Frame's lame callouts

[Lester C. Smalley]

You can apply named Character formats to the content of text lines, I do
it all the time.  You can select multiple text lines (control-click to
grab the first one, and control-shift click to add others to the
selection) and apply the same character tag to them all in one
operation.  And if you update the character style via the character
designer window, updates will be applied to the text-lines as well (as
you would expect, actually).

In fact, you can select a character tag in the catalog, and then pick
the text-line tool in the drawing tools palette, and the character
format is automatically applied to the newly created text.  At least,
this has worked for me since Frame 3 or so, and still does in 7.2 - I
don't have FM 8 so I can't test if it still functions there.

It is true that text-lines are not in the text flow and paragraph styles
can not be used.  There is one additional caveat about using text lines:
if you select them as part of a graphic (for example, selecting all in
an anchored frame, or you grouped the text line and the graphic object)
and scale the image the text scales as well, even if it has a named
style applied (but this creates a format override).  Easy to correct by
reapplying the catalog definition, but it does surprise you the first
time.

On Tuesday, November 13, 2007 02:58 PM, Fred Ridder wrote:

| Gillian Flato asked (in part):>
| 
| > Does anyone know why I can't apply styles to them globally? 
| > I have to open up the character designer and apply a style
| > to each word individually.
|  
| Callouts created with the drawing tools cannot be manipulated
| with named styles because they are not paragraphs in the text
| flow. They are lines of characters in a graphic frame which
| is entirely separate from the text flow even though it is
| surrounded by it.

- Lester 
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Lester C. Smalley              Email: lsmalley AT infocon DOT com 	
Information Consultants, Inc.  Phone: 302-239-2942 FAX: 302-239-1712	
Yorklyn, DE  19736               Web: www.infocon.com	
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