Tutor/help

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rabbijacobs
Posts: 5
Joined: 2013-08-20 20:39:01

Tutor/help

Post by rabbijacobs »

Hello,

I've created a few academic books with Nisus Pro. I'm still not clear on using the Style sheets.

Is there anyone available to give me some talking time (zoom, WhatsApp, something?) to help understand it a bit better.

I'd happily pay for the time.

Phil
Amontillado
Posts: 41
Joined: 2019-06-20 11:13:06

Re: Tutor/help

Post by Amontillado »

Wouldn't it be better to go through questions here?

What are your questions? The reason I use Nisus is because of the world-class way it handles styles. Very, very, cool and without entangling side effects. Hierarchical, so one style can enhance another. I wish it had page styles, but other than than Nisus is awesome for styles.

Here are a few thoughts. I would not use a word processor that didn't support styles.

A style is almost like a little macro for applying attributes to text.

You can choose individual attributes to force a block of text to look a certain way. No problem, except for consistency. Everywhere in your document you want that appearance, you have to remember to set all those attributes. Icky and error prone.

Or, you could create a style that applies what you want. Then everywhere you want text to appear the same way, you select the style.

Later, you decide the fancy script font you used for captions is elegant but Times New Roman would be more readable. If you used a style for the text you wrote in the script font, you would just update the style definition to use Times New Roman instead. Bingo, all your captions text would change to Times New Roman.

The workflow with styles is "just type" and don't sweat the appearance. Text (and paragraphs, and lists) serving different purposes each get a style.

Another use is if you need to format your work differently for different audiences. I used to participate in two critique groups, both of which were exceedingly grumpy about formatting.

Each had their own ideas about margins, line spacing, and fonts.

No big deal. I had two style sets, each containing identically named styles. Flipping the format from one group's tastes to the others was just a matter of loading the appropriate style set and hitting the print button.
rabbijacobs
Posts: 5
Joined: 2013-08-20 20:39:01

Re: Tutor/help

Post by rabbijacobs »

Hi,

Thanks for the kind reply.

For some reason, I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around using the Style Sheets.

I believe that I've created some Styles, but then when I go to apply that Style to some text I don't see that happening.

Isn't that how it is supposed to work? I create Styles with different characteristics.

Then, I apply that to other sections of text?

For some reason, that's not working. Any idea?
adryan
Posts: 561
Joined: 2014-02-08 12:57:03
Location: Australia

Re: Tutor/help

Post by adryan »

G'day, Phil et al

Without seeing a step-by-step account of what you are doing, it's hard to know why things aren't working for you.

Here is an absolutely basic and straightforward procedure for you to try. It's not quite the way I would normally do things myself, but I've done it this way for pedagogical and testing reasons. If this does not work, deeper issues may be in play in your situation. But I'm hopeful that this will demonstrate how things are supposed to work and hence point to the error of your ways.

(1) Open a new Nisus document.
(2) Macro > Document > Lorem Ipsum
(3) Note the size of the text.
(4) Format > Character Style > New Character Style…
(5) Style View opens.
(6) Change the name of the new Style from the default name "Character Style" to something else (eg, "Test").
(7) Select the text in the field below the name.
(8) Change the font to something interesting and make the size several points larger than the text in the document.
(9) Return to Page View.
(10) Format > Character Style
(11) Observe that your new Test Style is now in the list of Styles that appear in the drop-down menu.
(12) Select a word in the document.
(13) Format > Character Style > Test
(14) The selected word should now appear in your new Style.

Your new Style remains attached to that document. If you close the document and reopen it, the Style should still be available.

To make the Style available in other documents, you need to save it to the Style Library whence it can be imported when required.

There is a lot more to Styles than this, but I hope this short tutorial gets you on the right track.

Cheers,
Adrian
MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 2021)
macOS Ventura
Nisus Writer user since 1996
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martin
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Re: Tutor/help

Post by martin »

rabbijacobs wrote: 2022-12-12 05:57:48 I believe that I've created some Styles, but then when I go to apply that Style to some text I don't see that happening.

Isn't that how it is supposed to work? I create Styles with different characteristics.

Then, I apply that to other sections of text?

For some reason, that's not working. Any idea?
What you described is indeed how it's supposed to work: you create a style in the stylesheet, edit it to enforce various text formatting (e.g. fonts, colors, etc), return to your document text, select some text, and apply the style to see the same formatting.

When you say it's "not working", do you mean that the formatting you chose for your style in the stylesheet does not appear in the document text? The main reason for this is due to formatting overrides, aka manual formatting. This may sound very technical, but it's actually simple. Imagine that you have some text in a heading style (e.g. Heading 1). You select a single word in that heading and change the font. The new font is an override; it is not part of the style definition. The font is something you added "on top" of whatever the style enforces; it obscures the font that is normally enforced by the style.

Such formatting overrides may be part of your existing document text, especially if you've been working without using styles for a long time. If you haven't been using styles, then basically all of your formatting is manual/override formatting. Here's an easy way to check if this is your problem:

1. Select the text whose formatting does not match the applied style.
2. Use the menu Format > Remove Formatting Except Styles.
→ all manual/override formatting is removed, so only the style's enforced formatting is used.

Another great tool to help you: the Formatting Examiner palette. It will show you exactly what styles and manual formatting are applied to the selected text, and the resulting "display formatting".
Amontillado
Posts: 41
Joined: 2019-06-20 11:13:06

Re: Tutor/help

Post by Amontillado »

rabbijacobs wrote: 2022-12-12 05:57:48 Hi,

Thanks for the kind reply.

For some reason, I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around using the Style Sheets.
Style sheets are where styles are stored. A style, which is arguably kind of a funny name, is a collection of text attributes. Let's say a character style is called ImportantStuff and includes italics, Times New Roman, 16 point.

When you apply that character style, it's like applying all those choices at once - but wait, there's more.

If you change ImportantStuff to be bold, non-italic, 12 point, Arial, then everywhere you used the ImportantStuff character style it will change in one swoop to all those new settings without your having to go through your document. Magic.

I like to define character styles for every way characters appear in my document. Then I base paragraph styles on the character styles. That way I get a character appearance that feeds a paragraph appearance.

For instance, most of my style sets have a character style called Body. I might have paragraph styles called Body First Paragraph and Body Paragraph.

Both are based on the character style Body. Body First Paragraph doesn't indent the first line and is set for a next style of Body Paragraph. Since they are both based on the character style Body, they both look the same except for the first line indent.

I might also have a heading style for Chapter, creating a nice big title. The next style will be set for Body First Paragraph.

So, I start a chapter by selecting Chapter. I type the title and hit return, which automatically shifts me to the Body First Paragraph style. When I hit enter at the end of the first paragraph, it drops automatically into Body Paragraph.

Here's a tip, too. If you might later first line indents, make yourself those two different styles. You can set them to look the same, with or without first line indent.

Then, to reformat to indented first paragraph, all paragraphs indented, or no paragraphs indented, you just adjust the styles. You don't have to touch the text.

It's also a good idea to highlight all your styles and save them to a style library. Be sure to select all the styles you want to save, otherwise you'll just save the current style. You save styles to style libraries in the style editing mode.

Now you can use those same styles in a new document. Or, you can make a document reformat itself for a different audience just by loading a different style library.

You can still manually italicize or use bold text, but for overall appearances, never select long-running attributes. Underline or italicize when it's an exception.

Define styles to set general appearances. Go through the process once and you'll see it is no more work to create a style than it is to select the text attributes you want as individual settings. The benefit to styles is consistency and flexibility.
Amontillado
Posts: 41
Joined: 2019-06-20 11:13:06

Re: Tutor/help

Post by Amontillado »

By the way, I'm not averse to the idea of setting up a Zoom call to help a fellow writer. The problem is I'm so darn busy it's hard to schedule anything - but if things just don't seem to work out, I'll help.

Nisus is a wonderful product, and it is particularly good at Styles. I can't think of another product that makes them work so well.
adryan
Posts: 561
Joined: 2014-02-08 12:57:03
Location: Australia

Re: Tutor/help

Post by adryan »

G'day, all

I'm afraid I don't have time to go into this in detail just now, but it makes a difference if you have a Style's "Based on" setting set to "None" rather than something else (like "Normal" perhaps).

Try this with a Character Style and apply it to a whole word in your document. Select just a few characters in the word, change their formatting (eg, larger size), then select the whole word and reapply your Style. Try it with the two different Style definitions.

A further complexity relates to iterative operation of a command. The familiar Italic command (for example) is not a simple character-by-character toggle. It only acts as a toggle if the entire contents of a selection are uniformly italicized or uniformly non-italicized. Otherwise it makes the entire selection italicized before allowing it all to become non-italicized upon invoking the command a second time. The first invocation of the command behaves differently from subsequent invocations. I think a similar situation can occur with Styles.

So I wonder if something in these comments throws some light on Phil's problem.

Cheers,
Adrian
MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 2021)
macOS Ventura
Nisus Writer user since 1996
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