Nisus Writer Pro - Manual (Page 115)

Creating Documents 95
Formatting Documents Using Style Sheets
An introduction to Style Sheets
Nisus Writer Pro has multiple ways of handling the various possible combinations of fonts, sizes,
colors and paragraph formats, languages and other character attributes. While the vast majority of
word processors allow you to define styles that apply to entire paragraphs, in Nisus Writer Pro you
can also apply a collection of attributes to a single character. This offers you much greater control
over the final look of your document as well as the manner in which you can modify it. A Style
Sheet is a collection of styles associated with your document. Each style can consist of a variety of
attributes and be as precise as you want, so as to define the!font, size, underline attributes, color,
spacing, line wrap, tab!locations, and language. Or, a style can consist of as little as one attribute.
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Please note we use the word “style” to refer to the user defined styles (whether shipped with Nisus
Writer Pro or created by you, the individual user) which appear in the Style Sheet view of Nisus Writer
Pro, in the Character Style and Paragraph Style submenus of the Format menu and in the Styles
palette. We use the word “attributes” to refer to those other means of altering the appearance of your
characters which you choose directly from the Format menu and apply individually.
Style Sheets can provide a variety of functionalities:
• Styles can help you to automatically format document content including text and rulers, with a
single click or keystroke using sets of predefined formats you, the user define.
• Styles can help you to automatically re-format your document as you the user change any style
definitions.
• Styles enable you to store that formatting in a way that can be reused in other documents.
Nisus Writer Pro comes with a Nisus New File that includes a number of predefined styles. These
appear in the Styles palette as well as in the Character Style and Paragraph Style submenus of the
Format menu, and in the Style Sheet view of your untitled document.
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You can modify these styles, or add more styles which meet your writing needs. Any attributes you
can apply to text using the Format menu and its submenus you can use to create a paragraph style,
while those that do not affect entire paragraphs you can use to create a character style. In addition a
number of the tools in various palettes are also available.
In order to have these styles available to you at any time, each time you open a “New” (Untitled) file
you need to add them to your Nisus New File. Instructions on how to modify your!Nisus New File are
explained in “Create a Nisus New File” on page 123.
In addition, you can create any number of unique named template files with different Style Sheets in
them, each one for a different purpose. You can learn more about the Nisus New File and other
template documents in the section “Understanding Template (Stationery) Documents” beginning on
page 115
As an alternative, you can manage your styles using the Style Library of the Document Manager. The
Document Manager is explained in detail in the section “Managing… Saving and Opening Your Files”
beginning on page 53. The Style Library is explained in detail in the section “Maintain a Style Library”
beginning on page 107.
Working with styles makes it easy for you to experiment with the appearance of your document.
Changing a style only affects the attributes that are specifically linked to that style. Once you
change a style, all text of that style in the document changes to match the modifications.