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WP 6.0 DOS Styles - Information Guide
DocumentID: 613459
Revision Date: 29-Feb-96 1:35:44 PM

The information in this document applies to:
WordPerfect® 6.0 for DOS

Problem

Solutions: What are Styles?
Styles are how WordPerfect lets users create customized formatting codes for favorite formatting combinations. As an example, suppose you often apply Bold, Underline and Very Large to documents to create headings. Without styles, you must apply each of the three codes individually each time you use them. If you make a style that includes all three codes, they become as easy to apply as a single Bold code.

Why use Styles?
You may use styles for the same reasons you use macros. In fact, a style can be thought of as a formatting macro, and creating a style is just as easy as creating a keystroke macro. If you never use styles, you are putting yourself through unnecessary typing and formatting the same way as someone who never uses macros. But unlike macros that simply repeat keystrokes, styles are a code that can be edited. When you edit the style all changes automatically affect each occurrence of the code.

Previous to WP 6.0, Styles were a "power-user" function that was kept pretty well hidden away in the program. Most people had no idea what a Style was, and didn't care to know. But in WP 6.0, styles are "in your face." Turn on Reveal Codes and the first thing you will see is [Open Style:Initial Codes]. Customer Support technicians dealing with WP DOS 6.0, regardless of specialty, are going to have to know Styles inside and out. Being comfortable in Styles will soon become as basic and essential as being comfortable in Reveal Codes. But the good news is that if you have ever edited your initial codes, you already know how to create a style, and styles are not as complex as people think.

Style Basics
To understand the kinds of styles available in WordPerfect, you must understand the two basic kinds of codes in WordPerfect; Paired Codes and Open Codes.

A Paired Code is actually two codes: an On and an Off code, both of which are created simultaneously. Text is typed between the On and the Off, and this is the only text affected by the paired code. A typical example of a paired code sequence would be:

      [Bold On]this text is bolded[Bold Off].

Think of paired codes as if they were bookends to the text between them. If you delete either "bookend" of a paired code, both codes disappear.

An Open Code turns On at the cursor position, and stays on for the rest of the document. A [Paper Sz/Typ] code is a good example of an open code. The effects of an open code can only be turned "off" by inserting another code of the same kind with a different value. You can also delete an open code to remove it.

Style Types
There are three kinds of Styles in WordPerfect, but all three fit under the classification of either Paired or Open:

1.      Open Styles act just like any other Open Code; they turn on and stay on for the rest of your document. A good candidate for an Open Style would be a style that defines paper size and type, base font, margins, page numbering and header. Open Styles are used most often at the top of a document.

2.      Character Styles are Paired Codes; they are created in an On/Off set, and you put whatever text you wish to be affected by them in between. If you block some text before selecting a Character Style, the On code will be placed at the beginning of the block and the Off at the end.

3.      Paragraph Styles are Paired as well, but with a twist. When you select a Paragraph Style, it searches back to the beginning of the current paragraph and places its On code there, and then searches forward to the end of the paragraph and places its Off code. A Paragraph Style will consider the beginning of a paragraph to be just after a previous Hard Return, and the end of the paragraph to be at the next Hard Return. Paragraph Styles are very convenient and easy to apply because very often the text you wish to apply a style to will naturally be bounded by Hard Returns, for example, titles and headings.

Editing Styles
When you edit the Contents of a style, your changes alter the style codes throughout your document. Suppose you decide after creating a dozen headings that you want your heading to be Extra Large instead of Very Large. If you used a style to format the heading, edit just the Style Contents (Layout|Styles|Edit|Style Contents) and all the headings in the document will change their look. If you didn't use a style, you will have to change each and every heading by hand.

Styles can be specific to only a single document, or can be saved in Library files for use over and over again in many documents. A new feature in WP 6.0 is that you can now edit a style in your Library, and it will automatically change in all the documents in which it was used. Understanding the rules for when styles stay "hooked" to libraries and when they don't is probably the hardest thing about Styles.

Styles Setup
Before you begin using styles, you should set up both personal and shared style libraries in Setup|Location of Files. If you don't, the selections for Personal and Shared Libraries will be dimmed and unaccessible from the Style Menu (Layout|Styles). NOTE: If the Personal and Shared Libraries are dimmed on the Styles Menu, it is possible to set up these options temporarily (specific to the current document only). From the Style List, choose "Options" and then "Libraries Assigned to Document." Specify a Personal and/or Shared Library and then exit (F7) back to the Style List. Remember, these Style Libraries pertain to the current document only. Even if you are not on a network, you can have a Shared Library. It is probably a good idea to set the default LIBRARY.STY that ships with WordPerfect as your shared library, and define a library under a different filename (for example, MYNAME.STY) for your personal library.

Once you are set up correctly, access the Styles menu (Layout|Styles). At the top, you have the choice to list styles from the current Document, from your Personal Library or from your Shared Library. If you pick a style from a library and use it in the document, it is added to the Document Styles list.

Go into Options, and look at "Libraries Assigned to Document." The library files listed should be the same as the ones you just defined in Setup| Location of Files. You can change these entries and thus "hook" any document to any libraries you wish, but the default libraries for new documents will be the ones you defined in Setup. Unless you create so many styles that your style list gets more than a couple of screens long, you probably don't need to have multiple libraries. Note: if you retrieve a document created on a different machine, the Assigned Libraries in that document will probably not match your defaults. As a document moves around from machine to machine, it keeps its "home" Assigned Libraries.

Troubleshooting hint: Any time you are confused about why styles are disappearing, or styles are appearing that you didn't expect to see, compare Assigned Libraries and Location of Files and you will probably see a mismatch.

Styles Pecking Order
WordPerfect keeps track of Styles by their names, not by their contents. There are rules of precedence for resolving conflicts between styles that have the same name: a Document Style gets first priority; then the Personal Library; finally the Shared Library.

For example: You create a Document Style called "mystyle" and you already have a different "mystyle" in your Personal Library. Later, you access your Personal Library, and select "mystyle." But the "mystyle" from the Document Styles, not your Personal Library shows up in your document.

Why doesn't WordPerfect just keep track of the contents of a style. As strange as it seems to allow a different style to be picked than the one you picked, it does allow for the most versatility and power. Since WordPerfect doesn't care what a specific style contains, you can edit the contents all you want and the style will still be recognized as being the "same." As a general rule, try to give all your styles unique names, unless you specifically wish to override one style with another. For example, you might edit a style in the Shared Library so it has your favorite font, and put it in your Personal Library so that even if it is chosen from the Shared Library list, your font makes it into the document.

Copying, Saving and Retrieving Styles
The Copy option on the Styles Menu allows you to copy individual styles or a group of marked styles between the currently assigned Personal Library, Shared Library and Document Style list. You do not work directly with DOS filenames when using this option.

The Save option will do a wholesale save of all the styles on your screen to a DOS filename. If the filename you choose to save to already exists, styles of the same name already in the file will be over-written with the styles on-screen.

The Retrieve option allows you to merge all the styles in a library file with the styles already on-screen. Styles on-screen with the same names as styles in the retrieved library will be replaced by the library styles.

What happens if...?

What happens if I edit the style in my document, but not the one in the library?
      The style in the document will "unhook" from the library, and won't update when the library is changed. You will notice that the bullet denoting a library style will disappear after editing a style. To hook the style back to the library, copy the edited version to the library (remember: this will change this style in all documents to the edited version of the style).

What happens to the styles in my document if I delete the library they belong to?
      The styles in the document won't know the difference. They will still have the bullet by them that indicates they are library styles, and if you Copy them, the library will be automatically recreated. The styles stay "hooked" to the deleted library because, especially in a network environment, style libraries may become temporarily unavailable, but are restored later.

What happens if a document was created on another machine?
      The document will still point to the libraries assigned it on the other machine, not to your own default libraries. If you choose Copy to add a style from this document to your own library, it won't work: a new library will likely be created on your machine with the name of the library on the other machine, unless you change the Libraries Assigned entry in the document. Cutting a document loose from its Assigned Library won't hurt the styles in the document; it only prevents them from being automatically updated by changes to that library.

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