Ending tags for character styles

[Bucky Edgett]

Working in IDCS2, OS 10.3.
I can't get character styles to work when placing a document. I have a text doc with the following "header" copied and pasted from an export:

<ASCII-MAC>
<Version:4><FeatureSet:InDesign-Roman><ColorTable:=<Black:COLOR:CMYK:Process:0,0,0 ,1>>
<DefineCharStyle:italic=<Nextstyle:italic><cTypefa ce:\(TM\) MONOTYPE Italic OsF><cFont:Centaur Expert BQ>>
<DefineParaStyle:Normal=<Nextstyle:Normal><cTypefa ce:\(TM\) MONOTYPE Roman OsF><cAutoPairKern:Optical><cLeading:14.000000><cF ont:Centaur Expert BQ><pSingleWordAlignment:Left><pTextAlignment:Cent er>>
<DefineParaStyle:list=<BasedOn:Normal><Nextstyle:l ist><cSize:10.000000><pLeftIndent:18.000000><pFirs tLineIndent:-18.000000><cLeading:12.000000><pSpaceAfter:6.00000 0><pTabRuler:18\,Left\,.\,0\,\;112\,Left\,.\,0\,\; 127\,Left\,.\,0\,\;227\,Right\,.\,0\,\;245\,Left\, .\,0\,\;348\,Right\,.\,0\,\;><pTextAlignment:Left> >

I have some text tagged like this:
<ParaStyle:list><CharStyle:italic>African Gaze<CharStyle:> 1996 Gorilla Bronze
<CharStyle:italic>The Aged One<CharStyle:> 2002 Chimpanzee Bronze 36" x 23" x 29" 3 20,000

(In case it doesn't show here, the spaces between text are tab characters.) I use the Place command, the dialog box recognizes Tagged Text, everything works, except the <CharStyle:> tag. All the text has the <CharStyle:italic> applied to it. That is, it's all italicized. The character level style never gets "turned off." If I export the Placed text, the <CharStyle:> tags don't appear. So, what is going wrong? It all looks to me as if it should work! Thanks for any suggestions!

[doc_bud@adobeforums.com]

Is ALL the text coming in as italic when importing the text?

I've seen that a few times when someone has imported a text file and had the "italic" (or any other charater style sheet highlighted) when importing.

I always make sure it's set to none, and then import.

I remember the time I had a zapf character style selected for some reason and the entire file flowed in as ALL Zapf.

Or I could be misunderstanding your problem. If so, apologies and I hope some one can help you.

doc

[Bucky Edgett]

Dear Doc,
Bingo.

Of course, in doing my figuring out, I had exported text to get the "header" quoted above. And of course, since it was the character level style I was trying to "capture," I had
just highlighted some text and styled it with the character level style. And naturally, I was Placing my test text into that same document. So it goes without saying the CharStyle WAS still "chosen" in the Style Palette when I Placed the test text. Good lord! I NEVER would have figured THAT out!

Works like a charm. Can't thank you enough.

[doc_bud@adobeforums.com]

Glad I could help you, Bucky :)

When it first happened to me, I banged my head against the wall for a while until the I finally noticed the character style was "chosen."

Needless to say, I haven't forgotten it, but still occasionally do it and immediately slap myself in the forehead and yell "doh."

I wonder why having a character style sheet selected (accidentally or not) when importing a tagged text file would override the paragraph stylesheets.

doc

[Bucky Edgett]

It makes a certain kind of sense. Character styles *do* "override" paragraph level styles. That's their function. And having the charstyle "checked" on import obviously applies it to all the text coming in. I'd say *that's* the glitch: in a perfect world, Import would ignore any styles, either Paragraph or Character, that were selected in the Palettes. Import would apply Tags, of course.

Now that there is no longer a choice for "None" in Paragraph style, perhaps Import would have to apply "Basic" as a default? Or should there be a choice in the Import dialog box?

Sounds like a Feature Request to me; perhaps one that could use some discussion.

[doc_bud@adobeforums.com]

Good points, Bucky.

But, a character style sheet shouldn't override a paragraph stylesheet *before* the paragraph style sheet is even imported.

I hate to bring up Quark as I know a lot of folks here despise it, but--Quark's paragraph style sheets (the tags at the beginning of the element) pretty much say to ignore any previous character style sheets. Start with a clean slate.

And that's what InDesign needs to do, so far as this *glitch.*

It's not a big deal so long as folks know about it, but I'm sure it drove you nuts, as it did me.

When importing a tagged file (or a word file for that matter), a character style should not override ALL the tagged paragraph style sheets.

doc