Available styles list doesn't show all from stylesheet

[amatsumoto]

I'm 10 days into learning Flare and I am stumped by something with my stylesheet. When I'm working on a topic (and my stylesheet is associated with that topic), I find that only a handful of the styles from the stylesheet are available. Why is this? In particular, this is a problem while I'm creating a new master page. I'm trying to format my footer proxies and I have only two styles available. What am I doing wrong?

[LTinker68]

The styles shown in the Styles pane and drop-down menu are context sensitive based on the tag the cursor is currently in. For instance, if you're inside a <p> tag (writing a paragraph), then you'll see paragraph-related styles in the Styles pane and drop-down menu. Paragraph-related styles are other <p> classes, the heading styles, and a few others. If you go into a list, then the Styles pane and drop-down menu display change to display list-related styles.

It's an attempt to keep you from having to scroll through all the styles in the stylesheet every time you want to select a style.

[davidgolden99]

On a related note, how can I change from one tag to another? For example, a document inported from FrameMaker has text in <blockquote> tags. There doesn't seem to be a quick way to change them to <p> tags.

[jmenning]

If you want to get rid of all <blockquote> and replace them with <p>, you can use the Find and Replace feature (CTRL+F). Make sure you select the check box for "Find in Source Code". Also make sure you replace the closing tags </blockquote> with </p>.

If you don't like the Flare find-and-replace, you should be able to do the same thing in a text editor.

[LTinker68]

For blockquotes specifically, you should be able to put your cursor inside the text in the blockquote then click the outdent icon. Or, you could right-click on the blockquote block in the show blocks area (if show blocks is turned on) and unbind the tag -- it'll revert back to being a <p> tag.

[KevinDAmery]

If you have alot of them, I'd use JMenning's approach.

Tip: as long as there are not classes or attributes on the blockquotes, you can change both the opening and closing tags with one find and replace. Here's how:

In Find, put the string as

Code: Select all

blockquote>

In Replace, make it

Code: Select all

p>

This will ignore any characters that appear before the start of the tag type--in other words, it will ignore the < on opening tags and the </ on closing tags.

[navoff]

I have a slightly different complaint. In particular, I'm trying to apply a blockquote to some text. I added some text and was able to change the style from <p> to <div>. According to WDC (Web Design Group) a blockquote can be contained in the following tags: APPLET, BLOCKQUOTE, BODY, BUTTON, CENTER, DD, DEL, DIV, FIELDSET, FORM, IFRAME, INS, LI, MAP, NOFRAMES, NOSCRIPT, OBJECT, TD, TH. However, the blockquote doesn't appear as an option anywhere that I can see to apply that style to the text. Yes, I can go into a text editor. But then I'm use to working in raw html code. But what about the poor sucker who doesn't know diddly about working in the raw html/xml code? Not to mention, there's the annoyance of mistyping the code and not being able to open the file in the XML editor in Flare.

So, is there something I'm missing here or is this just a "feature" of Flare that it limits you to what you can actually apply in terms of styles (short of creating a new p.class that duplicates what a pre-defined style already does).

[LTinker68]

If you place the cursor in a paragraph and click the indent icon in the formatting toolbar. One of the options that appears is blockquote (as well as DIV and others). Click on that and it'll insert a <blockquote> tag a level above the <p> tag.

Don't know why it's not an option in the styles pane. Maybe because a blockquote is a container tag and the paragraph tag isn't, but a DIV is a container tag, too. I wonder if the blockquote is being deprecated by W3C and MadCap is just getting a jump on it???

[navoff]

If you place the cursor in a paragraph and click the indent icon in the formatting toolbar. One of the options that appears is blockquote (as well as DIV and others). Click on that and it'll insert a <blockquote> tag a level above the <p> tag.

Don't know why it's not an option in the styles pane. Maybe because a blockquote is a container tag and the paragraph tag isn't, but a DIV is a container tag, too. I wonder if the blockquote is being deprecated by W3C and MadCap is just getting a jump on it???

Well, gosh, that was so <not> intuitive. Thanks for the hint. I don't think I would have ever thought to use the formatting indent button to specify a blockquote tag.