how to turn off preview of stylesheets in style select menu?

[gbusch]

I have a strange problem with the styles menu in Flare.
By "styles menu" i mean the dropdown input in Flare in the main menu "Start" where you can select a style from your stylesheets to apply it to a pragraph. In this dropdown you see a preview of the styles such as font-family, font-size, colors, margins, borders etc.
And that is the problem. I have a style with negative margin or negative text-indent. And since flare provides a preview i cannot see this style in that dropdown. I mean the style is there. You can select it. But you don't see the text-representation of that style.
Just see the screenshot below:

MadCapFlare_Error_Style_affects_menu.png

The orange highlighted style is the style that has negative text-indent. This is very annoying expecially if you have multiple styles like that since you don't know what to select.

Is there any way to turn that preview off or to make it ignore positions, margins etc.?

[kwag_myers]

I experimented with all the ways to display styles and came up empty. It's interesting to me that the current style always displays as plain text (which is what I think you're after), but the menu itself is stylized. I think you have a feature request on your hands.

Just out of curiosity, how much margin do you have on that style?

[ChoccieMuffin]

Can you see it if you use the Style window? (Home tab, click Style Window, appears by default on the right of the application screen.)

[gbusch]

Thanks for your quick response.

Just out of curiosity, how much margin do you have on that style?

It is -2.5cm. This is for print output only. I want some margin notes beside the main text but I do not want to create a second column because the margin notes would not flow with the main text where it belongs to. Whenever content changes and paragraphs move up or down, i would have to additionally edit the margin notes. So in my text the margin note comes first text comes second. So its meant to be some kind of a "headline" or point of orientation for the reader.

(anyway, is there a way to have margin notes to the left and right depending on if you're on a left or right page? i only managed to have margin notes to one side. but not alternating sides.)

Can you see it if you use the Style window? (Home tab, click Style Window, appears by default on the right of the application screen.)

No. Same situation.

Margin text ... I have the decent feeling that i'm doing it wrong in MadCap Flare.
Any suggestions?

[doc_guy]

You're doing it right.

A couple of ideas:

First, when you are typing content, and you are in the paragraph that uses a different style, press the keyboard shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + H. This will pull up a dialog of styles. Start typing the name of the style (if it is a class, type the element name, then type the period key, then type the style name: p.Note). When the style you want is selected, press Enter. The style will be applied.

Second, if this left margin is only for printed output, make sure that the left-margin style is only set in the Print section of the style sheet. Then do your editing in the Web layout, so you can see the style names.

[Lydia]

I don't think this can be set somewhere. I would be interested in turning off the preview as well. I have a few styles that use big numbers for fonts, which will enlarge the styles box to an enourmous size. Not handy. Of course I can work around this with some of the tricks mentioned in this topic. But it would be much easier to (temporarily) get rid of the preview functionality.
Where is the feature request? I'll subscribe to it

[Rene Severens]

Hi,

I will beceome a subscriber too. Besides this (using Flare 9, but hopefully solved in Flare 10, but... the company decided to skipp 10 and wait for 11...) the issue with extra installed fonts will be solved also so I do not have to guess which is what. To give you an impression, the available styles I work with are rendered like this:

available styles window.PNG

As the creator I know what they are, but explain this to another user .... .

Greetings,
René Severens

[gbusch]

Second, if this left margin is only for printed output, make sure that the left-margin style is only set in the Print section of the style sheet. Then do your editing in the Web layout, so you can see the style names.

I think this is the only solution for the moment.
Since in most cases editing is done in web layout anyway (better readability on screen for editors) this is no big deal for me.

Tough your other suggestion [CTRL] + [SHIFT] + [H] works, i cannot see the style there either.
So if i mistype something i might choose the wrong style.

Where is the feature request?

I just set up a feature request using this form:
https://www.madcapsoftware.com/feedback ... quest.aspx
As subject i used "Turn off preview of styles in style select menu" and provided a link to this forum topic.
I also suggested to be able to turn the preview in the menu off for certain medias, conditions or even styles (margin, padding ...).

[dorcutt]

I'm signing up for this one too...

Bare Minimum Improvement:
What I'd like is a checkbox right next to the style menu (or the styles window) that allows you to quickly toggle on or off the style preview option. I have both the "enormous style" problem and the "negative margin" problem.

Better Improvement
Ideally, what I'd like is some sort of a hybrid view, where the styles are previewed but up to a certain limit (say, 18 point font size, or just enough negative margin so that you don't lose letters in the preview) then with a code-styled description of other properties of that style described as opposed to displayed.

Ideal Improvement
I'm an ingorant newbie, but I think a particularly awesome solution to this issue would be to create a new or hidden system CSS Medium @MCStyleSelect or something, where you could actually configure how the dang thing displayed so that it made sense to you. This would also allow you to add a Display: block attribute for styles that you're never going to select from the pulldown (I'm looking at you, 92 point p.TOCHeading in the Print Medium from the default Advanced templates!) :roll I don't know enough to know how actually doable this would be, however.

PS: IS there a way to make styles not appear in the selection window at all already? I'm putting off cleaning out my existing styles, but this is getting to be a problem as my project expands.

[Lydia]

Answer to your PS:
You can disable styles. If you are in the Stylesheet editor, Advance View, click on Options in the toolbar and choose 'Disable styles'.
Maybe check out the implications of disabling a style to not break existing content or to not run into problems in the future.

[kwag_myers]

Disabling styles removes the style from the menu. The OP is attempting to show the style as plain text.

[dorcutt]

In another thread I saw that there's apparently an "mc-hidden" property which will remove the style from most of Flare's UI but not from the Stylesheet Editor. This seems ideal to me and I'll be using this to fix most of my woes.

I still fully support the ability to show the styles as plain text, however, particularly if this ability can be toggled on and off in a fairly simple/convenient manner.

[kwag_myers]

In another thread I saw that there's apparently an "mc-hidden" property which will remove the style from most of Flare's UI but not from the Stylesheet Editor.

This has the same effect as disabling the style, which really seems pointless to me as you then must use the Text Editor to apply the desired style.

[dorcutt]

Well, at least based on Dave Lee's testing and that of another user, it seems to leave the style in the Stylesheet Editor, which seems pretty ideal to me: http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... en#p102026

However, in my limited testing I've yet to get the mc-hidden attribute to do anything. I tried adding "mc-hidden: true;" to a couple of styles, and it seems to have done exactly nothing. I tried to make sure I was in the right medium and modify all occurrences just in case. So, I'm not quite sure what the story is with that.

[NorthEast]

However, in my limited testing I've yet to get the mc-hidden attribute to do anything. I tried adding "mc-hidden: true;" to a couple of styles, and it seems to have done exactly nothing.

That's because true isn't a setting; if you look in the stylesheet editor, the settings are hidden and unhidden.

[dorcutt]

Ah, I was thinking it was probably a syntax issue, but I didn't see it in the advanced view of the stylesheet editor under the alphabetical listing of all attributes for some reason (maybe I just missed it?) and couldn't find a syntax example online anywhere in a quick search.

Thanks!

[NorthEast]

Ah, I was thinking it was probably a syntax issue, but I didn't see it in the advanced view of the stylesheet editor under the alphabetical listing of all attributes for some reason (maybe I just missed it?) and couldn't find a syntax example online anywhere in a quick search.

Thanks!

It's in the Unclassified section (Property Groups).

AFAIK, it's undocumented in Flare's help and the KB.

[dorcutt]

Huh! Yes, I see it in the Unclassified group now, and I just confirmed that it is not in the "alphabetical list" view. I had no idea that an attribute could show up in a group but not in the alphabetical listing. I wonder if that's a bug?

Thanks again. I'm much more likely to actually use mc-hidden now that I know I'm not going to have bust out the text editor every time I want to mess with it!

[gbusch]

Interesting.

Didn't know about mc-hidden/mc-disabled porperty.
This helps at least to hide stuff that is for page layout only and not for the content.
Nice.

Just as a hint: be careful when using mc-disabled. It will completely disable certain functions that are related to that style element. For example if you disable "MadCap|snippetBlock" you won't be able to insert snippets anymore since the UI element is disabled then. Don't disable "body" elements either! Yout won't be able to produce PDF output anymore (glorious .NET error message "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" ... took me about two hours to figure that out ).
So to hide styles from the select menu better use mc-hidden.

[dorcutt]

Hey,

Thanks for the warning. I did go with the disable option just due to the convenience of the Options > Disable dialog. I disabled everything that I didn't want to see in the Select window (except for main, "unclassed" styles like pre, fieldset, and the like) to avoid the sort of issue you're talking about. It's worked fine, and if I encounter odd behavior somewhere the Disable dialog is going to be the first place that I look.

Works like a charm, and it makes my content creation process infinitely less annoying. I'd still like the option to display the select window in plaintext, though. After creating topic number #253, I'm pretty sure I know what p.note looks like, thanks

[autocart]

(anyway, is there a way to have margin notes to the left and right depending on if you're on a left or right page? i only managed to have margin notes to one side. but not alternating sides.)

Hello, in case you are still around, gbusch, have you found a solution for margin notes on left and right pages?
I am looking for such a solution. Thx, S.