Nisus Writer Express - Manual (Page 101)

Creating Documents Formatting Documents 81
Formatting Documents using Style Sheets
An introduction to Style Sheets
Nisus Writer Express 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 Express 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 Express or created by you, the individual user) which appear in the Style Sheet view of Nisus
Writer Express, 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 Express 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.
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 102.
In addition, you can create any number of unique named template files with different Style Sheets in
them, each one for a different purpose.
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.