nisus.com

Forgive me if this is obvious or previously covered, but I couldn't find it.

My doc is a series of short essays, each with a heading (style called HEAD1, shown here in caps)

My goal is to have Nisus automatically number the HEAD1 styles, so that each will increment. Simple example:

THIS IS THE HEADING FOR THE FIRST PARAGRAPH
And this is one of the many sentences that would be under it.

It would include paragraph breaks, etc.

And be in style Normal.

THIS IS THE NEXT HEADING
And this is one of the many sentences that would be under it.

It would include paragraph breaks, etc.

And be in style Normal.


The above would become:

1. THIS IS THE HEADING FOR THE FIRST PARAGRAPH
And this is one of the many sentences that would be under it.

It would include paragraph breaks, etc.

And be in style Normal.

2. THIS IS THE NEXT HEADING
And this is one of the many sentences that would be under it.

It would include paragraph breaks, etc.

And be in style Normal.


Thanks for your help!

Hello Seth

I've attached a screen shot of my Outline page in Style Sheet view.

It's pretty straightforward really. You go menu Bar > View > Style Sheet.

Then you click on the + sign at the bottom left of the window to make a new Paragraph Style. Name it what you want -- in my case here, "Heading 1". Then select the sample text and format it in the normal way in the. Then go to the Lists panel and select "Headings". You can also have the heading listed in the Table of Contents so it appears in the Navigator Panel (and in a ToC you generate). In the graphic attached, you will see the Headings list formatted in a particular way. That was to suit me. I formatted that beforehand, then made the styles using those formats.

Now -- go below the text box and there is a thing "Based on". Make that "None" -- of you leave it as based on something else, when you change the something else you might affect your heading style. Making it "none" prevents that. On the other hand, I made my series of heading all based on the first one so that when I changed that, it affected all of them. I think! (I haven't hcnaged them for a long time and I tend to get mixed up with PageMaker and Canvas style attributes).

Next -- give it a keyboard shortcut if you like. I have a series of heads of different levels and each has a short cut. The Command key is a given, so just add any other modifiers you lke (e.g. option, control, shift) and the letter(s)/number(s) you like. My six levels of heading style have short cuts, rather originally, I thought, h1, h2, h3, h4 ...

Next step is to specify "Next Style". You are planning to have your text as "Normal". So that's what you set as Next Style. Thus when you type your heading and hit return, the style switches to Normal and you type in body text.

I prefer to have a specific body text style for each of my headings -- the type, etc., is the same but the indent varies to match the heading indents. You make that style up in the same way as the heading style. In your body entry style, you set the Next Style to the body entry style so that when you hit return, you get another paragraph that's the same style. I also have shortcuts for these, to your surprise(I'm sure), they are be1, be2, be3, etc.

You can save to a style library to be called up when you need them and/or you can do things the slack and simple way I do them (which is not so smart, actually) -- save a template of a document (a .dot files) with those styles to the Document Manager. When I want to write a document using those styles, I just click on the file in the Document Manager and launch a new document.

Now -- you start a new document. Hit command-h1 (or whatever it is0 and type your heading. Return. Type in the first paragraph of body text, return, type in the next part of body text, etc. You come to the end of that one and want to start on the new one. Command-h1 and you are typing a heading again. etc.

If you are doing your essays as one continuous document and you have your styles set up this way, you can move headings up and down in the Navigator panel and the text will go with the headings.

One further thing. I have my body styles in two varieties -- one is an easy to see type on screen, then I have an alternative "printing" style which looks better in print. When I am ready to print, I click in a body text paragraph, then go Menu Bar > Format > Paragraph Style > Select All Style -- and that selects all text in that style. I then go to my Styles menu in the Tool Drawer and select the print style. I am good to go.

Cheers, geoff

Geoffrey Heard
The Ad-Doctor-Online
http://www.ad-doctor-online.com

Wow! Boy oh boy.

I knew a bunch of that about styles, but your list tip did the trick and the navigator pane (new to me) is going to change my life.

I've been a Nisus user for a decade or so, but you just doubled my productivity. Thank you.

Excellent Seth. I forgot to mention that you need to work backwards in setting up the styles -- set up your body text style first so it is ready to designate as "Next Style" in the heading style.

Have fun!

Cheers, geoff

BTW, the method Geoff describes for setting up styles applies to most word processors and page layout programs. I teach seminary students, and most have never heard of style sheets. I stress the importance of such when tackling major writing projects in seminary.

Well done, Geoff.

Thanks exegete. Best of luck -- I tried to teach my daughter the advantage of styles for such work ... but she managed to get through 6 years of university without using them. Idiot!!!

Cheers, geoff

Try teaching the Chinese about styles! They don't even know what tabs are. Because Chinese is monospaced, they lay out everything with spaces, including English in a proportional font. Then they print it and the English doesn't line up, so they add more or subtract spaces. Paragraph styles, style sheets ... that's rocket science! And yet they all put on their CVs "Experienced Microsoft Office user".

Mark