Style Sheet classes not showing up in style picker

[MNewcome]

Totally new at css and Flare - so if this is an entirely obvious answer my apologies. I'm beginning a new project and have set up all of my topics. I set up a style sheet for this client and applied it to the whole project in the project properties. Two issues I can't seem to fix:

1. When I open topics and view the properties the stylesheet is not applied, instead it lists an old template and declares it missing.
2. Only a few styles show up in the style picker and those that do show up (p, and h1-6) are not formatted the same as they are in the stylesheet.

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

[lacastle]

Make sure that the mediums are set up correctly in the topic.
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... =6&t=11788

Also, which styles are you expecting to show up? different styles will display depending on where your cursor is (in a list vs. in regular body text) or if you have highlighted anything (then only character styles will display).
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... +character
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... +character

It's not necessary to define a stylesheet in individual topics. when i look at the properties for a topic of mine right now, the stylesheet drop-down says "missing file" but i know there's no problem.

[Andrew]

Welcome to the forums!

Totally new at css and Flare - so if this is an entirely obvious answer my apologies. I'm beginning a new project and have set up all of my topics. I set up a style sheet for this client and applied it to the whole project in the project properties. Two issues I can't seem to fix:

1. When I open topics and view the properties the stylesheet is not applied, instead it lists an old template and declares it missing.
2. Only a few styles show up in the style picker and those that do show up (p, and h1-6) are not formatted the same as they are in the stylesheet.

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

It's not what I would call obvious, but it has to do with how Flare handles things like project master stylesheets. It doesn't actually go and apply that stylesheet to every topic in the project in the XML editor; I believe that is because it can be overridden at the target level (I don't use project-level master stylesheets because I find it easier to assign a stylesheet directly to topics, but that's just me). I suspect your primary target may have a different stylesheet set in it.

[MNewcome]

Oh I wish I had a good grasp of this! Why oh why have I stuck with Word all these years!

I may have a functional misunderstanding, but here's my example:

I have text in a topic that I want to apply a style I called p.legalblock - the style is smaller than p and justified and structured for legal text when it appears. The text I want to change to this style is currently just p. I can highlight the text, but without p.legalblock showing up in my style picker how do I change the style of that text?

And now - maybe after several hours of resting? - some of my topics are in the client css, yet some remain stubbornly in the plain style.css. Even though the client style is applied to the whole project. Which means some h1's are in my client style and some are in the default.

I'm going to examine the links you provided, Laura, and see if I have my mediums correct. This project has hundreds of topics so the thought of having to apply the css to each one individually is daunting. Of course, I used to do all this in Word so how much worse can it be?

[ChoccieMuffin]

If you're really very new in Flare, then first of all you have my sympathies, as I'm still very much a newbie and came from the same place you are.

Before giving you a specific response to your question, can I suggest you spend a bit of time looking through some of the training resources available on the Flare website before you get yourself tangled up too much in it, as they may help you to get your head round why, as much as what you have to do.

- Take a look here for some free webinars that will be very enlightening: http://www.madcapsoftware.com/demos/webinars.aspx. The cascading stylesheets parts 1-3 are particularly useful, and I also liked the single-sourcing one. Depending on what you already know and what you're trying to do with Flare, you might find some of the others are helpful.
- Also look in the Help menu and select Video Tutorials and Movies, and see if you can work your way through some of those.
- You might also want to take a look at the PDFs that you can get to (look at the bottom of the Video Tutorials and Movies page in Flare). The Styles one specifically might be worth looking at.
- Finally (for the moment) go to http://www.w3schools.com to find out more about HTML, XHTML, CSS and other fun stuff.

If you get your head round all that lot you'll feel as if it's about to explode, but you should find yourself a lot more confident to do things.

Now to your specific question:

If you highlight something, then you are invited to apply a span to the text you have selected. (So you are likely to be able to apply stuff like bold, or some other character style you have created.c

[LTinker68]

I have text in a topic that I want to apply a style I called p.legalblock - the style is smaller than p and justified and structured for legal text when it appears. The text I want to change to this style is currently just p. I can highlight the text, but without p.legalblock showing up in my style picker how do I change the style of that text?

Don't highlight the text. If you have a paragraph class called "legalblock" that you created in the stylesheet, then that class will appear in the Styles pane when your cursor is in a paragraph. If you select text within a paragraph, you're now trying to apply a span class, so the Styles pane changes to show the span styles available.

There are two ways to apply the legalblock class to a paragraph. The easiest way is to have the Styles pane visible (I leave mine docked on the right). Place the cursor in the paragraph without selecting any text, then click on the p.legalblock style in the Styles pane. Alternatively, turn on the show blocks option so that you see code blocks along the left and top of the topic in the XML Editor. You can then right-click on the paragraph block to get a context (popup) menu that has an option called Style Class, I believe, and when you hover over that option, you'll get a list of classes you can apply to that tag.

And now - maybe after several hours of resting? - some of my topics are in the client css, yet some remain stubbornly in the plain style.css. Even though the client style is applied to the whole project. Which means some h1's are in my client style and some are in the default.

Are you saying you have two stylesheets? Stylesheets are selected in the target and aren't actually applied to the topic (i.e., the reference tag isn't inserted) until the project is built. That's because you can have multiple stylesheets in the topic, so it doesn't know which one to apply until you select the target to build. When you're in the authoring environment (XML Editor), the styles you see are pulled from the stylesheet associated with the target designated as the primary target. So if your primary target is a PDF target and that PDF target is pointing to the style.css stylesheet, then you'll see those styles in the XML Editor. You won't see the client.css styles until you build the target that's referencing that stylesheet. If you switch the primary target to one that's pointing to the client.css stylesheet, then you'll see those styles in the XML Editor. So it really depends on what target is your primary target and what stylesheet that primary target is pointing to. That's why generally it's easier to have just one stylesheet in the project. Even if you have two stylesheets, you should have styles of the same name in both, otherwise you have to keep track of which style is applied to which text for which target. So you can have multiple stylesheets -- you just have to make sure you use the same style names in all the stylesheets and you have to realize that the authoring environment will only show the styles for one stylesheet at a time.