We wrote an XTension that does an option apply. It allows you to keep certain style sheet overrides while option applying the style sheet.

kerntiff.co.uk/produ...4-xpress/optionapply

Rich

Honestly be almost as nice just to be able to LOCK the styles to keep the editors paws off the type… Of course a new bundle of worms are created with that suggestion. Keep up the great InCopy tips!

Thread about scripts

http: //www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/
webx?128@@.3bc1cee8

Still, if it falls apart using Character Styles, it would have fallen apart using the keyboard shortcuts too. (With the exception of Helvetica … ID knows that applying Italic to Helvetia means you want Helvetica Oblique. There may be others.) I would recommend that the designers (not the editors using InCopy) create specific character styles for applying the correct bold/heavy etc. as appropriate to the typefaces used in the body text.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a script that would automatically convert local formatting to these sorts of Character Styles? I found this long thread that contains a number of them, if you don’t mind cutting/pasting text into a text file and saving it as a script:

Pariah one other thing. I was arguing (friendly argument) with a web design freelancer of mine that bold and italic were deprecated by the w3c long ago; replaced with strong and em. He didn’t believe me … sigh … but I could not for the life of me find the page on the w3c.org site that definitively said this. Do you have a URL?

thanks,

the inimitable and sagacious Anne-Marie ;-)

Usually I call my italic & bold character styles emphasis and strong respectively….It also makes [it] easier for those of us with one foot in the print world and the other on the web.

Clearly, I’m like you, one of those with a foot in each of the print publishing and Web publishing worlds. I have to say, though, I’ve never liked the EM (for emphasis) and STRONG tags, and I’ve been working in HTML since before they were introduced. Renaming Italics to Emphasis is to limit a 500 year old innovation only one of its uses in printed communications.

Italics, as I mentioned in my article, are used in written English to correctly set the name of self-contained titles like book, film, television show, play, magazine, and Website titles. They’re also used to identify certain types of proper names such as ship, boat, and other vessel names. There is no inherent emphasis in a book title or a ship’s name, so in XHTML, where every tag is part of a logical description of the content structure, why would you identify a a book title or a ship’s name has having EMphasis? We’re not allowed to use <I> for italics any longer, so if you want to type a book title but with no particular emphasis of voice, which tag should you use? Should you wrap it in a SPAN and give it a class named ProperTitle or NonEmphasisItalics? The W3C requires that all mentions of such titles or names be wrapped in EMphasis HTML tags—if one wishes to adhere to proper grammar, that is. Clearly, the W3C didn’t think through its decision to replace <I> with <EM>. The replacement of <B> with <STRONG> was similarly myopic.

I could go on at length about why EMphasis and STRONG are obviously ignorant and arrogant choices on the part of the learned members of the W3C, but in this publication, focussed on print applications, workflows, and professionals, such a conversation would be far out of place. Maybe we should continue it on Designorati sometime.

On another point, I strongly disagree that Adobe or Quark should provide default character styles.

I see your point, but I hope you can also see mine. The problem of common formatting like italics and bold being too easily erased with a quick ALT-click on the Paragraph Styles panel may be miniscule or enormous, depending on the individual creative and her work. I believe the software makers should provide some type of solution, and I offered two suggestions. Perhaps the best way is something I haven’t thought of. Regardless of the proffered ideas, the way the software works creates a problem that can and should be solved, by somebody, somehow, soon.

Adobe and Quark have not provided a solution yet, which makes more work for users. Granted, each time isn’t much work, but the act of highlighting text and assigning a character style—even with Quick Apply—is a significant distraction from the writing. Any time you have to break your concentration away from creating and styling content to think about the software, the software maker has failed to do its job.

Usually I call my italic & bold character styles emphasis and strong respectively. The main reason for doing it that way? What if you (or your boss/supervisor) decide later in the workflow that you want to emphasize passages of text by color and not font-style?

I know you could easily change the character style at that point but I just think it’s a good workflow habit, especially when working with lots of other folks. It also makes easier for those of us with one foot in the print world and the other on the web.

On another point, I strongly disagree that Adobe or Quark should provide default character styles. I hate the Basic Paragraph style enough as it is, plus if I want defaults character styles I can create when no documents are open.