How to inherit a font from another style?

[Michael Moser]

Hi all,
I am trying to make my styles a bit more "systematic" so I can easier
apply global changes that then automagically change the entire
document's look. I am e.g. trying to make all "Heading <n>" styles to
inherit from a common ancestor "Heading", the idea being, that I could
then e.g. change the font type (e.g. Arial => Times) just in one style
"Heading" and that effect would then ripple through to all "Heading
<n>" and then ALL headings would use that new font.

But alas, some of the styles in the style I am tweaking have already
defined their own fonts and thus don't adopt the change of the
ancestor. But in the font configuration dialog one can not leave the
font field empty. So, how do I get rid of a style's font setting such
that it inherits the font type but e.g. just changes the size and
maybe some attribute (e.g. bold/italic)?

Ideally, one would of course also be able to change the font size in a
relative manner (i.e. "<based on style size>-2" instead of giving an
absolute size). Is that possible?

Michael

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi Michael

Yes, Word is several options short of a stylesheet here, IMO.

However, you can get rid of a style's own font settings by first changing
them to match the parent style (this wipes the '+' settings), and then
modifying again with any changes you want to apply.

 

[Michael Moser]

Ah - it does that "automagically" when the "derived" style has the
same attribute as its "ancestor". That's so simple, that I didn't
think about it...

But that means: if I happen to set the ancestor temporarily to match
some attributes of any "derived" style(s) and later to something else
then - as a "sideeffect" - the derived styles might loose some of its
settings. That's truely ingeniuos! ||-(

Michael

 

[Margaret Aldis]

But that means: if I happen to set the ancestor temporarily to match
some attributes of any "derived" style(s) and later to something else
then - as a "sideeffect" - the derived styles might loose some of its
settings. That's truely ingeniuos! ||-(

You got it. Actually, I'm fairly sure at one time long ago the reverse was
true - the '+ ' formatting would disappear on the description, but remained
hard-wired under the surface so you could no longer cascade. The current
behaviour is marginally more usable, but it means you need to be careful to
have a separate 'body base' and 'head base' if you want the option of
sometimes using the same and sometimes different fonts.

As I said, MS miss a stylesheet trick here - there should be a specific
setting (FrameMaker calls it 'As Is') to show derivation, as opposed to
accidental matching.