Bullet point setting lost when subsequent style is different

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Rainer Oehry
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Dec 10, 2017 12:47 pm

Bullet point setting lost when subsequent style is different

Unread post by Rainer Oehry »

I experience the following effect:
  • A paragraph style is applied to a paragraph.
  • The style for the following paragraph is defined to be the same style (!).
  • I apply a bullet point to the paragraph and enter some text.
  • When I hit Enter, I get a new paragraph with the correct same style, and it also starts with a bullet.
Everything is as expected, as long as the subsequent style is defined to be the same as the current style.

When the subsequent style is a different style, on the other hand, I get the correct style for the next paragraph as defined and requested, but the bullet setting is lost—I don't get a bullet at the beginning of the next paragraph.

Of course this is not really a problem, I can always apply the bullet point setting again. I just wonder whether you can reproduce that, and whether it is the intended behavior. The "bullet or no bullet" setting is not part of the style, so it is not obvious to me why the bullet point setting should be lost when the style for the subsequent paragraph is different from the previous one …?

Thank you.

Addendum:
I just noticed that this only happens when the cursor is at the very end of the paragraph, after the last character immediately in front of the paragraph marker. If I move the cursor one character to the left and press Enter, everything is fine: Of course the last character goes into the next paragraph, but the paragraph has the corrent style applied—and a bullet.

This makes this issue even more negligible.
Regards,

Rainer
Head of Technical Writing & Knowledge Management
TIG Technische Informationssysteme GmbH, Rankweil, Austria
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Tim Green
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Re: Bullet point setting lost when subsequent style is diffe

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Rainer,

This isn't really an error. Fundamentally, all the paragraphs in a list are supposed to have the same paragraph formatting. So if the style changes a completely new paragraph is created with the new style, and that also eliminates any list attributes that would be added later.

Also, the paragraph attributes for the next paragraph aren't used anyway in a list (a text style is different, since it only formats the text, not the paragraph attributes). All the paragraph settings in a list are defined by the first list entry. That's why you only really need to apply formatting to the first paragraph in a list. However, it's generally better to format all the paragraphs anyway because then you can split a list into two lists and not lose the paragraph formatting.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Rainer Oehry
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Dec 10, 2017 12:47 pm

Re: Bullet point setting lost when subsequent style is diffe

Unread post by Rainer Oehry »

Hi Tim,

thank you for your quick reply.
Tim Green wrote:Fundamentally, all the paragraphs in a list are supposed to have the same paragraph formatting.
I was not aware of that.
The reason I use different styles in lists is the following: I have a "list" paragraph style with two "sub-styles": "first list item" and "last list item". They just have a larger "SpaceBefore" resp. "SpaceAfter" setting, in order to better separate the entire list optically from the regular text, while keeping the list entries closer together.

I could of course create paragraph sub-styles, based on the "regular text" style, such as "last paragraph before list" and "first paragraph after list", with the appropriate space settings. I did not choose this solution because I have more than one list style (different fonts, font sizes, line spacings etc.) that require different top and bottom additional vertical spacings, and so I would need to create different "last paragraph before list" and "first paragraph after list" paragraph styles, depending on the type of list I am going to use.
This solution, on the other hand, could save me from a problem I have with my current solution: now, whenever I need to add another paragraph at the end of the list, I have to change the style of the previous last list entry to the "inner" list style …

I will give it a try, to see what works best for me.

By the way, the quite powerful style functionality, especially in connection with "central" styles managed from a repository, is one of the many strengths of H&M. Thank you for that.
Regards,

Rainer
Head of Technical Writing & Knowledge Management
TIG Technische Informationssysteme GmbH, Rankweil, Austria
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Tim Green
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Re: Bullet point setting lost when subsequent style is diffe

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Rainer,
I have a "list" paragraph style with two "sub-styles": "first list item" and "last list item". They just have a larger "SpaceBefore" resp. "SpaceAfter" setting, in order to better separate the entire list optically from the regular text, while keeping the list entries closer together.
That's fine -- the main thing that lists "globalize" from the first item is the indent settings of the paragraph, which will remain the same for the entire list irrespective of what you set in individual subsequent items.

We're going to look into making the "next paragraph" thing more flexible in the future. I can't promise anything, however. Like so many things, this is a lot more complicated than it looks at first glance. :?
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
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