Page 1 of 1

Footnote reference style doesn't update

Posted: 2013-09-27 10:29:08
by withoutFeathers
Hi,

I have superscript footnote reference numbers, and just reformatted my document and changed the main text size, rising from 9 points to 13 points (different size of paper).

I discover that my footnote references are still stuck at 9 points. So I think, fine, they're all "Footnote Reference" style, so I'll just change one of them, and update the style.

I do this, but no luck, all the rest of the ones in the document fail to update.

I find I'm having to re-apply the resized "Footnote Reference" style to each footnote reference, manually, to try to get it to change size.

Any suggestions? Is this a known bug?

Thanks

wF

Re: Footnote reference style doesn't update

Posted: 2013-09-27 11:12:00
by CrisB
withoutFeathers wrote:all the rest of the ones in the document fail to update.
If the style did get updated (check in the stylesheet) then the unchanged ones probably show with an over-ride in the tag bar at the bottom.

Sometimes, depending how you do it, they don't all get changed. If you change the style in the style sheet then it normally changes them all. But over-rides should be easy to remove in one step. Go Select All in the footer style tag, then remove the override..

warm regards,
Cris

Re: Footnote reference style doesn't update

Posted: 2013-09-27 11:34:45
by Hamid
You can change Footnote Reference style in the Style Sheet by selecting the style and applying the font size there.
This will update the font size of all the footnote references in the document.

You can also get the same result by selecting any one footnote reference in the document and changing the font size and while the changed footnote reference is still selected you must apply "Redefine From Selection" from the character style tag in the Statusbar at the bottom right of the document window:
RedefineFromSelection.gif
RedefineFromSelection.gif (12.08 KiB) Viewed 10133 times

Re: Footnote reference style doesn't update

Posted: 2013-09-27 11:40:29
by withoutFeathers
CrisB wrote:
withoutFeathers wrote:all the rest of the ones in the document fail to update.
If the style did get updated (check in the stylesheet) then the unchanged ones probably show with an over-ride in the tag bar at the bottom.

Sometimes, depending how you do it, they don't all get changed. If you change the style in the style sheet then it normally changes them all. But over-rides should be easy to remove in one step. Go Select All in the footer style tag, then remove the override..

warm regards,
Cris
Hi Cris
Thanks for the input. I don't understand it all, so I'll try some questions:
First, the Footnote Reference style, in Style Sheet View, is indeed updated correctly to 13 points.

Q: 1. I don't know what an 'override' is. I can't find an actual icon called that in the manual. Do you mean the ruler icon? If so, I don't see how that applies here because "Footnote Reference" is a character Style, not a paragraph style.

Q: 2. How does what you've called the "Footer Style Tag" relate to the "Footnote Reference" character style?

Q: 3. How does one go about doing "Select All" 'in' such a 'tag'? All I can think of is the sample text inside the "Footnote Reference" tag, but you don't mean that, do you?

Sorry, but I'm quite lost about the terminology in the last two questions.

wF

p.s. to Hamid, whose post I just saw: what you've described, both methods, is exactly what I've done. (See my first post). They didn't update. That's the problem and why I'm here on this board.

Re: Footnote reference style doesn't update

Posted: 2013-09-27 12:24:46
by martin
withoutFeathers wrote:First, the Footnote Reference style, in Style Sheet View, is indeed updated correctly to 13 points.
That being the case, the problem is very like some manual formatting you've applied (or that was introduced) to the note references in your document's text that overrides the "Footnote Reference" character style. When we talk about overrides like this, it only means formatting applied to text that does not come from styles.

Explaining this another way: to decide how some piece of text in your document should look (eg: font, color, etc), Nisus Writer checks the attributes enforced by the applied styles plus manual formatting. Going from least important to most important, this list of consulted factors is:

1. The paragraph style.
2. The character style.
3. Manual formatting.

There are some other more esoteric factors (eg: if the applied paragraph style does not define a font, then the font of your document's Normal style is enforced) but they can be ignored for this discussion. Factor #3, the manually applied formatting, is what we mean by "override" because it overrides the formatting enforced by your styles.

So, to get back to your problem: your reference style sounds to be in order. Probably the only reason the text in your document hasn't been updated is because all/most of your note references have a font size override applied, which overrides the style.

Hopefully this is clear. It sounds more complicated than it really is, since in practice it's used often, say to make a single word appear bold in a paragraph which is marked in the Normal paragraph style. If you had updated the Normal style to use a different font, you wouldn't expect those single bolded words to suddenly lose their bold.
Q: 1. I don't know what an 'override' is. I can't find an actual icon called that in the manual. Do you mean the ruler icon? If so, I don't see how that applies here because "Footnote Reference" is a character Style, not a paragraph style.
If you look at the bottom-right area of any document window you should see a bunch of little icons, which are tags. There is indeed one for the ruler, but also some for fonts, colors, etc. Some of these tags are always shown (eg: the style tags), but other ones only appear if a relevant override has been applied to the current text selection.

To see if your footnote reference has some font override applied: select a footnote reference in your document's text and check if the font tag appears, whose icon is a little black underlined "a". If it shows up you can click that icon and use the menu "Remove Font" to remove all the font related overrides.

Another way to remove such overrides: use the menu Format > Remove Attributes Except Styles, or the more specific menus like Format > Font > Remove Font Attribute.
Q: 3. How does one go about doing "Select All" 'in' such a 'tag'? All I can think of is the sample text inside the "Footnote Reference" tag, but you don't mean that, do you?
There are a variety of ways to select all text in a particular style, one of which is to use the tag icons: select any footnote reference in your document text, click on the Character Style tag (a blue-boxed "a" icon), and use the menu "Select All". Another way is the main menu Format > Character Style > Select All Style. Both of these will select all text in your document marked in the current character style.

Once you have all your footnote references selected at once, you can use any of the aforementioned commands to strip the font size overrides in a single action, thereby letting your footnote reference style shine through.

I hope this helps explain things. Let us know if there's still some confusion, or you have additional questions.

Re: Footnote reference style doesn't update

Posted: 2013-09-27 12:32:48
by CrisB
An override is a local change to a style. In the tag bar at the bottom. What I called the "Footer Style Tag" is your "Footnote Reference" character style in the bottom tag bar, I didn't have your name in front of me to use when I wrote this. But why is your footer style not a paragraph style? don't you want the font change applying to all lines in the footer?
I've made an override to the word "last" - it's in italics unlike the rest of the paragraph. the underlined a shows the override...
I've made an override to the word "last" - it's in italics unlike the rest of the paragraph. the underlined a shows the override...
Screen shot 2013-09-27 at 22.21.18.png (29.41 KiB) Viewed 10129 times
Here the italics on the word 'last' is the override. Your overrides are point sizes.

First select all the lines in your footer format - click on Select All in the Character style tag when your cursor is in a Footer style paragraph. This selects all footer format lines and no others. Then in the underlined a override tag, go remove font.

But Martin knows way more about this than I do... I'd written this before his post appeared, so I posted anyway...

Edit: since your footer style is not a paragraph style then this may not make complete sense..

Re: Footnote reference style doesn't update

Posted: 2013-09-27 14:22:36
by withoutFeathers
martin wrote: Once you have all your footnote references selected at once, you can use any of the aforementioned commands to strip the font size overrides in a single action, thereby letting your footnote reference style shine through.
Thanks, got it now.
Ah, if only Nisus had a hypertext manual and I could find these things quickly myself and not waste your valuable time, Martin. :wink:

Cris, part of our confusion was that you apparently thought I was referring to the FOOTER (which uses paragraph styles), but I was referring to the CITATION, ie, the number in the main body text that refers to the footnote (and uses Character styles). Sorry if I didn't make that clear enough.

wF

Re: Footnote reference style doesn't update

Posted: 2013-09-27 14:31:51
by martin
I'm very glad everything has been made clear!
withoutFeathers wrote:Ah, if only Nisus had a hypertext manual and I could find these things quickly myself and not waste your valuable time, Martin. :wink:
I know you've said before that you're not a fan of the user guide on the Help menu, but it is searchable using Apple's Preview or other PDF viewers. I'm not sure if it directly answers this question, or if such an answer would be easy to find, but I just want to let others know that there is a searchable user guide available.

Re: Footnote reference style doesn't update

Posted: 2013-09-27 16:33:27
by withoutFeathers
martin wrote:... I just want to let others know that there is a searchable user guide available.
Fair enough Martin, and I'd feel remiss if I didn't let them know that they shouldn't consider purchasing Nisus Pro on that basis.
Example that I just did for my current problem: I opened Adobe Reader and the Nisus Manual, and opened the "Full Reader search" from Adobe Reader, and then tried some searches:

footnote reference update — zero hits
footnote reference fails to update — zero hits
style fails to update — zero hits
footnote reference — 5 hits, none remotely relevant

updating a style — zero hits
update style — zero hits
style instances don’t all change — zero hits
override — 23 hits, too many, I can’t read through all 23 refs to the word “override”
update override — zero hits

etc. Give up

Go to forum.

I’ve done this example to show you that for me it’s always been a wacky hit-or-miss thing to find anything in the PDF manual, because the PDF search engine appears to work by verbatim phrases only. In fact they tell you that's what they do: they say "what word or phrase would you like to search for". And accordingly it either finds nothing, almost always, if there are two words or more, or it finds a vast amount if you go for a single word. Comparing this to how Google searches the web …OK, I’m spoiled. But there it is. Many other companies have switched to hypertext manuals that use intelligent search algorithms that allow you to enter a natural phrase that includes the best guess you have at what your problem it, and then returns SOMETHING about that problem. Here you almost always get nothing. As far as I can see, at least the default PDF search is still in the dark ages.

But as I'm ranting I realize maybe there are third-party search engines that would do a superior job?

OK, I'll go look. :-)
Suggestions welcome.

wF

Re: Footnote reference style doesn't update

Posted: 2013-09-27 21:16:07
by CrisB
I have put a Google search on my website [url]http://www.LifeStrategies.net,[/url] check it out (and +1 its pages please). Now I find that finding a natural phrase by googling it is by far the easiest way to find anything on my site's 200 pages.

This suggests that if Nisus put up the user guide as web pages on its site, and if the Nisus site were enhanced to allow local site Google searching (which is free unless you disallow their advertising), then the ability to find such phrases would be vastly improved...

This works extremely well for me :-)

Re: Footnote reference style doesn't update

Posted: 2013-10-04 12:33:26
by martin
To help other users who might need help on this in the future, we've added an FAQ entry that better explains the details of the situation:

FAQ: Why aren't changes to a style showing in my document text?