Styles - creating, saving, finding, applying

[schakwin]

Hello, all -
this is my first post to this forum and I hope that I am not asking about something that I should have been able to find by doing a better search.

I'm a lawyer and do a lot of written work. I'm using NWP 1.03 and love the speed and power and what seems to be the customizability, but I'm still finding my way around under the hood, so to speak, and am not having much luck on this with the manual.

In Word, my previous usual word processor, I could create and apply a predefined style to my text. I could control font, spacing, numbering, whatever I needed the word processor to do and give that style a name and save it in a list that I could access from an inspector-type window. I could then type in style-neutral plain text, get my content to be what I wanted, and then apply the style with a mouse click, yielding me exactly what I wanted.

I can't figure out how to do this in NWP. I can define a style (I think) but I can't find a way to save it and retrieve it. What I had been doing was going to the inspector, using the + sign to add a style, giving it a name "Affirmation" and assigning a font, point size, line spacing, and what I hope will produce numbered paragraphs (I entered numbers in "lists" in the third panel down of the inspector. Then I have more or less what I want, but can't find a way to save this in the styles list. It appears as part of an unsaved document and when I try to save, I wind up with a saved useless document and no addition to the styles list.

Can someone please tell me if what I'm trying to do is possible in NWP and if it is (which I assume is so) how to do it?

Thanks in advance.

[Groucho]

Welcome, Stephen

You can find all about Styles in the NWP Help, pages 98 through 111.
You set styles via the Style Sheet. Click on the third tab, at the left end of the toolbar to enter Style Sheet view.
Styles are summoned by clicking on the Character Style tab (for character styles) or the Paragraph Style tab (for paragraph styles) in the Statusbar, or through the Styles palette in the drawer, or by selecting Format>Character Style(or Paragraph Style)>"Your Style Name".
If you want a particular set of styles to appear in every new document, open the Nisus New File that is located in "Home"/Library/Application Support/Nisus Writer/Nisus New File. This document is a template for all the new files created by selecting File>New, or hitting Command-N. In addition to this you can create your own template/s and save it/them as a document template (.dot).

I hope this helps
I'm in a hurry
Henry

[martin]

Henry is right on. You add styles to your document using the stylesheet view, which can be accessed using the menu View > Style Sheet. From there configure the styles as you desire using the normal formatting menus/tools.

If you want to add styles that will be present in all new documents you create, you should add them to the new document template, the Nisus New File. The easiest way to modify that template is in the preferences. Switch to the "New File" pane, click the "Advanced" tab, then the "Edit Nisus New File" button.

[schakwin]

Thanks to Groucho and Martin for their help. I *think* I understand but will have to slog through it for a while till I'm sure that I have it down. My head is still back in the old Word model which, like all things that one already knows well, seems easy and natural by comparison. I'm sure that this approach will seem equally easy in a little while.
Best,

Stephen

[greenmorpher]

Hiya Stephen

As a lawyer you will have some standard documents. What you need to do is to open a new document, either delete the Styles that are already there or modify them to meet your needs. Make other changes too -- such as setting the margins hyow you want them. Then save that document to User | Documents | Nisus Documents using the format "Document Template".

You will then be able to launch new "untitled" documents with those Styles you have set up already in place, from the Document Manager.

Note that in Paragraph Styles, you can set type and so on -- but you can later use override thse if you wish using Character Styles without changing the paragraph parameters such as indents, space befgore or after, and so on. You can do that en masse using the Menu Bar | Format | Character (or Paragraph) Style | Select Style Range or whatever, then applying the new style.

I use this to have an screen type, in my case, 12 pt Verdana, in my Paragraph Style and then to substitute a printer font, Adobe Caslon or something similar, just before I go to print.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com

[ptram]

And, what if I want to copy my style sheet to a different document? In Word I must import an external style sheet, in Mellel I can change Style Set; how do I do in Nisus?

Paolo

[Groucho]

Hi, Paolo.

You import/export styles the following way.

Go to Stylesheet view.
Select the style(s) you want to export (click on names in the left pane).
Copy (Command-C).
Open the document or template you want the styles to export into.
Paste (Command-V).
In case of conflicting names you will be asked what to do (overwrite, rename, cancel).
That's all.

Henry.

[ptram]

Fantastic! This is the easiest and most intuitive way. Shame on me I didn't try.

Paolo

[Groucho]

By the way, time ago Nobumi Iyanaga (http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~n-iyanag) published a macro to import all the styles defined in the Nisus New File template. I never got it to work and so ended by putting it on the back burner. So it lies buried in my macro folder since, and waiting for me to learn enough about Perl to make it go (Ha ha!). Anyway, I think, if I could manage it to work, this might be a starting point for a macro that allows one to import styles from whatever file.
Well, I think this might be.
Maybe.

Henry.

[Hamid]

By the way, time ago Nobumi Iyanaga (http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~n-iyanag) published a macro to import all the styles defined in the Nisus New File template. I never got it to work and so ended by putting it on the back burner.

There are two versions of the macro. Make sure you are using the correct version which should work without any problem:
http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~n-iyanag/nis ... tyles.html
Also note the limitations as stated in the description of what the macro is expected to do.

[Groucho]

My fault. I re-downloaded the file and it seems to work now. Also, I modified the macro to have it load styles from a file different from the usual Nisus New File. It would be the ticket if it could overwrite existing styles, like with the copy/paste method. I know, I know, this is a limitation not a glitch.

Well, many thanks to Mr. Nobumi. Great work, indeed. I will mail him a bunch of thanks.

Henry.