Can we get more info about Group Text Styles, please?

[Petar Petrenko]

Hi,

I tried to find out what are group styles but I can't understand them at all.

I opened a "Base" text style which is defined as "Group" and found that it is set to "Minion Pro, Regular, 12 pt" Then I opend a "Body" text style which is based on "Base" group text style and there is only "Font Size" set to 12 pt. If I change The font and it's size in "Base" style, text formated as "Body" changes into the font taken from "Base" style but the size stays the same from "Body".

What I can conclude from this is that "Group" works the same as the style is set with "Based on".

Does "Group" have to work the same as grouping the styles into folders like in InDesign? If so, why it can be defined as text style at all?

EDITED:

I know that you A-Team had something good in mind when adding this option, but it really needs some better explanation to be accepted by users. Until that, I equate it to "Based on" seting.

BTW, it would be nice if you add creating folders for text styles for gouping purposes.

[walt.farrell]

They are not new with Publisher. They have been in Designer for awhile, at least in 1.6.

They are covered in the Help for both Designer and Publisher under Text Style Types:
 

Quote

• Group—used to define the properties for a group of text styles.

[and later]

Group text styles

A Group text style cannot be applied directly to text on the page. Instead it defines the foundations on which other text styles are built and allows you to quickly create a text style hierarchy.

Group text styles only display in the Text Styles panel and are best understood when Show hierarchical is set on the panel's Panel Preferences.

The Group style can be considered as the group's parent or master text style. All other styles which are based on a Group style are considered to be child or subordinate styles.

You can create subordinate text styles within a group by selecting the Group text style as the Based on style.

You can display text styles in hierarchical groupings by checking Show Hierarchical from the Text Styles panel's Preferences.

The complexity of your hierarchy is entirely in your hands—subordinate styles can also be master styles with their own subordinates and group styles can be introduced as subordinates to a master group style.

 

[Petar Petrenko]

I know all that Walt. But they are not very well explained in Help.

What is the purpose of Group Styles? Where and why I should use them?

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, Petar Petrenko said:

What is the purpose of Group Styles? Where and why I should use them?

I use them for situations where i will want/need to change both Character and Paragraph Styles. Make a change in the Group and the Paragraph and Character both change.

Sometimes I just want to keep the styles organized and use them as folders.

[Petar Petrenko]

19 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

 1. I use them for situations where i will want/need to change both Character and Paragraph Styles. Make a change in the Group and the Paragraph and Character both change.

2. Sometimes I just want to keep the styles organized and use them as folders.

1. What you are saying can be achieved by using "Based On". I don't see here anything special for "Group".

2. How do you create folders? I don't see that feature in the Text Styles palette.

 

[Old Bruce]

1: I have a Paragraph style I want to use for most of the text, and a couple of variations (first and last paragraphs). I haven't quite decided on which font will be used. I also have a couple of character styles for use in Drop Cap and First Words. By using the Group Style "Whatever I Call It" to base my Paragraph styles on I can keep the Justification and leading and font and size and hyphenation and a bunch of other stuff set there. Base everything in the Bulk, First and Last styles on the Group Style and it is all co-ordinated. Same with Drip Caps (too early to back-space and fix that) and Initial Words.

2: Show Hierarchically over in the Text Styles. I turn off the Show Samples.

It is too early and I still need caffeine so I can explain further if needed. Essentially I just set up a Group style and change the subsequent Based on styles a very little bit. First line indent and decorations and Drop Cap for three different styles. Each one has only one change in it everything else is inherited.

[Petar Petrenko]

Can I understand "Group" as based on "Based On"? In other words "Group" is the same as "Based On" feature but with more power (over multiple text styles)?

[Dave Harris]

A Group style is one that you never intend to apply to text. Group styles are not included in the list of Character and Paragraph styles in the text context toolbar, or in the Character panel or Paragraph panel. They are listed in the Text Styles panel, but separately from the other styles, and clicking on them does nothing.

So all you can do with them is base other styles on them with Based on. The idea is that you use them to share formatting between the other styles, and/or as a way of organising the Hierarchical view in the Text Styles panel.

[Petar Petrenko]

1. Wouldn't it be less confusing if the styles were organized into groups by using folders?
2. Or, maybe, to use "Group" like headings between paragraphs, without any kind of formating possibilities, just to explain the purpose of the grouped styles?

[Old Bruce]

One project I worked on had two Groups, Heads and Paragraphs. I used the Heads group to set up the font face only, Size and weight, left right centre were on a per need basis. The paragraphs group had more things chosen in the group as I was only changing the first line indent for my paragraph style "first paragraph" and the decoration for the "last paragraph". The style "bulk text" was based on the group and had nothing changed from the group. If I changed the group's justification from ragged right to justified then all three styles would change.

The heads group was used as a way of keeping them together in the list. 

One way of working is to set up a Paragraph style and then just promote it to a Group style and make a new paragraph style based on that and change nothing in that new paragraph style.

There can be jobs where the Groups would be effectively useless. I can imagine cases where you need one paragraph style and all the headings would be unique so the styles are of no use for headings.

[Petar Petrenko]

I still think folders will do the job. I didn't analized all the styles if the hierarchy is based on "Based On" setting (which I suppose it is). If so, it is OK and it is great. Just enough together with folders.

[dominik]

2 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

I still think folders will do the job.

If we'd have plain folders instead of groups styles we would loose the ability to control some settings that are common to the styles in a folder. In this regard I find group styles superior to plain folders. I admit, it took me a while to understand this 

Groups styles can be used both ways: just as folders or as folders that are the root of a style family (a.k.a. group).

d.

[Petar Petrenko]

In that case the only thing I can do is to delete all default styles and redefine as I'm used to. Sorry.

[GraphicDesigner]

On 4/27/2019 at 1:49 PM, Petar Petrenko said:

In that case the only thing I can do is to delete all default styles and redefine as I'm used to. Sorry.

I totally think that folders would be better and less confusing, haha. This may be a bit more advanced but Based on works good enough imo.

Also, you do lose the ability to reorder styles manually in Publisher without actual folders, so there's that. 

[Catshill]

I only use character and paragraphs styles. I do not use or understand group styles despite reading this thread. Can someone be so kind to give an example of why they could be used?

[fde101]

5 hours ago, Catshill said:

I only use character and paragraphs styles. I do not use or understand group styles despite reading this thread. Can someone be so kind to give an example of why they could be used?

They are base styles which provide something for other styles to build on.  You would use them to set up common style information to be used across a family of styles, then create other styles based on them which override specific characteristics of the base style.

You can do the same thing with other types of styles, but those would show up in the lists on the context toolbar (for example) in addition to the Text Styles panel.

Group styles only show up in the Text Styles panel and cannot be directly applied to text.

 

In short, the only real difference between the types of styles is what they can be applied to:

• Group styles - can't be applied to anything
• Paragraph styles - are applied to entire paragraphs
• Character styles - are applied to text within a paragraph (which may not be the entire paragraph)

 

Additionally, paragraph formatting options are not available when editing a character style (as they would not be applicable).

 

Each style inherits from any style it is "based on" all the way up the hierarchy until the special "[No Style]" of the appropriate type is reached.

 

The selected character style for a range of text overrides what is in the paragraph style applied to the paragraph containing that text.  Local formatting (if any) overrides both.

 

Exactly one paragraph style can be applied to a paragraph at any given time, and exactly one character style can be applied to any particular character at any given time, though either one might be the special "[No Style]" (which acts more or less like a style which does not derive from anything else and cannot be edited).

[Catshill]

9 hours ago, fde101 said:

They are base styles which provide something for other styles to build on.  You would use them to set up common style information to be used across a family of styles, then create other styles based on them which override specific characteristics of the base style.

You can do the same thing with other types of styles, but those would show up in the lists on the context toolbar (for example) in addition to the Text Styles panel.

Group styles only show up in the Text Styles panel and cannot be directly applied to text.

 

In short, the only real difference between the types of styles is what they can be applied to:

• Group styles - can't be applied to anything
• Paragraph styles - are applied to entire paragraphs
• Character styles - are applied to text within a paragraph (which may not be the entire paragraph)

 

Additionally, paragraph formatting options are not available when editing a character style (as they would not be applicable).

 

Each style inherits from any style it is "based on" all the way up the hierarchy until the special "[No Style]" of the appropriate type is reached.

 

The selected character style for a range of text overrides what is in the paragraph style applied to the paragraph containing that text.  Local formatting (if any) overrides both.

 

Exactly one paragraph style can be applied to a paragraph at any given time, and exactly one character style can be applied to any particular character at any given time, though either one might be the special "[No Style]" (which acts more or less like a style which does not derive from anything else and cannot be edited).

Thank you that helps. I cannot see me using group styles.

[Seneca]

3 hours ago, Catshill said:

I cannot see me using group styles.

I'm sorry, I don't want to sound condescending but there might be two reasons why you won't use them:

1. You don't understand what they are for

2. You use very few paragraph or character styles in general

[Catshill]

5 hours ago, Seneca said:

I'm sorry, I don't want to sound condescending but there might be two reasons why you won't use them:

1. You don't understand what they are for

2. You use very few paragraph or character styles in general

Definitely not 2 . I have lots of paragraph and character styles set up  but would accept that I need to see more examples of how they can help workflow. Would you care to share your experience of them and why you couldn’t do without group styles?

[Old Bruce]

9 hours ago, Catshill said:

Definitely not 2 . I have lots of paragraph and character styles set up  but would accept that I need to see more examples of how they can help workflow. Would you care to share your experience of them and why you couldn’t do without group styles?

Not that I cannot do without group styles it just makes life easier.

I set up a group to have 90% (or more) of the text formatting so if I wish to change the justification from ragged right to full I only have to change it in one place. If I don't like the colour of the text on the page and choose a new font family or weight I only have to change it in one style, the group style.

I use a group for the text of a book. I have it set up like so;

Group Bulk: < Justification, widows and orphans, font family, font size, leading etc. All the stuff you need in all the text. 

   Paragraph Styles;

      First Paragraph < zero indent and perhaps initial words or drop cap Space Before

      Normal Paragraph < one em indent

      Last Paragraph < one em indent text decorations Space After 

   Character Styles;

      Italic < italic

      Bold < bold

      Initial words < perhaps small caps and bold

      Drop Cap < a particular font

Group Heads < Justification, font family, font size, leading etc. All the stuff you need in all the headings.

I wouldn't bother with a group for Captions or annotations I probably would for Footnotes or End notes.

[fde101]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

it just makes life easier

In some ways this will depend on the nature of how your styles are structured and the complexity of the document's design, however.

Since you can inherit from non-group styles as well, you could just as easily (in your example) placed all of the information in the "Normal" paragraph style then based the "First" and "Last" styles on that.  They could have inherited those properties from the Normal style and just changed the indent / decorations as needed so that you could have made your adjustments in the Normal style and the others would have followed suit.

 

I do think that your use of the group style makes the breakdown a bit more clear however, and particularly if this structure is being used in combination with other styles in a more complex set is likely worthwhile.

[Orlon]

I'll be using this to have multiple styles with the same text decoration - I have an outlined box with a few different styles in it, and this will let me manage all of them in the same place.

[Petar Petrenko]

You can do anything you want just with "Based on" option. There is no need for "Group" styles.

[PaulEC]

I suspect that this is the sort of feature which is very useful for people who need this sort of feature, but is not very useful for people who don't need it (like me)!

However, as some people obviously like it, the easiest thing (for me) seems to be to not use it. until the (possible) day when I do have a need for it.

In other words, I can't see a problem having the feature there (for people who do want it) – AFAIK it doesn't cause any problems if you don't want to use it! 😏

[printchap]

For brochure work I use often use groups to organise font styles by spreads. This limits the font styles to the pages I'm working on. It's much quicker than searching through a long list…