Indicate include/exclude in styles

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Dean Whitlock
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Indicate include/exclude in styles

Unread post by Dean Whitlock »

Now that H&M has dynamic styles, I suggest adding a checkbox to the optional Help/Print File Views dialogs that would include/exclude text of that style from the respective builds.

For example, I create a style that I use to format links to external popups or external web pages. (e.g., "Click here for more information.") These links only apply to online help and the text only makes sense when viewed in online help. In the Help File View for this style, I leave the "Include in online help builds" box checked (this would be the default). In the Print File View, I uncheck the box (which here is labeled "Include in print/PDF help builds"). The compiler looks at the check boxes and builds as indicated. There is no need to add If/Then statements or to select from the Include Options in the Compile Help File and Run dialog.

I suspect that people used to working with styles will find this easier to use in many conditional text situations. It does not have the specificity of the current functions, but it would cover the common situation of differentiating between online and printed help.
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Alexander Halser
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Unread post by Alexander Halser »

Dean,

this is already implemented: you can use conditional text tags (Insert > Conditional Text) to include or exclude parts of your topic content into particular builds. These include tags are independent of the styles you used to format the text (styles are for formatting only, not for conditional inclusion).
Alexander Halser
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Dean Whitlock
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Unread post by Dean Whitlock »

Hi Alexander,

I have tried out the current conditional text functions, which I agree are powerful tools. I am suggesting an additional method based on styles, which I would find easier to use and would serve my purposes in most cases. Once I had added a couple of include/exclude styles to my standard template, I would simply assign the appropriate style where needed. I wouldn't have to think about whether it was better to use an If or an IfNot or remember to check Include options at compile time.

I admit this is a "wish" item, not a "must have" item. I'm just trying to make my life easier. :wink:

Thanks for the quick reply,
Dean
JohnHind
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Unread post by JohnHind »

I'd like to strongly endorse this: conditionals are hard to get right and time consuming if you need to switch say a footer on thousands of topics. Styles give central control which is much easier.

In passing styles are great but they could do SO MUCH more!

- Conditionals (as suggested here)

- Add the styled text to the index automatically.

- Add a link to a topic with the same name as the styled text, creating the topic if necessary.

- Better pagination control (widow/orphan and keep with previous as well as keep with next.)

- Suppress word wrap (for the styled text only, not the whole paragraph).

John Hind.[/list]
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Dean Whitlock
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Unread post by Dean Whitlock »

I would *love* a Keep with Previous paragraph attribute!
JohnHind
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Unread post by JohnHind »

Dean Whitlock wrote:I would *love* a Keep with Previous paragraph attribute!
So pleased to hear that, Dean. I've tried to sell this one to every wordprocessor on the planet without success (it's not in MS Word or Open Office for example). Seems so obvious, but no one gets it!
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Martin Wynne
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Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Dean Whitlock wrote:I would *love* a Keep with Previous paragraph attribute!
Hi Dean,

Is that significantly more useful than "Keep with Next Paragraph"? (Which is already available in the style settings. -- Format > Edit Styles... > Paragraph Settings > Line and Page Breaks >.)

It seems to me that it is just as easy to modify the style for the paragraph above as it is to modify the style for the current one. But I suspect I'm missing something. :?

Martin.
JohnHind
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Unread post by JohnHind »

Hi Martin,

Yea, that's the "party line" I got from both MS and OO! My view is that you should be able to control document formatting entirely using styles. To do this, you need both "keep with next" and "keep with previous". Suppose you have a style for a topic footer or, in a WP for the "salutation" line ("yours sincerely" etc.) at the end of a letter. These look silly if a page throw happens immediately before them, so you want to pull a line or two from the previous page to leed up to the terminating paragraph.

If you have to use a special style (with "keep with next") for the preceeding paragraph, you need a second version of every possible preceeding style and things become error-prone. What happens if you add more paragraphs at the end of the topic? You have to remember to take "keep with next" off the old last paragraph AND put it on the new last paragraph. Most of the time you forget and only notice when you've printed the document!

- John
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Dean Whitlock
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Unread post by Dean Whitlock »

John's reason is basically my reason, though I first ran into it dealing with screen shots. I always want the preceding paragraph to stay with the screen shot, which means I need a special version of my Normal style for the lead-in paragraph, in addition to my Image style for the paragraph containing the image. If my Image style could have a Keep with Previous attribute, I could dispense with the Lead-in style, which I sometimes forget to apply. Currently, I have ditched the Lead-in style and have been clicking the Keep with Next button on the Normal preceding paragraph, but I sometimes forget to do that too. It's a minor irritation, but I do use a lot of screen shots.

Dean
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Martin Wynne
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Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Hi John, Dean,

Thanks for the explanation. I knew I was missing something!

Don't forget tables. When I want things to stay stuck together my usual instinct is to put them in a single-cell table. Table handling is one of the best features of the RVF editor. Essentially every table cell is a complete RVF document, similar to an embedded topic.

Martin.
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

Martin,
Martin Wynne wrote:Don't forget tables. When I want things to stay stuck together my usual instinct is to put them in a single-cell table.
There's a catch involved when you do this: In PDF tables can still only break at cell boundaries so if you put too much text in a table cell you can get large gaps on your pages when the cell is bumped to the next page.
Last edited by Tim Green on Thu Sep 14, 2006 4:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
JohnHind
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Unread post by JohnHind »

Thanks guys, Dean's reason reminds me of another aspect of H&M that puzzles me. When you insert a picture it automatically gets the "Image Caption" style but the docs say that only the font settings from this style applies. So how do you set paragraph styles for the image? I'd like to set space before and space after settings for a better look.

The single cell table is often a good work-round, but again you have to remember to manually insert this for every image and then style the table.
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

John,
JohnHind wrote:When you insert a picture it automatically gets the "Image Caption" style but the docs say that only the font settings from this style applies. So how do you set paragraph styles for the image? I'd like to set space before and space after settings for a better look.
Actually, the caption style is really only for the caption that you enter in the image properties dialog when you double-click on the image. However, since it's "attached" to the image it will sometimes overflow into the paragraph itself. It's a similar phenomenon to what happens in Word if you delete or copy paragraph marks. This happens in particular if you insert an image, type some text directly after it and then press Backspace to delete the text all the way up to the image. If you start typing again then your text will have the caption style. When this happens you just have to select the text and reapply the correct style manually.

Applying paragraph attributes for the image is easy, however. Just place the cursor in the same paragraph as the image and then either select Format - Paragraph or apply a paragraph style with the necessary space before and after settings. This will only work for inline images, of course, not for images for which you have set the Alignment property to Left or Right.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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JohnHind
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Unread post by JohnHind »

Hmm.. The model here really baffles me!

I have an image with an ordinary text paragraph above and below. With paragraph marks showing, there is one mark immediately after the image. With the cursor before the image, style shows "normal+", between the image and the paragraph mark, style shows "Image Caption". So two different paragraph styles apply to the same paragraph (actually the same line)?

Even odder, with the image itself selected, the style shows "Image Caption". Surely in the ultimate HTML, the CSS style will apply to the IMG tag?
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

John,

The style selector only shows what style is at the current cursor position, irrespective of whether it is a text or a paragraph style. If the style shows as "Image Caption" between the image and the paragraph mark this means that you have typed text and then deleted back to the image. If there is no text after the image you don't need to worry about this. If there is just select the text and apply a style and the problem will go away. To change the paragraph style settings just place the cursor anywhere to the left or right of the image and select a style.

The same will apply in front of the image: If there is no text there the style selector display is really irrelevant. If there is text there just select the text and apply a style to it.

What you don't want to do is select everything including the image and apply a style, as this will also apply the style to the image caption, if there is one. :)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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