Applying Styles to List Items

[Calybos]

This should be a straightforward action: I've got a paragraph style called "note-text" (mainly background shading and font color), and I want to apply it to both regular text and list items.

The note-text style is available for selection on a regular line of text, but it disappears when I put the cursor on a list item. How can I customize the list of available styles on the Style window so that note-text is always an option?

[Lydia]

This is not a matter of customizing the list of available styles. The styles shown are context sensitive. If the cursor is in a line that is a <p> style, every style that can be applied to <p> is available. If you are at a list <li> style, only those styles appear that can be applied to a <li> style.

If you want something that can be applied anywhere, add a generic class to your stylesheet. You will have to edit the stylesheet in a text editor to do that (at least I don't know another way).

[Calybos]

OK... so there are 'paragraph' styles, and there are 'list' styles. So I just need to copy my note-text style so it shows up on both lists, paragraph and list. I can do that.

Now... how can I modify the style within a list so that it doesn't include the bullet or number of the regular list items? The Paragraph Formatting options seem to have vanished from the stylesheet editor on a list style.

[Lydia]

The paragraph style vanished, because your filter is set to "List styles". The filter is at the top left of your Stylesheet editor. It's visible in your screenshot.

[ChoccieMuffin]

I suggest that you do a "make paragraph" thing (as explained in your other thread) and insert your "Notes" paragraph inside your list item. That way you can have other text in your list item, not just the heading.

[Calybos]

Well, I did... but there's apparently something about list items that adds extra spacing by default, and I can't access paragraph before/after formatting to close it up.



The lower example shows how the note header and text style are supposed to look together. But when it's applied inside a list, there's a gap. In fact, I'm seeing a gap with Paragraph-formatted borders and shading too, even when there's 0 before/after spacing.



How can I get a continuous border around multiple lines like we see in the Flare online help?

[ChoccieMuffin]

You'll need to adjust the stylesheet to deal specifically with a <p> inside a <li>. You do this by adding the following structure to your stylesheet and then adding whatever specific properties you want for a <p> that appears inside a <li>

li p
{
}

See also http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css_selectors.asp.

In the middle of something at the mo so can't go into detail, but that should get you started.

[LTinker68]

OK... so there are 'paragraph' styles, and there are 'list' styles. So I just need to copy my note-text style so it shows up on both lists, paragraph and list.

That's too much work, because if you decide you want to change the color, for example, then you have to change that color in multiple styles. Instead, set it up as a generic class, as mentioned previously. To do that, open the stylesheet file in the Internal Text Editor instead of the Stylesheet Editor. Then manually type something like the following into the stylesheet then save the file.

Code: Select all

.note-text {
    color:#000000;
    background-color:#FFCCCC;
}

The period before the name -- without a preceding tag -- is what makes the style a generic style. Generic meaning you can apply it to any tag (although the tag has to support the style attributes; you can't make an image bold, for example).

In the Styles pane, if you're in a paragraph or a list or a table, you'll see .note-text listed near the top of the Styles pane. So it doesn't matter what type of tag you're currently in, you'll still see the generic class listed.

Once you've created that generic class, you can modify it thereafter using the Stylesheet Editor. In Advanced view, the generic class will be included in the generic class group. Note, however, that Flare's Stylesheet Editor will sometimes display weird values. I don't know if they're hard-coded values for the GUI or inheriting from elsewhere, but just don't let it confuse you when you look at the styles in the Stylesheet Editor. I actually edit generic styles manually through the Internal Text Editor because doing it through the Stylesheet Editor always confuses me.