Can't find a quick way to override all formatting when applying a paragraph style

GarryP · January 9

Windows 10 Home 1809, Publisher 1.7.0.206.

There are plenty of ways to apply a paragraph style while preserving character formatting but I can't seem to find a way of quickly overriding all of the formatting. I've found that I can apply the paragraph style and then apply the [No Style] character style afterwards but that sounds like going the long way round. All I want to do is just "blast" the text with the paragraph formatting and completely wipe any character/local formatting that was already applied.

It seems to me that, at the moment, "Apply ... to Paragraphs" and "Apply ... to Paragraphs And Preserve Character Formatting" do the same thing as I've never noticed a difference in their functionality.

Am I looking at this wrong, is there something I'm missing, or is this a bug or incomplete functionality?

dominik · January 9

32 minutes ago, GarryP said:

All I want to do is just "blast" the text with the paragraph formatting and completely wipe any character/local formatting that was already applied.

Hi @GarryP,

there is a small icon at the top right side of the Text Styles Studio that looks like a 'T' with half a circle around it (the circle fading in anti clockwise). This removes all formatting from a paragraph except for its text style assigned to it. Is this what you are looking for?

d.

Fixx · January 10

Have you tried the same thing you do in InDesign: alt-click the style? Seems to work.

GarryP · January 10

@dominik I tried to use the "half-circle-T" icon but couldn't get it to do anything. I tried clicking it when I had the text frame selected, nothing. I tried clicking it with the caret in a paragraph and no text selected, nothing. I tried clicking it with a paragraph selected, nothing. See attached GIF. Am I doing something wrong?
@Fixx I tried Alt-clicking the style - with frame selected, then with caret in text, then with paragraph selected - and I got nothing. That doesn't seem to be working for me either.
I've attached the afpub file in case it helps with diagnosis.

persistent style menus.afpub

dominik · January 10

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

@dominik I tried to use the "half-circle-T" icon but couldn't get it to do anything. I tried clicking it when I had the text frame selected, nothing. I tried clicking it with the caret in a paragraph and no text selected, nothing. I tried clicking it with a paragraph selected, nothing. See attached GIF. Am I doing something wrong?
@Fixx I tried Alt-clicking the style - with frame selected, then with caret in text, then with paragraph selected - and I got nothing. That doesn't seem to be working for me either.
I've attached the afpub file in case it helps with diagnosis.

persistent style menus.afpub

Hi @GarryP,

I'm doing pretty much the same thing you do. Place the cursor in a paragraph (not highlighting it) and hit the 'T'.

I cannot tell from the screenshot if you are on Windows or a Mac. This may be the difference (I'm on Windows).

d.

dominik · January 10

28 minutes ago, dominik said:

I'm doing pretty much the same thing you do. Place the cursor in a paragraph (not highlighting it) and hit the 'T'.

Just to make sure: there was only manual styling in the paragraph no Text Styles.

d.

GarryP · January 10

I'm using a Windows 10 machine.
The paragraphs were formatted using the paragraph style called "First", then two inner sentences of the first paragraph were formatted using the character style called "Strong".

Note 1: I've found that I can select the text (or the whole frame), then use the context bar to choose the paragraph style as [No Style] and then the character style as [No Style] and then re-apply the paragraph style that I want but that's a long procedure just to re-apply the original style.
Note 2: I can also do it in the Text Styles studio by selecting the paragraph style [No Style], then selecting it again (for some reason that I don't understand), then selecting character style [No Style], then selecting my original paragraph style but, again, that's more long-winded than I would expect.

An associated question, which I've already alluded to is: If the Text Styles studio context menu functions "Apply ... to Paragraphs and Preserve Character Formatting" and "Apply ... to Paragraphs and Preserve Local Formatting" both preserve the formatting of the characters, then shouldn't "Apply ... to Paragraphs" not preserve the formatting? It seems to say, in the context as it is next to two functions that specifically preserve formatting, that it won't preserve formatting, but it actually does (as far as I can tell). So I'm wondering what it's for.

I might try resetting my installation of Publisher at the weekend and seeing if that does anything.

dominik · January 11

18 hours ago, GarryP said:

The paragraphs were formatted using the paragraph style called "First", then two inner sentences of the first paragraph were formatted using the character style called "Strong".

Hi @GarryP,

it took me a while to come back to this. Sorry.

When using character styles the 'T' does not work to reset to the original paragraph style.
However, I am able to reset to the original paragraph style with 'Apply Paragraph Style to Characters' from the right click menu.

d.

GarryP · January 11

It seems to me that the "Reset Formatting" button doesn't actually do what it says.
I would expect a "Reset Formatting" button to always reset all formatting back to the default without exception.
It doesn't say it's a "Reset Some Formatting In Some Cases Depending On What Formatting Has Been Applied In Some Specific Ways" button, it says "Reset Formatting" so that's what it should do (or it should be renamed).
The developers have given us a lot of control over what happens but I think the documentation - in the Help, in the names of the functions, and in the tool-tips - needs to be more precise so we can know which function we should use to achieve what we want to do in a consistent way. At the moment I don't understand what does what, and when, and I shouldn't need to experiment to figure it out for myself. Something should tell me exactly what a function does and doesn't do.
It's nice to have options, but not if you don't know the differences between them.

dominik · January 11

5 hours ago, GarryP said:

It doesn't say it's a "Reset Some Formatting In Some Cases Depending On What Formatting Has Been Applied In Some Specific Ways" button, it says "Reset Formatting" so that's what it should do (or it should be renamed).

I think you say it on the spot that way

I hope someone from Affinity staff can look into this and confirm if this works as inteded or if there is a bug. Maybe you should post it as an option bug in the other forum.

In regard to documentation, please keep in mind that documentation (help, videos, tutorials) are still work in progress. Mentioning it in this thread may also be of help for the team.

d.

GarryP · January 12

I would prefer to hold off logging this as a bug until I find out that it is actually a bug and not simply expected behaviour.

I totally understand that the documentation for the beta versions will not be complete but there should be some way for beta testers to know what each function does - and, just as importantly, doesn't do - so we can perform some decent testing. Otherwise there's no way for us to know what we are testing or whether we're testing it properly. If someone copying/pasting from a design/test document into the Help is all we can get then that might be enough to give us a start in figuring out what's going on.

A few minutes of someone's time adding something to the documentation - even if it's just some rough notes - might save hours of a tester's time repeatedly going over the same stuff trying to figure out what's happening. The faster we find real bugs - rather than chase our tails on unknown (but only unknown to us) quirks - the quicker the developers can get round to fixing them. And the faster the bugs are squashed, the quicker Serif gets a release-ready product and can start getting paid.

Note: I reset Publisher - using CTRL on start-up and selecting everything - but I still get the same issues with the "Reset Formatting" button as I showed in my second post in this thread. I.e. It's still not resetting anything that I can see, or to put it another way, the text stays the same - visually - but the document is still marked as "Modified".

Edited January 12 by GarryP
Added note.

Dave Harris · January 15

The intended behaviour for the Reset Formatting icon in the Text Styles panel is to reset the formatting to the current styles. It removes any local formatting that doesn't come from the styles. There are potentially two styles, for paragraph and character. Reset Formatting should have the same effect as reapplying both of them. If no text styles are applied, it does nothing. It's very much a text styles thing; it's label should be understood in the context of the panel it is in.

The control to the left of the Reset Formatting icon can be expanded. If you do that it should give a more detailed description of what formatting the text has. It will also make the effect of Reset Formatting more apparent. After clicking it, it should just have the names of the styles. We have had bugs in the past where specific formatting wouldn't clear; if that happens again please report it.

To reset formatting to the document defaults, you can use Edit > Defaults > Revert, or the Revert Defaults button in the top toolbar. This will also reset the text styles to whatever the defaults are. You can reset the defaults themselves with Edit > Defaults > Factory Reset. This works for all formatting, including text but not just text.

GarryP · January 15

Thanks for clarifying that @Dave Harris

Okay, so the "Reset Formatting" button doesn't remove formatting but reverts the formatting back to what the styles say it should be. Unfortunately that's not enough for what I need, see below.

Using the "Revert Defaults" button - or menu option - isn't much use to me in most cases as it also removes all other formatting such as the background/stroke colour and text frame formatting such as indents and justification, etc.

To me, "reset" takes something back to the default (removes all changes), while "revert" takes something back to a previous state (like an Undo). So, with that in mind, would it be better if the "Revert Defaults" button is called "Reset to Defaults" and the "Reset Formatting" button is called (something like) "Revert Formatting to Styles"? That would make things much clearer to me.

Either way, what I would like is a button or menu-selection that says: "Okay, something has gone wrong with how I have formatted the text and I don't know how to fix it, so what I want you to do is completely remove all of the text formatting already used and totally replace it with the Paragraph/Character style formatting I have selected."

I often find myself trying various things and then getting to the point where I just don't know how I got to where I am and it's all gone wrong. In these cases I want to be able to 'whitewash' all of the text formatting - usually within the whole frame, including linked frames, but sometimes just a paragraph - and 're-paint' it all with only the selected style so I can start again.

The text formatting options that Publisher gives are very comprehensive and I'm sure they allow for all kind of things I've not even thought about but that also makes them very complex and confusing for beginners. What I need, as a beginner, is to be able to tell Publisher that what I have selected should be formatted a certain way and forget anything else I have done to it in the past. I'm sure experts will have uses for it too.

Does that make any sense?

walt.farrell · January 15

2 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Either way, what I would like is a button or menu-selection that says: "Okay, something has gone wrong with how I have formatted the text and I don't know how to fix it, so what I want you to do is completely remove all of the text formatting already used and totally replace it with the Paragraph/Character style formatting I have selected."

It sounds to me like that's exactly what @Dave Harris said the Reset Formatting button does, or should do.

Can you supply a sample file with the text you need to reset, where the button doesn't work to your liking, so we (and Serif) can see the problem? Maybe Publisher has a problem, or maybe something else odd is happening.

GarryP · January 15

The "Reset Formatting" button goes some way to doing what I want but not all of the way.

For example, if I have formatted a paragraph with paragraph style "X" and then - maybe accidentally - applied character formatting "Strong" to a sentence or two (as in my earlier example), pressing the "Reset Formatting" button won't get rid of the "Strong" formatting as "Reset Formatting" doesn't "reset" character formatting. I'm left with the "Strong" character formatting and might not know how to remove if I added it by accident.

To add to that, if I then want to apply a different paragraph style "Y" to the paragraphs, the "Strong" style persists and often I don't want it to. Once I get more used to how Publisher works then I'm sure it will become second nature but, until then, I want to be able to 'blast away' all of the formatting I've already applied and re-apply a completely 'fresh coat' of a particular style.

Many experts will, no-doubt, be fine and dandy with how things are because they are used to doing things the way Publisher works but beginners need that extra bit of help.

I don't think Publisher is doing anything wrong, it's more of a case that people in my position - those that haven't learnt all the ins-and-outs of how it all works - sometimes need a "just do this and forget anything I've done earlier" option.

MikeW · January 15

I don't think it gets any easier than in QXP/ID. Alt+click on a p.style and all local formatting is gone.

No hunting for this or that command, attempting to clear overrides only to find one isn't having success. Just an assured nuclear option. Quick and sure.

walt.farrell · January 15

15 minutes ago, GarryP said:

For example, if I have formatted a paragraph with paragraph style "X" and then - maybe accidentally - applied character formatting "Strong" to a sentence or two (as in my earlier example), pressing the "Reset Formatting" button won't get rid of the "Strong" formatting as "Reset Formatting" doesn't "reset" character formatting. I'm left with the "Strong" character formatting and might not know how to remove if I added it by accident.

Thanks for that description, Garry.

That still leaves me puzzled, on two accounts:

A very minor point: How would one accidentally make a couple of sentences Strong? (I can, though, see accidentally adjusting various settings like kerning or tracking accidentally; I've done that when trying to scroll the studio panels using my mouse scroll wheel with the cursor in an inappropriate spot.)
Because @Dave Harris mentioned that Reset Formatting "removes any local formatting that doesn't come from the styles." What is local formatting, if it's not the of thing that you did accidentally?

walt.farrell · January 15

3 minutes ago, MikeW said:

No hunting for this or that command

Assuming one can remember that an Alt+click will do it.

MikeW · January 15

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

Assuming one can remember that an Alt+click will do it.

I can pretty much assure you that anyone in the several threads related to this one would remember once told.

I can also assure you that anyone coming from ID/QXP would know this and expect this function.

GarryP · January 15

@walt.farrell I've often accidentally applied formatting by clicking on a style when I should have right-clicked - to, for example, edit the style - instead. When I don't realise that I shouldn't have clicked, the formatting can be applied and I don't notice until I see the text looking wrong. Obviously it's my own fault for doing the wrong thing but there should be a way for me to be able to quickly get back to where I was with the text without traversing the Undo stack (as I might have made other changes since which I want to keep).

As far as I understand it, local formatting is formatting done without using styles, for example: selecting a sentence/word/character and giving it a different colour, or making a single character superscript, that sort of thing.

dominik · January 15

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Because @Dave Harris mentioned that Reset Formatting "removes any local formatting that doesn't come from the styles." What is local formatting, if it's not the of thing that you did accidentally?

Hi @walt.farrell,

there's two ways of local formatting:

formatting from the character panel or even simpler making text bold or italic fromt he buttons on the toolbar.
formatting with a Character Style.

In my tests (see above) Reset Formatting removes formatting made the way I describe in point #1.

But Reset Formatting does not remove any locally applied Character Styles within a paragraph. According to @Dave Harris this is how it is supposed to work and @GarryP asks to have the option to remove everything from a paragraph except it's original Paragraph Style.

I think @MikeW's suggestion to use ALT+click would work very well

d.

PS: sorry, for some reason the @ plus username stopped working for some of you.

fde101 · January 15

In other software, there can be more than one character style applied at the same time.

Based on this discussion it is sounding like this is not the case for Affinity Publisher - I will need to experiment with that a bit when time permits.

dominik · January 15

15 minutes ago, fde101 said:

In other software, there can be more than one character style applied at the same time.

Based on this discussion it is sounding like this is not the case for Affinity Publisher - I will need to experiment with that a bit when time permits.

This seems to be true.

Assign to a couple of words within a paragraph the Character Style 'Strong' (which comes as a default style and make characters BOLD)
Create a new Character Style (with nothing selected) and set its Character Colour to red. Note: this Character Style's font property weight is set to [No change]!)
Apply this Red Character Style to parts of the bold text > letters become red and their weight is not bold anymore.

I am hesitant to call this a bug but it seems to lack some kind of logic

d.

Seneca · January 15

42 minutes ago, dominik said:

I am hesitant to call this a bug but it seems to lack some kind of logic

Everything is very logical.

You need to base one style on another. So for example if you applied Bold character style to some text create another Character style based on Bold style and add Red as its colour.

Then apply that to the text you want. :-)

dominik · January 15

21 minutes ago, Seneca said:

You need to base one style on another.

Yes, this is some kind of dependency.

But what is the dependency if one applies a style that is not based on its original style?

I would assume that a '[No change]' does just that. Not change the underlying format.
I am really unsure about all of this until we have documentation (or comments).

d.

Can't find a quick way to override all formatting when applying a paragraph style

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