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Styles
More pages about Styles
on this site
-
Custom styles
- Creating custom styles; Saving custom styles to your default
(or other) template; Retrieving custom (user) styles from another
document or template; How to remove the new style from the default
template
Mark a custom style
for automatic inclusion in a Table of Contents
Replace
one style with another, or remove a style's codes
Block protect
paragraph styles (e.g., "Heading 2") and following
body text
Using, creating, and
modifying Outline styles
Automatic paragraph
numbering, outlines, and numbered lists
Automatically
numbered document headings
Adding emphasis to
text:
How to create custom paragraph/page border or fill styles
How to create a Question-and-Answer
style
Insert identical
text in several locations (Note: WordPerfect
10 can do this with its new 'text
variables' feature)
Alternative
heading styles - A "Stepped"
style; Legal-number-style headings and other automatically numbered
headings; using the Columns feature
Also see the examples under "Tips"
in the right column, which show how to create custom styles.
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About styles ...
Styles are design elements -- such as bold,
italics, extra large, or colored text -- that can be applied
to text. Once created (and saved)
they can be reused in other documents by simply selecting some
text and applying the style by choosing it from the "Select
Styles" drop list on the text property bar. (You can also
create a style quickly by using QuickStyle. See WordPerfect's
online Help [the <F1> key] or click here.)
Some "WordPerfectionists" never
use styles, preferring to control formatting in the text itself,
where all format codes are clearly visible in Reveal Codes. [See
Footnote 1.] Since WordPerfect is a "stream
oriented" program, where codes take effect until discontinued,
replaced, or removed by another code, this makes some sense.
You can see (in Reveal Codes) just what is happening with formatting
by looking for various On and Off codes for a particular format
to verify where a style begins and ends, or to check problems
with overlapping or competing codes.
Styles, however, are special codes that act
like containers: They usually hold several formatting codes,
but they can even hold text (but see Footnote 2),
graphical items, tables, watermarks, and other styles ("nested"
styles). Moreover, the items inside a style code are relatively
immune from global operations (such as Find and Replace) and
casual user editing.
Styles are easy to create,
edit, or import
from other documents. They are very easy to apply to text in
your document, and may be suited for a variety of tasks. They
can give a consistent look to the document, and they have
the big advantage of being globally changed simply by editing
any single instance of a particular style in a document.
(This requires that a checkbox, "Automatically update style
when changed in document," be enabled in the Styles Editor
for that style. Of course, if you share the document with others,
let them know about this setting or they might be surprised to
see global changes when none were expected!)
Types of styles
There are three general types of WordPerfect
text styles:
- Character -- generally these are applied to selected
text (i.e., text you first select with mouse or keyboard), and
are usually limited to applying a different font or combination
of font attributes (bold, underline, color, etc.). They will
override any Paragraph styles that might be applied at the current
cursor location.
- Paragraph -- these affect entire paragraphs (up to the point
where you press <Enter>); typically, you use them for headings,
titles, outlines, etc. They will override the DocumentStyle settings
or other formatting.
- Because short text phrases are often used
as headings or section titles, WordPerfect comes with several
standard Paragraph styles (Heading 1 through Heading
5), available from the drop list on the Text property
bar. They are also set up ("marked")
to be included in a Table of Contents.
- Document (a/k/a/ "Open") -- applies to all text
in a document from the cursor location forward until another
style is encountered (if any).
- The initial style at the very top of a document
([Open Style: DocumentStyle]) is a Document style;
it sets up initial formatting for the document, and this style
can be edited by double clicking its code in Reveal Codes.
Note that the variety of style in effect in
a document -- Character, Paragraph, or Document -- should be
visible on the code itself in Reveal Codes. Just pass your cursor
over the code.
It is also important to note that the first
two style types -- Character and Paragraph -- are paired-code
styles. If you delete one of the pair, you will delete both
codes. However, Document styles are produced by a single
code that remains in effect until replaced by another
style.
Even some things we tend to think of in WordPerfect
as separate features are in fact a type of style: Headers, footers,
footnotes, endnotes, watermarks, comments, outlines, etc. --
all are built-in styles!
Tips
- You can quickly edit (i.e., change) a style
in the current document by double-clicking the [Style] code in
Reveal Codes. The Styles Editor that appears has a menu and toolbar
which you can use to add format codes to the Contents pane in
the Styles Editor. The changes made this way will be stored in
the current document. The information here
on creating a style should help you with editing
a style.
- If you click Format, Style, then select a
custom style, then click Options, Delete ... you can choose
to "Leave formatting codes in document." This is an
easy way to convert a custom style into normal formatting codes.
(You can't do this with standard "shipping" styles.)
N.B.: If you have duplicate style names in the list, you should
delete the style stored in the current document, not the template.
(The location -- current document or template -- of each style
is shown on the right side of the Styles dialog.)
- Here's a three-line macro that will do the
job. Be sure to change "MyCustomStyle" below to the
name of your actual custom style (but retain the quote marks).
Note that the code redirects the macro to a Label() if the style
does not exist. (To copy macro code here into WordPerfect, see
CopyCode.html.)
- OnError(End@)
StyleDelete (Style: "MyCustomStyle"; Codes: LeavingCodes!;
Library: CurrentDoc!)
Label(End@)
- For more on creating, modifying, and saving
styles see here.
- By default, customized styles are saved with
the current document, but you can also save them to your default
template or other template so that they will available for
all new documents based on those templates. You can also copy
styles from one document to another. See here.
- See "Creating or modifying outline styles." WordPerfect outlines are a form of Paragraph
style.
- Other references:
- A good, basic introduction to styles can
be found in Laura Acklen's Absolute Beginner's Guide to WordPerfect
12 (or other version), which is inexpensive and can be found
on Amazon.com or other bookseller.
- A more comprehensive guide is Laura Acklen
and Read Gilgen's Special Edition: Using WordPerfect 12 (or
other version).
- Both books are published by QUE. See the
direct links on this site's Home
page.
- See the example below, which shows how to
create a custom style.
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Example: Creating a custom Paragraph style to automatically
convert selected text to UPPER case (see
also Footnote 3)
To give you a taste of how easy it is to create
a custom style, let's suppose you want to create a style that
turns all selected text into UPPER CASE (a/k/a/ capital
letters) because WordPerfect has no direct way to do this except
by selecting some text and clicking Edit>Convert Case>UPPERCASE.
You simply create a style that uses both Small
Caps and Large size. Then you can apply this custom style to
text that is all lower case. This should give you something similar
to all upper case for most fonts and typical sizes.
- Click Format, Styles, Create.
- In the "Style name:" field, give
the style a name.
- Add a description if desired in the next
field.
- In the "Enter key inserts style:"
field, select <None>.
- Note: This
field lets you choose another style to become active when the
Enter key is pressed; here, you most likely want normal body
text to become active, so <None> will default to
your body text style. If you select <Same Style>,
WordPerfect will continue applying the same style to the next
paragraphs -- that is, the text following a press of the Enter
key -- until you deliberately choose another style from the Select
Style list on the Text property bar (or from Format, Styles).
- In the "Type:" field, select Paragraph
for headings and other single paragraph types of text, or select
Character if you want to apply the style to a word or a few phrases
(then, after applying the style, press the right arrow key to
skip past the "ending" style code and resume typing
normal text). If you select Document (open), the style will be
used until you deliberately select another style or choose until
you choose <None> from the Select Style list.
- In WordPerfect 9 and later, check the box,
"Automatically update style..." if you want all instances
of the style in the document to change if you change any single
instance of the style's formatting. (Most people probably want
this to happen.) In WordPerfect 8 and earlier, you will not see
this checkbox; rather, use the "paired-auto" version
of the style in the Type field.
- Put the cursor in the "Contents:"
field. This is where the actual style's formatting codes (and
any text characters) are stored. (See also "Tricking WordPerfect"
in the next Tips section below.)
- From the Styles Editor menu at the top of
the dialog, click Format, Font, and check the Small caps box;
then click the Relative size button and choose Large. This inserts
two format codes in the Contents field.
- Note the "Show
'off codes'" checkbox: If you enable it you will see a long,
"placeholder" code appear" [Codes to the left
are ON - Codes to the right are OFF]. This code can be selected
(it's easier to use <Shift> plus an arrow key) and a paired
format code applied to the code itself, such as relative
size codes, italic codes, etc. This tells WordPerfect to apply
the format to everything in the paragraph, then discontinue it
(turn it off) immediately following the end of the paragraph.
For a good example of this, see "Mark
a custom style for inclusion in a Table of Contents.
- Click OK twice to return to the document.
The new style will appear in the Select Style list on the text
property bar.
Apply the new paragraph style to some selected
text. If you created a Character style, you can apply it and
start typing in lower case (when finished, press the right arrow
key once to skip past the style code), or type the text and then
apply the Character style.
In Reveal Codes, you can double-click the
style code to edit the style.
You can add this custom style to your default
template or any other document. See
here for more on saving, importing, or removing custom styles. |
Tricking
WordPerfect
- Some things cannot be inserted in the Styles
Editor's Contents pane from the Styles Editor's menu or toolbar.
However, you can create them in the document itself and
then copy them from the document into the Contents pane. For
example, if you want to delay margin settings (or other formatting)
to the second and subsequent pages, you can use a [Delay] code
on the first page, then copy that code into the initial Document
Style, where it will be hidden from view and less likely to be
accidentally deleted. See here
for instructions.
- Some custom style formats are difficult to
create just by using WordPerfect's QuickStyle (Format, Styles,
QuickStyle). For example, setting up a custom paragraph
style (see basic steps in the preceding section) that makes all
text in the paragraph (or selected paragraphs) relatively smaller
(or larger) will probably require you to edit the custom paragraph
style (Format, Styles, <style name>, Edit) and add the
paired codes for relative size around the built-in
single "placeholder" code you will see when you enable
the box "Show 'off codes'" in the Styles Editor. (This
single code shows up as "Codes to the left are ON - Codes
to the right are OFF" in the Styles Editor's Contents field.)
In the current
example, you would select this single "Codes to the left
..." code (with <Shift+right arrow>) in the Contents
field and then click Format, Font, Relative size, and choose
a relative size to apply. The "Codes to the left..."
code will then be bracketed by the paired relative size codes
-- which in effect means that the paragraph (or selected paragraphs)
will be sized smaller (or larger) when the style is applied to
paragraphs.
For
another example of this technique, see Mark
a custom style for automatic inclusion in a Table of Contents,
which brackets this code with paired Table of Contents codes.
Note that
you can select and bracket the "Codes to the left ..."
code with any paired formatting codes using the Styles
Editor's own Format menu, such as italics or a new font. You
can also add an Indent or Tab code at the beginning of the string
of codes.
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Advanced example: Creating a style using a macro
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Here is a Character style (i.e., one that
applies formatting from the current cursor location onward) that
a user requested on WordPerfect Universe. It can be used to deploy
a custom style on multiple machines, or just apply a custom style
when needed by assigning it to a
toolbar, menu, or keystroke. (To copy macro code here into WordPerfect,
see CopyCode.html.)
Notes
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Since WordPerfect 9 was released, you cannot
record a style, you have to code it manually. I cheated: I used
WP8 to record things and then edited the results.
The macro code below creates a style -- named
here "SampleStyle" -- that applies Arial Black 10-point
font, underlining, and red coloring to all text following the
cursor location. It also creates the style in the current document
only. You will want to change these parameters in your own macro.
The items to change are indicated in dark red.
If you want the user to see what's going on
in the document, you can force Reveal Codes "on" by
using the RevealCodes(On!) command just above the rest of the
commands below.
Macro writers can insert a style into a document's
(or template's) initial style with a macro. See here
for an example.
(To copy macro code here into WordPerfect,
see CopyCode.html.) |
// All commands should be on their own lines:
StyleCreate (Name: "SampleStyle"; Type: AutoCharacterStyle!;
Library: CurrentDoc!)
StyleEditBegin (Style: "SampleStyle"; Library: CurrentDoc!)
StyleDescription (Description: "Sample character style")
StyleCodes (State: WithOffCodes!; Library: CurrentDoc!)
StyleEnterKeySetting (Action: StyleOff!)
Font ("Arial Black
Regular")
FontSize (10p)
AttributeAppearanceToggle
(Attrib: Underline!)
TextColor (Red: 255; Green: 0; Blue: 0)
SubstructureExit ()
StyleEditEnd (State: Save!)
// If you want to immediately apply the style
(otherwise delete the next line):
StyleOn ("SampleStyle") |
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Footnote 1:
One of the big advantages of WordPerfect compared
to Microsoft Word is that you don't need styles in WordPerfect.
As Seth Katz said in a post on WordPerfect Universe:
"... It's fine to depend on styles when
you yourself created them and know their details. Another person
may not, and that person will either have to spend time excavating
the document to determine the formatting of each style, or will
give up and use direct formatting. If you're a mechanic you could
rearrange all the controls and instruments in a car and on the
dashboard to make them more efficient; don't expect anyone else
to be able to get in and just start driving. Since WordPerfect
[unlike Microsoft Word] doesn't depend on styles you can just
apply the formatting [in WordPerfect, these are controlled by
in-line codes] as the program is designed to do out of the box,
and the next person will do the same. ..."
Some Word users might say that WordPerfect
codes are a drawback, that they proliferate in a document in
a confusing manner. Seth continues:
"The proliferation of codes in WordPerfect
is a *FEATURE*, not a bug. Each code is discrete, controlling
just one aspect of formatting. Word ... aggregates its formatting
because it's part of the object. You can't copy, move or delete
just one part of the formatting; it's all or nothing. These discrete
codes are why you can search for formatting *CHANGES* in WordPerfect
[e.g., with Find and Replace], unlike Word. ...
Actually codes in WordPerfect really don't
proliferate, because they don't have to. The stream-based architecture
means one code controls that format aspect for all downstream
text until superseded by another code. Contrast that with Word,
where every character, paragraph and section contains formatting.
The flush-right discussion [about how to create
a small bit of text that is flush with the right margin, or mixing text justification on the same
line] points out many of Word's shortcomings. Yes, you can do
flush-right in Word, but that's not the point. If you had to
you could type your document on a typewriter. The point is how
easy, fast and convenient it is to do it. In Word, you have to
customize to do it by either manually setting a tab stop or including
that tab setting in a style. Later, you will not easily be able
to tell which method was used. If you include it in a style,
you get all the other formatting included in the style, whether
you want that or not. You do not know whether it's available
unless you look at the ruler or know ahead of time that it's
there. If for some reason you don't want it, you have to change
the tab setting or revise the style. If you revise the style,
that revision takes effect for every other paragraph formatted
with that style, whether you want that or not. And it's available
only for that particular paragraph or when using that particular
style.
One last thing: If reveal codes is so bad,
why has Microsoft done everything it can to emulate it?"
Footnote
2:
Starting with WordPerfect 10, Corel included
Text Variables (Insert, Variable), a form of WordPerfect
style that lets you place the same text in multiple document
locations. You can include text in any style by editing the style
and including text characters along with the style's format codes.
However, if you want to convert documents that contain such complex
styles to Microsoft Word, you should be aware that, since Word
has no comparable feature, the text in the style will be lost
after the conversion to Word. Similarly, tabs (but apparently
not tab settings) inside WordPerfect styles might be lost,
too.
Footnote
3:
You can, of course, convert selected text's
case with a macro.
For example, here's a macro that will convert
the current sentence to all UPPER-case. (To convert just
the current word, replace the parameter in the SelectOn
command with WordMode!. You can also add other commands immediately
after the ConvertCaseUppercase command, such as AttributeRelativeSizeToggle
(Size:Small!).)
The first segment of the macro takes into
account the possibility that something greater than a sentence
might already be selected, such as the current paragraph. In
that case, the macro will position the cursor at the beginning
of the selected text before processing the text.
To copy macro code here into WordPerfect,
see CopyCode.html.
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// Convert the current sentence to upper case.wcm
// To convert just the current word,
replace the parameter in
// the SelectOn() command
with WordMode!
OnError(End@)
If(?BlockActive)
PosSelectTop
SelectOff
Endif
SelectOn (SentenceMode!)
PosSelectBottom
ConvertCaseUppercase
SelectOff
Label(End@) |
And here's a macro that converts the currently
selectred sentence to all lower-case, taking into account
the possibility that the first letter of the sentence bight be
automatically capitalized by WordPerfect's QuickCorrect Format-As-You-Go
feature. Moreover, it takes into account the possibility that
(1) something greater than a sentence might already be selected,
such as the current paragraph; and (2) the sentence begins with
a format code or non-alpha (i.e., not an A-Z or a-z) character.
(To copy macro code here into WordPerfect, see CopyCode.html.)
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// Convert the current sentence to lower case.wcm
OnError(End@)
// Position the cursor at the top of the selection
-
If(?BlockActive)
PosSelectTop
Else
SelectOn (SentenceMode!)
PosSelectTop
Endif
SelectOff
// Move past codes and non-letters until an
upper or
// lower alpha text character is reached -
While (?RightCode>0 or
((not(CtoN(?RightChar)>64 and CtoN(?RightChar)<91))
and
(not(CtoN(?RightChar)>96 and CtoN(?RightChar)<123))))
PosCharNext
EndWhile
// Convert the first alpha character to lower-case
-
SelectCharNext
vSel:=ToLower(?SelectedText)
Type(vSel)
PosCharPrevious
// Convert the rest of the sentence -
SelectOn (SentenceMode!)
ConvertCaseLowercase ()
SelectOff
Label(End@) |
You could add code immediately after the ConvertCaseLowercase
command to change the selected text to all caps, etc. See the
ConvertCase and AttributeAppearanceToggle commands. |
Barry MacDonnell's