Writer - Getting differing font weights in the same font and style

[dalepres]

I am working in Writer and custom styles. I pasted a large block of text that seemed to be all the same font and weight in the source and, after pasting, still seemed to be all the same font and weight.

Next I selected a large block of that text, several paragraphs long, and double-clicked on my desired style. Most of the text changed to the selected style but some paragraphs didn’t change font. When the cursor is in that text that didn’t change font, the style shows the intended style but the font is wrong.

There are multiple sections of the selection with this condition even though there are sections in the text that have the expected font - even in between sections that didn’t change font.

I have to manually select each one of those sections and manually set the font, even though the style should have already done so.

Then, once I set the right font, Century regular 14pt in my case, that text that I had to set the font manually is displayed and printed in lighter weight than the other that is regular weight.

I can bold sections of the too-light text and it bolds properly and returns back to the too-light weight if I undo the bold. I can bold the regular text and it bolds properly and returns back to regular when I undo the bold.

The toolbar shows Century 14pt for both the light text and the regular text. I turned on Formatting Marks, I don’t see anything that would indicate a change but I’m not real clear what to expect with that since if I do change formatting it doesn’t show anything different either. All Formatting Marks seems to give me, that I can see, is paragraph breaks and then there is a tiny little blue mark in front of every word, both in the regular and the light text - but no such mark between the paragraph, only the paragraph mark.

So that’s everything I know of to offer that might help someone to help me. Any ideas what causes this or how to fix it?

[dalepres]

I found a bit of a solution. If I select the text and choose Clear Direct Formatting, then the font weight restores to the expected weight, matching the other text. But when I do that, I lose any italic or bold in that text, along with any other direct formatting that I may not even be aware of. That leaves me with a tedious task of comparing the pasted text to the source and restoring the direct formatting I want without the unknown formatting that was causing the problem.

So, I’d still like to find a way to see all of the formatting in a selection or even the entire document so I can clear the formatting I don’t want while keeping the formatting I do want.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[Grantler]

@dalepres

That leaves me with a tedious task of comparing the pasted text to the source and restoring the direct formatting I want without the unknown formatting that was causing the problem.

@dalepres

I am working in Writer and custom styles. I pasted a large block of text that seemed to be all the same font and weight in the source and, after pasting, still seemed to be all the same font and weight.

If I were you I would paste texts as unformatted and then apply character styles. In the beginning it’s a bit more work but in the end you don’t have to question this ask site…
To discover bold/italic hard formatted text you can surely use the built-in SEARCH&REPLACE tool (it only discovers hard formatted character properties).
To check both hard and style formatted characters the extension AltSearch.oxt may be useful for you.
Cheers

[Hrbrgr]

Upper stings Lower

We know this sentence from playing cards.
Here it means:

• A paragraph style can be formatted differently by a character style.
• A paragraph style and character style can be formatted differently by the direct formatting.

Conversely, it means:

• A paragraph style cannot format text differently that has been handled by a character style or direct formatting.
• Similarly, a character style cannot format text that has been treated with direct formatting.

Order, which formatting is above which?

• Direct formatting (Upper)
• Character styles
• Paragraph styles (Lower)

You can remove direct formatting from your document by selecting all the text with the keyboard shortcuts ( Ctrl + A ) and then choosing Format > Delete Direct Formatting, ( Ctrl + M ).

Direct formatting is strongly not recommended for large documents, such as novels, long letters, documentation, or the like.

Professional text composition with Writer

[dalepres]

I didn’t realize that asking questions this ask site was a bad thing. I thought that was what the site was for. Thanks, though, for your suggestion.

[ajlittoz]

You didn’t tell where the pasted text comes from. Every source (web, other document processor, …) except plain text has some form of formatting. During paste operation, this formatting has to be converted to Writer primitives if Writer supports the format to some extent. Most of the time, the encoding is far from ODF concepts though Writer understands the expected visual result. Since this encoding can"t be related to the global document structure (e.g. chapter headings for the most obvious concept but the same doubt exists for bold), all Writer can do is to approximate original formatting with direct formatting. And this is the beginning of your trouble.

@dalepres

Then, once I set the right font, Century regular 14pt in my case

This is wrong because, eventhough you set the font the same as in your paragraph style, you set this forcing attribute in the direct formatting layer, preventing any change in the paragraph style to become effective here. Direct formatting always has precedence over styling.

@dalepres

choose Clear Direct Formatting, then the font weight restores to the expected weight, matching the other text. But when I do that, I lose any italic or bold in that text

Yes because you can’t remove a single selected attribute from direct formatting. You clear them all.

The correct fix is to replace this bold/italic by a character style like built-in Strong Emphasis or Emphasis respectively. You then gain the ability to manage the attributes individually. Of course don’t forget to clear direct formatting because, as mentioned, its precedence is higher than styles.

@dalepres

I’d still like to find a way to see all of the formatting in a selection

This is the role of the Style Inspector (introduced in the 7.x releases if I remember right) which is activated by clicking on the bottommost icon in the margin of the style side pane.

Put the cursor anywhere in your document and the inspector shows the formatting (styles and direct) in effect at this position. The inspector is not perfect as it reports list numbering by style as direct formatting. Only this last case has to be pondered carefully.

[dalepres]

I’m using 7.0 - definitely time for an upgrade, which I coincidentally already downloaded before this came up today. Style Inspector came with 7.1 so I hadn’t seen it but I’ve read up on it now that you clued me in. Thank you very much.

[ajlittoz]

@KoJoT: your answer is correct but you’re on the English leg of this site. So, for non-German-capable readers, provide an excerpt or a translation in English. Danke schön fur die Gemeinschaft.