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1. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
pkahrel Sep 14, 2009 3:14 AM (in response to Geert DD)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
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2. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
Geert DD Sep 14, 2009 3:24 AM (in response to pkahrel)Too bad. Thanks anyway. Feature request made.
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3. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
Eugene Tyson Sep 14, 2009 3:37 AM (in response to Geert DD)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
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4. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
[Jongware] Sep 14, 2009 3:38 AM (in response to Geert DD)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".)
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5. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
Jeremy bowmangraphics-DQuh1B Sep 14, 2009 5:44 AM (in response to [Jongware])[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?
(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
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6. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
peter at knowhowpro Sep 14, 2009 7:20 AM (in response to Jeremy bowmangraphics-DQuh1B)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?
(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 Sep 14, 2009 7:37 AM (in response to Jeremy bowmangraphics-DQuh1B)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 Sep 14, 2009 7:42 AM (in response to [Jongware])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.
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9. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
Geert DD Sep 14, 2009 7:42 AM (in response to Eugene Tyson)Right, that seems like the best workaround to make it work. Thanks.
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10. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
Jeremy bowmangraphics-DQuh1B Sep 15, 2009 3:47 AM (in response to Geert DD)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
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11. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
Harbs. Sep 15, 2009 3:57 AM (in response to Jeremy bowmangraphics-DQuh1B)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
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12. Re: Combining multiple Character Styles
Jeremy bowmangraphics-DQuh1B Sep 15, 2009 4:48 AM (in response to Harbs.)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






