So unless I am missing something, I do not see why this would be a problem for you. As Dave said, if you don't want to apply paragraph styles to characters, there is nothing forcing you to do so or even causing any extra effort on your part. Just ignore the hamburger menu.

 

I understand that it is different from what you are accustomed to in the layout apps you have been using for a long time & that disturbs you, but that does not mean there is anything wrong with it. After all, if everyone insisted that nothing must ever depart from the traditional because it involves learning something new, where would we be now?

 

EDIT:

I cannot think of an instance where it would be beneficial to apply a paragraph style to a text selection that is using a different paragraph style.

 

Did you consider the examples Dave mentioned in this post?

Edited by R C-R

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Yes, I did consider it. Which is why I applied a different paragraph style to a selection of a paragraph that was yet a different paragraph style.

 

And it picks up all the attributes of the applied style. Which is not anything I would ever do. I would create a character style...like I did. Only I didn't expect it to mis-report the size as it did. I expected AD to report the size of the selected text.

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I cannot duplicate the mis-report of the font size here, but that may be because I do not understand the steps you took that resulted in that.

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Well, you can do that. If you don't want to apply paragraph styles to characters, don't. It's fine if you don't need the extra flexibility. As far as I can tell, the only downside for you is that when defining a Character style you are shown some paragraph formatting options that you don't want to use. Just ignore them.

 

Let's pretend I don't want to ignore them. Nay, I want to use those paragraph features when I create a character style.

 

post-255-0-27415600-1489522241_thumb.png

 

I am going to assume that I am ignorant of how to use those paragraph definitions inside a character style. Perhaps they simply do not have any effect in a character style--but then that begs the question of why show them to the user at all.

 

Mike

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I am going to assume that I am ignorant of how to use those paragraph definitions inside a character style. Perhaps they simply do not have any effect in a character style--but then that begs the question of why show them to the user at all.

The effect, if any, is determined by what you are trying to apply them to. Obviously, some paragraph attributes won't affect a single selected character or word but some can affect two or more selected sentences in a paragraph. The choice of which attributes to include in a style is left entirely to the user so yes, it is quite possible to create a paragraph style that will have no effect at all if applied only to part of a paragraph. However, I doubt that anybody with even a minimal understanding of paragraph style attributes would be surprised by that.

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So, when the windows for paragraph and character styles are same, why the are two sets for their management:

 

Create Paragraph Styles

Update .........

Delete .........

Set no ............

 

and 

 

Create Character Styles

Update .........

Delete .........

Set no ............

 
There should be only:
 

Create TEXT Styles

Update .........

Delete .........

Set no ............

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The effect, if any, is determined by what you are trying to apply them to. Obviously, some paragraph attributes won't affect a single selected character or word but some can affect two or more selected sentences in a paragraph. The choice of which attributes to include in a style is left entirely to the user so yes, it is quite possible to create a paragraph style that will have no effect at all if applied only to part of a paragraph. However, I doubt that anybody with even a minimal understanding of paragraph style attributes would be surprised by that.

 

R C-R, I do know what text styles do.

 

What I don't know is why AD shows the darn paragraph attributes in a character style. Feel free to upload a document where adjusting the paragraph attributes of a character style effect a change.

 

Here's another example. I selected an entire Paragraph. I altered only the paragraph section as shown below. Er, the paragraph is still left aligned. The leading isn't applied. Nor the space before/after...etc., etc. I have created the style. Applied said style and reopened the style mod dialog so you can see what I changed.

 

post-255-0-59958600-1489525483_thumb.png

 

Look. I have been doing this long enough that I know beyond a doubt that if this is how APub is going to be, it is a poor choice by Serif as regards any customer who has done layout for very long.

 

The goal of layout is to do so as quickly as possible. Not fiddle-fart around trying to change things to see the effect on text that ought to be painfully obvious how it works. Now, I may be playing a bit dumb here in these examples--but customers will run across this in APub and wonder what in the world was Serif thinking.

 

Sometimes doing something different is not a good thing nor does it achieve the desired result.

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I selected an entire Paragraph. I altered only the paragraph section as shown below. Er, the paragraph is still left aligned. The leading isn't applied. Nor the space before/after

 

Why should your character style do this?

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For details, see the chapter How to Change a Wheel.

This is witty, Dave. I love it.  :D

But to the point: by following your examples, I can appreciate that there might be applications of this new conception of text styles, but I cannot help but feel a bit sceptical still. I guess only time will tell if I will be able to use these additional options in a productive and fruitful way, without getting overwhelmed and lost in side effects.

Maybe some of the confusion could be mitigated, if the user interface would exhibit more clearly which attributes are actually applicable to a part of text, depending on the style type created. When a Character Style is created, it might make sense to grey out the Paragraph attributes in the Edit panel (or to give any other visual clue that the user shouldn’t expect any difference with regard to these parameters when the style is applied to a part of text). Wouldn’t that make sense?

This is an interesting discussion, by the way …  :)

Alex

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