Does ANYONE understand how to commandeer Mac OSX Styles?

Wow, this is like directly read from my heart!

Better no layout with the Mac OS text engine, I would say. Leave design for the last stage.

Choose Ruler – styles – Other… – Add to favorites. There are option whether to include font or ruler or both.

(a) Choose Ruler – styles – Other… Click on the right radio button “Favorite styles” and then click on the button down on the left “Remove from Favorites”.

(b) Yes, why???

I found them somewhere in a plist some time ago, but I had to accept that working in that plist or copying to other computers did not really work. The only way to keep a set of favorite styles is to set up a document with all the styles you need and then work through the styles style by style – if necessary.

You have my sympathy. I am waiting for Leopard and OpenDocument format, maybe that will change a lot…

Hope this helps,
Maria

1. Microsoft Office Help is actually quite helpful. Turn it on via Word’s Help: Word Help command or just touch the “help” key, if you have an extended keyboard. Then enter “styles” in the Help Seach window. The top item, “Troubleshoot Styles,” is a good place to start.

2. If “horrid little panel” means the Formatting Palette, turn it on and select an element of text that you want to style. Put the cursor on the ¶ mark and click on the downward triangle. In the pop-up menu, select Modify Style…which lets you modify every aspect of the style in question. You may also do this by listing All Styles. To delete a style, see the Word Help menu. Then Save the modified style. With luck, you will have changed every line that needed changing. If that doesn’t happen, just scroll to the lines and use the list of styles to apply the proper styling. Example: you need to turn a quotation into a block style, with left and right indentation. Select the lines, and in the list of All Styles, click on Block Quotation.

3. Word saves all of its Style formats in the Format: Style menu. That brings up a panel that shows you all the styles, and you may modify, delete, or create new styles there.

Much of the reason this all seems alien is that MSoft builds Word for Windows first and later kludges it into a Mac program. I live for the day when I can forget most of this stuff! (Enjoy your drink.)

Howarth,

The questions were about the TextEdit style system that Scrivener uses.

Maria,

Well I’ll be durned!

Ajea,

I still think you should finish the beast in Word. Just slice it up.

And now I go to my drinky-poo, too. This working all day Saturday and Sunday stuff is not relaxing.

Dave

Maria, do I dare hope? What is “OpenDocument format,” what will it offer in terms of Apple’s text engine?

Michael

Oh. Doh. Beg pardon. Most of the users here agree that formatting shouldn’t occur in Scrivener; it’s a drafting tool. You’re right; at this stage, keep that MS in Word. If its Styles need repairing, then my advice could be helpful. And now I shall go have a drink.

Michael,

this is the XML based document format used by the Open Office Group, and rumours are that TextEdit will be able to use this format in Leopard as well. I hope, it will become the native format instead of this ambiguous RTF. I am so fond of XML that I observe myself ending up organising almost anything in XML. My hope for the text engine is that Apple puts more effort into that clear format and will offer better tables, lists, styles, notes etc. and private extensions. And better font support in different languages. All guessing though…

Best,
Maria

O yes!!! I did not think of this easy, self evident solution (but I never used Word…)

Maria

Thanks for everyone’s replies. Yeah, finishing the beast in Word is, of course, the answer but its engine interferes with every other program I have open, and it beachballs constantly. For instance, Word and DevonThink Pro open together are problematic, etc. etc. and that’s where I keep my research if I dont use Scrivener.

Did you try Nisus Express or the Pro version? Opens wordfiles I get from others nicely and does not interfere…

Maria

Fullack! This would be great!

Maybe this is why they procrastinate Leopard?

Dear Maria,

I always believe everything you say so I’ve just downloaded the trial version of Nisus Express.

I migrated to Mac because I believed there must be an alternative to Word Hell, and I’m finding – mostly thanks to the Scrivener forums – that I was right.

Back to work.
cw

Dear believer, now you see, you can even believe yourself!

Greetings from someone whom you better not trust…—>
Maria

Hmm. How much RAM do you have installed?

Dave

1GB on this laptop; 2GB on another.

Some support for ODF is rumoured for Leopard. However, Apple has materially supported the standardization of Office documents via ECMA, and those are also rumoured to be supported in Leopard.

I too had hopes that Apple might make XML the native format, but I’m not quite sure which one they would choose…

Bryce

That seems sufficient, but it might be worth your while to check how much RAM Word & Devon are using in Activity monitor.

Dave

Hi,

Another user - hell, I’ll name-drop, it was Michael Marshall Smith - had a hellish time with styles some time ago and e-mailed me some information about them that I meant to get around to putting in the FAQ (read: giving to AmberV to put in the FAQ ) but never did. I don’t think he will mind me quoting his discoveries here (basically I think he was trying to move styles between machines):

Q: Where does Mac OS X store text styles?

More info:

Hope that’s useful to others.

All the best,
Keith

Great, thanks for sharing that, Keith.

Maria

A plug for people explicitly looking to strongly style a large manuscript who want to move out of Microsoft Word - I bought Mellel for precisely this purpose, and have been very pleased.

Take a moment to check out the feature set before trying it, as there are some things it definitely doesn’t do, however if it fits your needs then the styles setup and interface is fantastic.

My only complaint about Mellel styling is that it doesn’t support style definitions that cascade, but this is really a minor interface convenience rather than a missing feature.

I seem to recall that there are several other Mellel fans on these boards too, who may have more concrete advice on migration issues.

Huge thanks to KB in this thread for sharing MMS’s info on this! I dont normally use the Terminal, as MMS discussed, to fix such problems, so I here share my use of his info, in case you’re having similar angst.

I recently upgraded to a new Mac and despite efforts to retain all my settings, the color palette in the color picker and my huge list of favorite styles (via the Text menu in Scriv) had reverted to their virgin state.

These being Mac OS X devices, I suspected there were files somewhere on my older Mac with the settings I needed on my new Mac. Those are usually found in the User’s Library. As MMS said, for the style settings, I needed the .GlobalPreferences.plist file. The whole path to that is Users/yourusername/Library/Preferences. But… it’s invisible (for good reason, believe me, there are tons of these that only a developer could love). To see it, since I am using a Finder alternative called PathFinder, I can choose to “Show Invisibles”. Cool.

Ready to hack? First, quit any OS X application that might be using this file.

Now I need to edit the file. And that also requires a special program. (MMS suggests using fseventer). I used Property List Editor. Unless you’re a geek, you probably don’t have it installed on your Mac. But, you have it; its in the Xcode Tools package on your Mac OS X installer disc. Once you’ve installed that package, double-clicking on any .plist file will open it into Property List Editor.

Before you ever edit a system file like this, select it and Duplicate! (In case your finger slips during editing, you still have the original.) I opened both the old mac and new mac copies of .GlobalPreferences.plist, found the property name “NSFavoriteStyles”, copied it from the old list and pasted it into the new list. (If you get two versions of NSFavoriteStyles as a result, just delete the old one and rename the new one.)

Recovering my favorite colors in the Apple color picker is even easier. Also in your Library (and NOT invisible) is a folder Colors. Replace the “NSColorPanelSwatches.plist” file in there on your new Mac with the same file from the same location on your old Mac. (Dont forget to make a copy of the file you’re replacing first.)

I should emphasize that the old and new Macs were/are running the same version of Leopard. And of course no guarantees that my luck will extend to you, sorry!

Now I can continue to work with this wonderful, essential creative tool without obsesssing about styles and colors (too much!).

PeterM, Fairfield CT