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• • February 16, 2014 at 11:39 am #67205
    Allen Cobb

    Member

    I have several carefully tweaked char styles which have specified a font. I need to preserve all the settings, but remove the font specification so they will work in other documents.

    So far, the only way I’ve found to do this is to take a screen capture of the style settings summary, click Reset to Base, and then manually reinstate all the settings (except font).

    Does anyone know of a more efficient way to do this?

    Thanks,

    Allen

  • February 16, 2014 at 2:45 pm #67206
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    All you have to do is go to that character style, highlight the font itself and hit “delete.”Then close it and reopen and the font field will be blank.

    Any attributes will remain.

    Now the character style sheet will pick up the font of the paragraph style sheet.

    I’m in book publishing and many books require different fonts. So my character style for italic just says “italic,” and nothing else. That way I can use it for multiple fonts or for my templates.

    If I receive a file with character styles, I normally take out the font family (unless it’s required) and things such as leading (since that’s in the paragraph style).

  • February 16, 2014 at 6:02 pm #67211
    Allen Cobb

    Member

    Thanks for the tip, but that doesn’t work on my system (latest CC on Win8.1/64). When I “delete” the current font family name, it reverts to the first name in the list. From that point on, the character style forces the font to that one, rather than leaving it alone.

    I, too, use character styles for italic (which I call “emphasis” for web-related reasons). But I’m unable to take out the font family in a character style if one has ever been assigned — all I can do is change it to a different one, which of course isn’t what we want.

    Allen

  • February 18, 2014 at 5:52 am #67229
    Masood Ahmad

    Participant

    Try auto selecting the font name by clicking on the “Font Family:” and then using the Backspace key to delete the font from the list.

    If you use the Del key to delete the font name, then it will revert to the first name in the list.

    • February 18, 2014 at 3:47 pm #67244
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      You’re right about that, Masood. I’m on a Mac, and the backspace key is actually labeled “delete,” so I’m used to calling it that.

    • February 27, 2014 at 10:44 am #67359
      Allen Cobb

      Member

      Hmmm. I replied to this right after Masood’s post, but it got lost. Anyway:

      Thanks, Masood. You’re absolutely right. On Wintel, the backspace resets the field to BLANK (i.e., “don’t care”), while the delete key just jumps the field to whatever happens to be the first font in the list. This behavior is almost certainly a bug.

      In every other UI I’ve used, removing all the content of a field, by whatever means, produces the same result, so I never even considered trying the backspace. I’ll bear this bit of weirdness in mind elsewhere in InDesign.

      Thanks again,

      Allen

  • August 25, 2016 at 4:37 pm #87830
    Allen Cobb

    Member

    This problem is back in a slightly different place. I’m now in a similar situation — child and grand-child styles based on a “master” style, and some of them have had their point size explicitly set. There seems to be no way to revert point size (and probably various other settings) to the default or “don’t care” state. I’ve tried BACKSPACE and DELETE, and both of them leave a blank field, which just makes the style input handler yell at me for entering an invalid value. I’ve even tried entering a space or a zero.

    There really should be a “revert to default” command of some kind (cmd+Del? right-click field caption?) to use in ANY field so that the field is no longer over-riding the parent style.

    Thanks in advance,

    Allen

  • August 26, 2016 at 5:29 am #87835
    Jake Overton

    Member

    Allen,

    I tried to duplicate your issue with the child and grandchild styles. Though I have seen this behavior in some dialog boxes, I cannot seem to duplicate your problem when I create new styles based on existing ones, regardless of which parent has a point size set explicitly.

    Have you tried to duplicate one of the “families” of styles from scratch using the “duplicate style” option in the flyout menu?

    Also, just to be sure, try something more global like saving the file as a new name, or even an idml file, and reloading it. You can also create a text box with one of the grandchild styles applied, open a new document, copy and paste that text frame to the new file. Save the new file as either a snippet or indd file. Close the open files, and perhaps even InDesign just to free up memory, then create a new file. Place the snippet file (or indd). You don’t even have to actually place it, just get it in the placement gun and press escape. Check your styles. The active style should be there along with any parents. See if that solves your issue.

  • August 26, 2016 at 7:25 am #87836
    Allen Cobb

    Member

    Thanks for your reply, Jake. Either I didn’t describe my issue clearly, or I’m not quite following your suggestions.

    Assume that I have, say, a Para Style called “Body” and a child style called “Body First”. They differ only in that Body First has no first line indent. The point size in Body First is not set, so it follows any changes I make in Body.

    Then a gremlin explicitly sets the point size in Body First to 24 points. Now if I change the point size in Body, it is no longer inherited by Body First.

    What I need to do is “delete” the explicit point size in Body First so it again inherits Point Size from its parent, Body.

    The earlier part of this thread revealed that you can clear an explicit font family setting (an over-ride of the parent setting, in effect) by using BACKSPACE to delete the local setting (in Body First) — but deleting the setting by other means doesn’t remove the setting. I’m hoping that there is some similar secret way of deleting an explicit Point Size — or any other setting in a child style — so it will revert to being inherited from the parent.

    From your reply, it sounds like you may have been able to do this, but I wasn’t clear as to the exact steps. I’ve tried everything, but the only recourse I can find is to completely recreate the child style anew, leaving out the Point Size value. In the case of numerous or complex styles, this is a substantial inconvenience.

    Thanks again,

    Allen

  • August 27, 2016 at 12:11 pm #87871
    Jake Overton

    Member

    Allen,

    I did recreate your problem and I see what you are talking about. However, in testing, all you need to do is set the point size for Body Indent to exactly what the Body style is (you may need to also set the leading and other font attributes as well). This then re-links Body Indent’s font size to that of Body.

    I agree, there ought to be a way to reset individual fields (or at least only those on the displayed tab) back to the base style, sort of like the Reset to Base button in the General tab. This button is global and resets all parameters to the base style. As it is, it is very confusing that some fields you can press Backspace to reset, others you have to know the base value to reset them.

    Jake

  • August 27, 2016 at 12:50 pm #87872
    Allen Cobb

    Member

    Hi Jake,

    Thanks for looking further into this. I hadn’t noticed that MATCHING the child to the parent would re-link those fields. I wonder if that’s consistent throughout . . . No matter. Until they provide an explicit “ignore” value for all settings (e.g., blank a setting with Backspace or Delete), I’ve learned to be especially careful with hierarchical style sets. Fortunately, most clients sharing ID files with me have also learned not to be messing with the styles at all, upon pain of dire retribution.

    I’ll file a Feature Request.

    Allen

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