Re: Hierarchical styles (was XML cookbook questions)

["Lynne A. Price" <lprice@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 04:53 PM 8/28/03 +0200, Theun Fleer wrote:

>Why should you define seperate paragraph formats for body paragraphs,
>table cells and several headings?


Theun,
  If a single paragraph format works for you, then by all means use only
one. 
  Distinct paragraph formats may be useful in cases when:

1) Numerous properties differ from the base format and it is easier to specify
   the differences in the Paragraph Designer than list them in the EDD.

2) Different book designs use the same EDD; you can switch among them by
   importing formats, but there is no need to import element definitions.

3) The EDD is developed from an existing unstructured template in which the
   paragraph formats are already defined.

4) You want to use a plug-in that operates on paragraph formats.

>I know of the problems with broken inheritance in table cells and
>footnote texts,

  I don't think there's a problem here. Most documents give distinct
looks to body paragraphs, table titles, table cells, footnotes, and table
footnotes. FM formatting is based on paragraph formats. It is therefore
quite consistent with the FM approach that different base paragraph formats
be used for these structures.

>Especially in multi-language documents (CE, Cyrillic and Greek) the font
>usage is depending on the lang-attribute at the highest element. And I
>do not want to maintain 3 seperate paragraph formats...

   Again, if you don't want to, don't. Does your EDD test for use of
tables and footnotes in order to use the same base format in all contexts?
An alternative would be to set up a template that uses Body as the paragraph
format for footnotes and table footnotes and also uses Body as the paragraph
format in all table formats.


	--Lynne

Lynne A. Price
Text Structure Consulting, Inc.
Specializing in structured FrameMaker consulting and training
lprice@txstruct.com            http://www.txstruct.com
voice/fax: (510) 583-1505      cell phone: (510) 421-2284

The program for the 2003 FrameUsers Conference includes several
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