Adding and removing styles from a document

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phspaelti
Posts: 1313
Joined: 2007-02-07 00:58:12
Location: Japan

Adding and removing styles from a document

Post by phspaelti »

Over in another thread Þorvarður asks whether it's possible to remove or add (from some file) styles via macro. The answer is of course yes. But since this is a technical discussion, I'm moving the answer over here.

Removing all styles from a document can be done like this.

Code: Select all

$doc = Document.active
foreach $style in $doc.allStyles
   $doc.removeStyle $style
end
But of course this is a bit like taking a sledgehammer to your document. If any styles are actually used, that formatting will vanish.

A more clever way is to remove only the styles not actually used:

Code: Select all

$doc = Document.active
foreach $style in $doc.allStyles
   If ! Find($style)
      $doc.removeStyle $style
   end
end
This still has one problem, if some of your used styles are based on others that are themselves not used, you might still lose formatting (and you'll change the styles).

So I attach a more elaborate macro here:
Remove Unused Styles.nwm
(7.41 KiB) Downloaded 965 times
The basic idea of the macro is to go through the styles 3 times:
  1. On the first pass, find all the used styles (as above), but don't remove them. Instead create a "flag" array (actually a hash) that marks whether a style is used or not
  2. On the second pass, check all styles to see whether they are (a) used, and (b) based on another. If yes, then follow the 'based-on' path to the end and mark all these styles as used
  3. On the third pass, eliminate all styles for which the used flag is set to @false
Now to adding styles from another file, for example, one of the files in the Style Library.

Code: Select all

$doc = Document.active
# Adjust path to point to the desired file
$styleFile = '~/Nisus Documents/Style Library/MyStyles.rtf'
File.requireAccessAtPath $styleFile
$styleDoc = Document.open $styleFile, @false
$doc.addStyles $styleDoc.allStyles, 'replace'
$styleDoc.close
For this your best bet is to hard code the file path into the macro, as I have done here. Alternatively one could use a "Choose" command to let the user select the relevant file. [Thanks to Þorvarður for the correction.]

The macro opens the style file (hidden), copies the styles and replaces the ones in the current document. Finally it closes the style file again. The addStyles command allows you to set the style conflict resolution as you would by hand. Here I have chosen the replace option, but rename or ignore are possible as well.

Finally as a variation, I add a macro that lets you choose one of your Style Library files for style import:
Add All Styles from StyleLib File.nwm
(6.21 KiB) Downloaded 961 times
Last edited by phspaelti on 2018-02-04 06:28:14, edited 2 times in total.
philip
Þorvarður
Posts: 410
Joined: 2012-12-19 05:02:52

Re: Adding and removing styles from a document

Post by Þorvarður »

This is great. Thank you so much, Philip
I merged the two macros, and I'll be using them a lot. I still have many Nisus Classic documents with old styles that I want to get rid of when I convert them.

Needless to say, these macros would solve the original poster's problem, but I don't think he's listening. :roll:
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