Reply To: Does ID store date/time of last redefinition of styles and can it compare?

On the subject of book styles or whatever they should be called (which idea, if no plugin exist for it yet, I'd be happy to sell for a reasonably exorbitant rate!), there could be a choice in the style definition dialog asking “Should this change affect all files in the book or only this file?” OR, there could be a list of the book's files and the option to put a check mark by the ones that should share the change to the style. OR, as I said in the first post, above, groups of files within a book could be designated as style groups, which all share a set of styles and whenever a style is changed in one file the same change happens to the rest of the files in the group (perhaps with the question I mentioned.

And as long as I'm designing my wish-fulfilling plugin or feature set, let me add that master pages, swatches and every kind of style (character, paragraph, object, cell, etc.) could also be included in this.

Another benefit to having styles and such housed in some sort of master list outside the files was revealed to my annoyed self today when I had to go through a bunch of files and delete dozens of swatches and a few defunct styles from each one. Couldn't just select all unused and delete them, because there were many that weren't in use but might be used. And of course the swatches weren't named anything intelligible. It was a pain. If there was just one list that applied to all the files in the book, it would have taken less time and been less annoying.

I should stop daydreaming and get back to work on the book in question. Or quickly learn how to write plugins, create this one, and then have dinner.