{S:X;X;0;0;Removing Styles{ITR-X}by Gerald L Fitton}
{S:X;X;0;1;Keywords:{ITT-X}Style Region Fitton}
{S:X;X;0;2;Introduction{ITR-X}{ITR-X}The first article in this series (to be found in a directory called Style01 on the ZL9303 disc) has received an enthusiastic welcome from many of our readers. In that article I demonstrated a few of the basics of styles with the emphasis on the way in which they are applied. Since then I have received many requests for help in dealing with \‘unwanted\’ styles that refuse to go away! By the way, thank you to those of you who sent me a disc file with an example. I find it much easier to help people who send me such a disc file because then I can investigate the file (for example by using !Edit as well as !Wordz) to find out exactly what the ZLine subscriber has done.}
{S:X;X;0;3;In this article I am going to deal with some of the problems which arise when you try to remove styles but, more importantly, I want to make a start on helping you to develop a philosophy for using styles which will greatly reduce the incidence of problems which can be resolved only by the removal of unwanted styles from those parts of your document that it shouldn\’t have reached!}
{S:X;X;0;4;Making Comparisons{ITR-X}{ITR-X}I have been mildly chastised for making comparisons between Wordz and PipeDream. The criticism is valid because there are many of you who do not have PipeDream and have no idea what I\’m talking about! I shall take my opportunity to explain why I think such comparisons can be useful to some and what I believe to be a fair compromise for the inclusion of such comparisons in ZLine articles.}
{S:X;X;0;5;If you get used to the way in which a package such as PipeDream works then you become familiar with various sequences of key presses and you develop a strategy for doing those things you do most. If Wordz doesn\’t do the same things in the same way then it slows you down and you feel aggrieved. It\’s happened to me. Two of my correspondents have taken this attitude to the extreme of \“Wordz doesn\’t work like . . . . . and I like the way . . . . . works. Therefore Wordz is no good!\”. However, I think that these two correspondents are the exception because most of my correspondents accept that there has to be a process in which familiar strategies have to be unlearned before progress can be made with any new package.}
{S:X;X;0;6;As a teacher I have found that the best way of helping such people to unlearn the old package is to make comparisons between that package and the new package they wish to learn. In a tutorial article like this, which has to cater for people with a wide range of \‘prior knowledge\’, some compromise is necessary. My strategy is this: I shall continue to make comparisons where they may help people unlearn but I hope that, even with the comparisons taken out, the text will stand on its own for those who don\’t have knowledge of the package with which I am comparing Wordz.}
{S:X;X;0;7;In what follows I shall compare Wordz with Impression.}
{S:X;X;0;8;Applying Styles{ITR-X}{ITR-X}Applying styles in Wordz may require different key presses and mouse clicks from Impression but the same principles apply to both packages. You mark an area of the document and then apply the style. The style which you apply overlays all styles previously applied to that area. If there is a conflict then the most recently applied style is used.}
{S:X;X;0;9;Let me give you an example to which, almost certainly, you would apply the same philosophy in Wordz as you would in Impression. Load the document [TestDoc01]. Investigate it by clicking on the S in the button bar and you will see that there are two styles (plus the ubiquitous ZLHeadFoot style which is not used). The first style I have called ZLBase and the second is called ZLRight\\\; the second style has a slightly different left margin so that text to which that style is applied is offset slightly to the right. Looking at [TestDoc01] on screen you will see that it consists of five lines of text typed in ZLBase style. Although the ultimate objective is to produce the layout of document [TestDoc02], you must suppose that when I start I don\’t know that that is the layout I want.}
{S:X;X;0;10;I start by marking lines two, three and four and apply the ZLRight style to those three lines. i then obtain the layout of [TestDoc03]. Only then do I discover that what I really want is the layout of [TestDoc02]! In Impression I would mark line three and remove the Right style from that marked block. In Wordz, after marking line three, I might apply the ZLBase style to just that third line and I would produce [TestDoc04]. Load [TestDoc04] and have a look at it. Although there is no difference on screen between the file [TestDoc02] and [TestDoc04], nor is there any difference when you print it out, there is a difference in the structure of the two documents. The document [TestDoc04] has the more complex structure and is the one which gives rise to the unwanted style problems of my correspondents.}
{S:X;X;0;11;In Wordz the \‘Region\’ containing the ZLRight style remains intact (the three middle lines) but line three has been overlaid with the Base style. This is different from the way Impression works. In Impression the \‘Region\’ containing the ZLRight style (lines two, three and four created in [TestDoc03]) would have been split into three separate regions (the three middle lines) by the complete removal of the ZLRight style from line three. Wordz can not \‘split\’ \‘Regions\’ in this way. As an aside let me say that I have pointed this out to Colton Software and they assure me that there are good reasons for keeping \‘Regions\’ together in this way and that it may be my familiarity with Impression which is causing my bias towards wanting to be able to split a Wordz \‘Region\’.}
{S:X;X;0;12;To continue. Load the file [TestDoc04] and place the cursor in line three. Don't be tempted to mark any block. Hold down <Ctrl> and tap R (I shall call this process <Ctrl R> in future). You will find that the third line is marked as a 'Region' automatically by Wordz in inverse video and, near the top left of the window, the Status line reads "Region: Style ZLBase". You will also see a sub menu called Region. Click once on 'In' and you will notice that the \‘Region\’ marked in inverse video consists of the three lines to which we applied the ZLRight style and the status line reads \“Region: Style ZLRight\”. Click once more on 'In' and you will find that the whole of the text is marked as a region in the style ZLBase. You are 'In' as far as you can go because the 'In' is 'greyed out'!}
{S:X;X;0;13;I hope that the exercise of the previous paragraph gives you an insight into how Wordz handles styles by overlaying one style over another. The most important point for you to realise is that line three \‘contains\’ three styles and not one. The three styles in line three, from the innermost outwards, are the ZLBase style, the ZLRight style and the outermost style is a second application of the ZLBase style over the ZLRight style.}
{S:X;X;0;14;A good analogy is to think of the styles as layers of paint. First the ZLBase style is washed over all the document, then the ZLRight style is painted over the middle three lines. Finally another coat of the ZLBase style is painted over the third (middle) line. I must emphasis that, in the last operation (changing [TestDoc03] into [TestDoc04]) ZLRight is not scraped off the middle line but painted over with an overcoat of ZLBase! Continuing the analogy, if you analysed a similar Impression document produced by a reasonably proficient user you would find that the \‘paint\’ had been scraped away from the middle line by Deleting the ZLRight style and so revealing the ZLBase style underneath.}
{S:X;X;0;15;Removing Styles{ITR-X}{ITR-X}So, how do you remove styles in Wordz? Well, you can only remove a style from the whole of a \‘Region\’, never from part of one (as in Impression), because, in Wordz, \‘Regions\’ can not be 'split'. What you can do from [TestDoc04] is to execute <Ctrl R> followed by clicking on \‘In\’ and then \‘Remove\’ to remove the ZLRight style from the middle three lines. If you do that then you will find that, although the ZLRight style is nowhere in the document, the ZLBase style has been applied twice to line three. You'll see that 'In' is not 'greyed out'. Click on 'In' and \‘Out\’ to convince yourself.}
{S:X;X;0;16;By the way, there\’s something you should be careful of. If you execute <Ctrl R> when the Regions menu is showing on the screen then the command Remove will be executed. In some cases it takes Wordz a little while to show the region in inverse video. You might become a little impatient and think that <Ctrl R> hadn\’t done its stuff the first time and so execute <Ctrl R> twice. If you catch it just right (or wrong as the case may be) you will find that you have inadvertently removed a style! If you keep executing <Ctrl R> then you will eventually remove all styles (and effects) except the Base style from regions which include your cursor! Is this a handy tip or a warning?}
{S:X;X;0;17;To stretch my painting analogy beyond practicality, you can not remove parts of a layer of paint but only the whole of the layer or nothing. When you clicked on \‘Remove\’ (in the previous paragraph) you gently 'lifted' the painted ZLBase style on line three, scraped away the middle layer of ZLRight style, and then 'dropped' the outer layer of ZLBase style back over the ZLBase undercoat!}
{S:X;X;0;18;Wordz has an interesting trick which even those of you to whom all the above is \‘obvious\’ (or at least something which you have practical experience) might not have noticed. If you Save the modified document as, say, [TestDoc05], delete it from the screen and reload [TestDoc05] you will find that the \‘isolated\’ ZLBase style of the third line has been \‘absorbed\’ into the original ZLBase and is no longer a separate \‘Region\’! I have not studied this process in any detail (eg for \‘regions\’ to which something other than the ZLBase style has been applied) but, if you have, then let me know what happens.}
{S:X;X;0;19;In Pursuit of a Strategy for Styles{ITR-X}{ITR-X}Anyway, what do I recommend? Firstly, plan your document to use Styles rather than Effects.}
{S:X;X;0;20;Secondly, it is better to split a large \‘Region\’ into three rather than (lazily) overlay another style into the middle of the \‘Region\’. Yes! I realise that that means having to Remove a style from a large \‘Region\’ and then applying it piecemeal to the parts where you want it. Be ruthless about Removing styles. In my tutorial example it would have been better to apply the ZLRight style separately to lines two and four (two \‘Regions\’ as I have in [TestDoc02]) rather than apply it as one \‘Region\’ to lines two, three and four and be forced into making corrections such as a second application of the ZLBase style to line three.}
{S:X;X;0;21;You may think that the example I have given is trivial and that I'm making too much of the problem. I agree that in my example either method could be used efficiently but I\’d like you to realise that overlaying styles in order to \‘correct\’ a mistake is not the best course of action in more complicated documents having many styles. Something else which I want to stress\\\; bear in mind that everything that I have said about Styles applies to Effects on small overlapping \‘Regions\’. You must be even more ruthless about Removing Effects than you are about Removing Styles! Let me give you an example. This is by no means the \‘worst\’ one I have received but it is one which is easier to explain than many others. I received a disc file in Wordz format and I think my correspondent had been trying every font he had! Every new font had been painted over the previous font using a new Effect without using <Ctrl R> to remove the old Effect (an unwanted font). The correspondent had also applied right and left justify Effects over the top of each other a multitude of times. Add to this complex structure the fact that some of the (Effect) \‘Regions\’ included a <Return> and others included a line break, <Ctrl Return> so that what looked like separate paragraphs weren\’t. After this tutorial I hope that you will now understand why, when inserting new text in the middle of such a document (or even a paragraph or a <Ctrl Return> in an address), it sometimes appeared in a totally different font or with a completely different alignment or line spacing from that expected. My correspondent was so completely astonished that he was quite sure that an unknown virus had corrupted either Wordz, his font manager or screen driver or all three!}
{S:X;X;0;22;Here is part of a letter which I mail merged and sent to several of my correspondents:}
{S:X;X;0;23;\“The problem you have is a common one and, at the most fundamental level, it is due to the fact that you have many layers of styles and effects \‘overlaying\’ each other. The address at the the end of your letter, indeed the whole of your letter, has a layer of style called LetterHead (which is right justi\fied) applied to it. When you do something which removes the top layer (style or effect) of the \final address (in your case this is a Justify left Effect) then the next layer (style or effect) is exposed (in your case it is the LetterHead style which is right justi\fied) pushing your text over to the right. The \‘correct\’ method of avoiding such problems is to ruthlessly remove styles that you don\’t want (the right justi\fied LetterHead is not required in the body text of your letter) by using the Regions feature of Wordz. Regions are accessed through <Ctrl R>. I have modi\fied some of your \files (removing some of the unwanted underlying styles from various Regions) and placed the modi\fied versions in the directory . . . . Try to recreate your problem by tapping <Return> in the \final address of the \file [ . . . . ] and you\’ll see your problem is \‘solved\’.\”}
{S:X;X;0;24;Finally{ITR-X}{ITR-X}If you still have difficulties with a layout involving styles or effects then send me a disc file containing an example and I\’ll see if I can help.}
