Classic to NWE 2.1 conversion

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Tacitus
Posts: 122
Joined: 2004-02-12 00:11:45
Location: UK

Classic to NWE 2.1 conversion

Post by Tacitus »

Hi all,

After downloading 2.1 (big improvement on 2.0!) I tried to convert my standard 50 page test file from classic 5.1.3. This opened more or less correctly if rather slowly, but the new version creates a mass of new styles - possibly the reason for the slowness. Quite why I don't know since there are no defined styles in the classic doc, unless NWE identifies minor changes as new styles for some reason. Alternatively, perhaps it sees each paragraph as a new style. Those styles that I could see appear to differ largely in name only, but because there are so many, when I try to scroll down the list of styles I get the beachball of death and NWE hangs.

So, two questions:
When opening a classic doc in a new file is it, or could it be made so, possible to force "use existing styles in new doc" only? This would confine any styles to those already existing in the default nisus new file. If some were wrongly applied, it would be relatively simple to do any tidying up.

Is it possible to create a doc with no defined styles whatever? If it isn't then I guess I could reduce the defined styles to say six or less and use those.

cheers,

Tacitus
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to escape.
ndcahill
Posts: 18
Joined: 2003-04-26 05:51:07

Classic to NWE 2.1 conversion

Post by ndcahill »

This is a problem new to 2.1; the earlier version 2.0 interpreted Nisus 6.5 styles correctly. I keep the old version around, use it to convert Classic files, and then use 2.1 for further editing. It's a chore, but I'm hoping they'll fix this by the next version.

Nick
JBL
Posts: 170
Joined: 2003-04-25 14:33:59

Re: Classic to NWE 2.1 conversion

Post by JBL »

ndcahill wrote:the earlier version 2.0 interpreted Nisus 6.5 styles correctly.
Although 2.0 interpreted Nisus 6.5 styles correctly, it did not import named rulers at all. NWE 2.1 appears to convert named rulers to paragraph styles. Since named rulers act essentially the same as paragraph styles do in NWE, this seems to me to be an improvement. Of course, maybe this is because I made extensive use of named rulers and almost no use of styles. Anyway, it seems to me that this bug is probably associated with the importing of the named rulers.
rmark
Official Nisus Person
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Post by rmark »

Friends,

JBL is correct.

Named rulers are converted to style names.

However, based on his description of the situation, we have no idea if that's Tacitus' problem.
Write On!
Mark Hurvitz
Nisus Software Inc.
JBL
Posts: 170
Joined: 2003-04-25 14:33:59

Post by JBL »

rmark wrote:However, based on his description of the situation, we have no idea if that's Tacitus' problem.
True enough, although it is not only Tacitus' problem. I got lots of styles in my style sheet for every named ruler I had in a classic document I just openned. For instance I had a named ruler called "body" and I got 53 styles named body, body 1, body 2,...body 52. Interestingly, on quick inspection I only see that "body" is actually used, (is there some way to search by style or select all text in a given style so that I can see if these other 52 styles are actually used?).
Tacitus
Posts: 122
Joined: 2004-02-12 00:11:45
Location: UK

Post by Tacitus »

rmark wrote:Friends,

Named rulers are converted to style names.
However, based on his description of the situation, we have no idea if that's Tacitus' problem.
Knowing the doc in question I doubt that is the source of the problem as I didn't name any of the rulers.

You should have a copy of the file by now.

cheers,

Tacitus
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to escape.
ndcahill
Posts: 18
Joined: 2003-04-26 05:51:07

Post by ndcahill »

Thanks for the clarification about named rulers. This makes sense; but it does not make sense for the same named ruler/style to be imported over and over with different names. That is clearly a bug, to my mind. It is made worse when you cannot select more than one style and delete them all at once; you have to delete each individually. I will still use 2.0 to import all my old NIsus 6.5 files.
cchapin
Posts: 424
Joined: 2004-02-25 18:28:40
Location: Nagoya, Japan

Post by cchapin »

JBL wrote:(is there some way to search by style or select all text in a given style so that I can see if these other 52 styles are actually used?).
You could locate a paragraph with that style -- or create one for that matter. Then, with the insertion point in that paragraph, click the paragraph style tag in the status bar. (It looks like a white paragraph symbol in a bluish square.) Then in the menu that appears click Select All. You would then need to scroll through your document to see what was selected. Checking all 52 styles would be pretty laborious, though.

--Craig
cchapin
Posts: 424
Joined: 2004-02-25 18:28:40
Location: Nagoya, Japan

Post by cchapin »

Better than what I wrote above, use the Styles palette. Select the style you want to check. Click the gear icon at the bottom. In the menu that appears, click Select All With Style. This saves you the trouble of finding an instance of a style or creating one.

--Craig
ndcahill
Posts: 18
Joined: 2003-04-26 05:51:07

Post by ndcahill »

I want to put in another plea for a fix here. It's great to have Express 2.1 import named rulers as paragraph styles; but it should do it just once for each Classic named ruler, not a new paragraph style for each occurance of a named ruler in the original document (if that's what's happening). Even short Classic documents end up being converted with dozens of new styles; and even if you can Select All With Style, you still have to delete those duplicate styles individually or have them cluttering up your style list. This is completely unacceptable. I was hoping it would be fixed in 2.1.1 but no such luck. Please make this a priority, as it prevents us long-time Nisus users from using the most current version of Express.
charles
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Post by charles »

Hi Nick:

This has now been fixed and will be in our next release.

-Charles
Charles Jolley
Nisus Software, Inc.
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