12 Replies Latest reply: Sep 15, 2009 4:48 AM by Jeremy bowmangraphics-DQuh1B RSS

    Combining multiple Character Styles

    Geert DD Community Member

      I'd like to apply multiple character styles to the same words. However, this does not seem possible. One character styles always overrides the other. Please see the attached image for a visualization.

       

      I tried Shift-clicking both styles to apply them, without success. I guess either I'm missing something quite obvious, or this is not possible?

        • 1. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
          pkahrel Community Member

          Sadly, this isn't possible. Please make a request at http://www.adobe.com/support/feature.html. The more people submit requests for this the better the chance we'll get it some day.

           

          Peter

          • 2. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
            Geert DD Community Member

            Too bad. Thanks anyway. Feature request made.

            • 3. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
              Eugene Tyson CommunityMVP

              You could just make a new style called Red Underline and apply the underline to the red type?

               

              So if you click the Red character style and go to New Style, it will based on the Red style but apply an udnerline that is the text colour. When you change the Red character style to a different character colour, for example, it will change the underline also.

               

              Parent and Child styles in character styles. http://help.adobe.com/en_US/InDesign/6.0/WS60910FA3-2BD7-449d-9904-05CFA551665Da.html#WS15 F28658-9D80-4fca-AB52-754957BDD2C4a

              • 4. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
                [Jongware] Community Member

                CS4 proves it is possible -- GREP styles mix perfectly with existing character styles.

                 

                (Admittedly, it would be overkill to add a GREP style just for this phrase "manual underline".)

                • 5. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
                  Jeremy bowmangraphics-DQuh1B Community Member

                  [Jongware] wrote:

                   

                  GREP styles mix perfectly with existing character styles.

                   

                  Why stop at mixing GREP styles and character styles when you can apply a nested style (bold), a line style (underline), a GREP style (first letter big) and a manually applied character style (red) all at the same time?

                  Screen shot 2009-09-14 at 13.37.30.png

                   

                   

                  (nested style: bold first word; line style: underlined first line; GREP style: big first letter; manual character style: red)

                   

                  Of course, you couldn't have more than one character styles applied to any single character -- that would be a violation of set theory (or the law of the excluded middle, or Russell's theory of types, or something like that)!

                   

                  Jeremy

                  • 6. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
                    peter at knowhowpro Community Member

                    Jeremy bowmangraphics wrote:

                     

                    [Jongware] wrote:

                     

                    GREP styles mix perfectly with existing character styles.

                     

                    Why stop at mixing GREP styles and character styles when you can apply a nested style (bold), a line style (underline), a GREP style (first letter big) and a manually applied character style (red) all at the same time?

                    Screen shot 2009-09-14 at 13.37.30.png

                     

                     

                    (nested style: bold first word; line style: underlined first line; GREP style: big first letter; manual character style: red)

                     

                    Of course, you couldn't have more than one character styles applied to any single character -- that would be a violation of set theory (or the law of the excluded middle, or Russell's theory of types, or something like that)!

                     

                    Jeremy

                     

                    Now, you've done it! You made me look up my favorite Russell citation, by Dudley Moore:

                     

                    http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ericsw/btf/

                     

                    Note: Depending on your browser, it may not be apparent that the word "Here" is a link to a recording of the text at:

                     

                    http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ericsw/btf/russell.mp3

                     


                    Regards,

                    Peter
                    _______________________
                    Peter Gold
                    KnowHow ProServices

                    • 7. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
                      Geert DD Community Member

                      Jeremy bowmangraphics wrote:

                       

                      Of course, you couldn't have more than one character styles applied to any single character -- that would be a violation of set theory [...]

                      I don't see why not? If you are a bit into webdesign, you may be familiar with CSS. Here is how you would combine multiple styles onto certain words.

                       

                      .red { color:red; }
                      .underline { text-decoration:underline; }

                      <p>HTML paragraph with some <span class="red underline">red+underlined</span> text.</p>

                      • 8. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
                        Geert DD Community Member

                        Good to know; however, as you say it would be terrible overkill to create GREP styles for some arbitrary words you'd like to style.


                        I'm on CS3 still anyway.

                        • 9. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
                          Geert DD Community Member

                          Right, that seems like the best workaround to make it work. Thanks.

                          • 10. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
                            Jeremy bowmangraphics-DQuh1B Community Member

                            Geert DD wrote:

                             

                            I don't see why not? If you are a bit into webdesign, you may be familiar with CSS. Here is how you would combine multiple styles onto certain words.

                             

                            .red { color:red; }
                            .underline { text-decoration:underline; }

                            <p>HTML paragraph with some <span class="red underline">red+underlined</span> text.</p>

                            CSS rules have a clear order of application (the "cascade"), so if there's any disagreement between rules applied to a given bit of HTML, the rule applied last "wins" by overruling any applied earlier.

                             

                            Unlike CSS classes, InDesign styles are not applied in any obvious order, so if more than one style could be applied to a given bit of text, there would have to be some way of ordering them so that disagreements between them could be resolved.

                             

                            The "based on" hierarchy of styles prevents style conflicts independently of any given bit of text. The ability to apply more than one style to a given bit of text would necessitate the introduction of a further ordering relation, one that applies only to the given bit of text.

                             

                            That could make things very complicated, and its effects would propagate into scripting, de-bugging, and so on. It wouldn't be just InDesign that had to get it right -- the poor befuddled user would too!

                             

                            Although I was kidding when I mentioned Russell's theory of types (and amused by the Peter Cook & Dudley Moore parody) I was gesturing vaguely towards the idea that there are some general/logical constraints on classification that go beyond individual applications such as InDesign.

                             

                            In general, the least problematic ways of classifying things use categories that are either disjoint or else ranked in a "containment" hierarchy. This is can be seen in many areas of life. For example, an animal can be a member of species A and genus X, but it cannot be a member of both species A and species B, nor a member of both genus X and genus Y. The syntax of XML reflects all similar ways of classifying things, and that is one of the reasons why it is so powerful.

                             

                            Jeremy

                            • 11. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
                              Harbs. CommunityMVP

                              Actually, GREP styles ARE applied in order (of their listing). There's 

                              no reason why the same can not be done with regular character styles. 

                              Of course style groups have made that more complicated, but the order 

                              can simply be down the tree with upper branches first.

                               

                              Harbs

                              • 12. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
                                Jeremy bowmangraphics-DQuh1B Community Member

                                But how do you propose to order raw character styles, or display that order (which will inevitably differ for different bits of text)?

                                 

                                I mean, suppose I have a character style that makes text red, and another style that makes text green. With some bits of text, one style will take precedence over the other, and the text will be green. With other bits of text, the precedence will be reversed, and the text will be red. What is to decide that precedence, and how could it be displayed? In a whole new panel?

                                 

                                At least with CSS rules the order of application is clear. And at least with GREP styles a clear order already exists-- they all reside within a single paragraph style, and they always apply in the same order to whichever bit of text they're applied to (which is the text of the paragraph their parent paragraph style is applied to).

                                 

                                If different character styles are always to have the same order of precedence no matter what text they're applied to, InDesign already gives you that functionality with the current "based on" feature.

                                 

                                Jeremy