Import Full Formated Text (late reply)

[J. Landman Gay]

On 11/26/03 10:20 PM, Thomas J McGrath III wrote:
> 
> I refer to the property inspector and the different 'panes' available in 
> it for text manipulation i.e. the content 'pane' and the text/formatting 
> 'pane' versus formatting text via the text menu directly into a field 
> versus formatting text in the content 'pane' using the text menu.

There may be some confusion about the differences in these approaches. 
Both the text menu and the contents pane apply styling on a 
per-character basis, provided you have used the text tool to select text 
in the field. Only selected text will acquire the style you choose.

If you have selected the entire field object using the arrow tool, the 
text menu will apply a default style to the entire field. This will be 
the style for any text that does not have per-character styling. 
(Character styling overrides field styling on a per-character basis.) 
The Text Formatting pane in the property inspector is just another way 
to do the same thing, and also applies a default style to the entire field.

> If you set the font and font style for a field on the mac and build a
> standalone then open it in Windows, depending on which method used it
> will default to another font and sometimes lose it's formatting. If
> you set the style in other ways it will work. I created a stack to
> show this effect if you prefer to inspect the problem with REV's text
> formatting issues.

Could some of the text be formatted per character and the rest of it 
using a default font higher up the inheritance hierarchy?

In general, I try to assign a default font for the entire stack. That 
makes it easy to change globally if necessary. When that isn't possible, 
I assign a font to an entire field. I occasionally need to assign 
per-character styles. I know your work demands more precise text display 
than I use. You'll probably want per-character styling more often; just 
be aware that any characters not specifically styled will take on the 
styling of the next object up the hierarchy: either the field, the card, 
the stack, or the engine default.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com