Style Question

[goldste4]

Hello,

In my Nisus New File, I have my Heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) based on the Normal Style. In the normal style, among other things I have the font defined, in this case Adobe Garamond Pro). Heading 1 is set to character style bold, Heading 2 has the same, Heading 3 is italic, with no added font code. Now, I've noticed, NWP, all on its own, adds to those Heading styles a font: Headings 1 & 2 = Adobe Garamond Pro semibold; Heading 3 = Adobe Garamond Italic (i.e., it is adding the font that corresponds to the character attribute which I have set for that style). This addition is fine as long as I keep Adobe Garamond Pro the font in my Normal style.

However, if I change the font in Normal to something else (say, Baskerville), the font codes which NWP orignally added to the Heading styles (Adobe Garamond semibold, etc.) do not disappear or change to reflect the changes to the Normal style (even though the Headings are based on Normal). When I go into the Heading styles to delete the added font code, those codes disappear just as I would expect. But, when I save the Nisus New File, and start a new file, the added font codes in the Heading styles are back. The result, is that instead of having to make a font change in one place (the Normal style), I have to make it in all the Heading styles as well, which defeats the purpose of basing those styles on Normal.

Any suggestions on how to keep NWP from automatically adding font codes to the Headings?

Josh

[Groucho]

Hello, Josh.

When you set Adobe Garamond to bold typeface are you using the Face drop-down? I experimented with Adobe Jenson, that is much like Adobe Garamond Pro. I clicked on the bold button under Options (instead of selecting the bold typeface in the Face drop-down), and it worked regularly as expected. Shifting to Baskerville changed Font Family while preserving the typeface. You should use bold (or Italic) button under Face if you want the typeface (bold or italic or bold-italic) to be inherited.

Greetings, Henry.

[goldste4]

Hello Henry,

Thanks for the suggestion, I went back to check more carefully what I had done. However, I noticed that, at least on my machine, the Face and Options are linked, when it comes to bold and italic. That is: if the font family is set to Adobe Garamond Pro (or Adobe Jenson Pro), and I select bold or italic under Options, the Face will automatically change to semibold or italic as the case may be. Similarly, if I change the Face to regular, all the selected Options are now unselected, if I select semibold, the bold under Options is automatically selected, and the same with italic.

I should have mentioned that the font family code does not immediately appear in the style when I use Option to select bold or italic. However, once I save the Nisus New File and then open it up (or start a new file), the styles then show the font code (e.g., Adobe Garamond semibold) and the Option code (e.g., bold), even though I only want the Option.

So, the search for a solution goes on!

Best,
Josh

[martin]

Unfortunately your search for a solution won't have an end Josh- at least, not without help from us. What you've observed is basically a bug, that the "Bold" attribute is incorrectly conflated with its corresponding font face.

When NWP saves a file, it must save out not only the "bold" state, but also the final display font (eg: "AGaramondPro-Bold") otherwise some RTF readers will not correctly show the text as bold. I believe InDesign was a notable offender. When NWP reopens the file, it should be smart enough to detect that combining the "bold" attribute with the inherited font (from the parent style) produces the applied display font, and revert to just using a pure "bold" attribute.

It's on our list of things to fix. Until then, sorry for the trouble.

[goldste4]

Hello Martin,

Not a big issue, and has an easy enough work around in any case. Thanks for the quick follow up.

Best,
Josh

[greenmorpher]

Hiya Martin

I notice that you're online. Good afternoon!!! 6.29am here and I'm just up and into the day.

Josh is starting off with Adobe Garamond which offers 6 variations (let's not get into "font" and "face" distinctions -- they are so easily confused) I think -- Regular, Semi-bold and Bold with Italics of each. So when he specifies "bold", he doesn't get bold, he gets the next step up from Regular, which is semibold.

Is this contributing to the confusion because it doesn't fit with the "switches" for Bold and Italic offered by NWP and everything else -- which are designed to use the more common type families which offer only four variations, Regular/Roman/Book and Bold with Italics of each? Since semibold isn't bold, perhaps there is a difficulty in how it is described which interferes with the step back when the substitution when the typeface is changed?

He mentions changing his basic font (as we say today, typeface or family as they would have said in the old days) to Baskerville. My Baskerville, and if I remember correctly, all the Baskervilles I have ever had, offered only the four, so they fitted with the switches -- not bold, bold, not italic, italic.

Would it make any difference if he started with a four font face/type family or a four font/face type family/font, then shifted to one with a similarly restricted range?

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Publisher, Editor, Business Writer
The Worsley Press

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[martin]

I notice that you're online. Good afternoon!!! 6.29am here and I'm just up and into the day.

Here in California it's 1:54PM now, so a more reasonable time to be working

Would it make any difference if he started with a four font face/type family or a four font/face type family/font, then shifted to one with a similarly restricted range?

So long as the font being used has at least one typeface that OSX reports as bold, the number/variety of typefaces provided by the font does not affect the outcome. If there's a bold typeface available, NWP will convert a pure "bold" attribute into that bold typeface upon reopening the file.