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More on Style Sheets in Version 6.0

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg76815] More on Style Sheets in Version 6.0
• From: "David Park" <djmpark at comcast.net>
• Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 00:52:55 -0400 (EDT)

Murray Eisenberg pointed out one pitfall in the tutorial I put up on style 
sheets in 6.0 at my web site. Creating a private Default.nb style sheet will 
interfer with 5.2 behavior for those still using that. The solution is to 
rename the Default notbook, say to TempStyle1Default and edit the TempStyle1 
style sheet to use this new inherited style sheet. I have corrected this in 
the 'tutorial'.

However, I think there is a design flaw in 6.0 style sheets that could 
probably be easily corrected. For a user to be able to use a cell style 
(such as Subsubsubsection) it must have a MenuPosition. It will then appear 
on the Menu -> Format -> Style listing, and also on the drop down menu on 
the ToolBar if one uses that.

On the other hand, to edit a style it must appear on the 'Coose a Style to 
Modify' drop down menu. Presently, the only way to do that (I believe) is to 
give the style a MenuPosition. Any style that is not on the drop down list 
can't be edited. To put a hidden style on the drop down list one must create 
private versions of the Default and possibly the Core style sheets. It seems 
that once one has done that, one has lost all the efficiency of the 
cascading style sheets.

There are many 'styles' that one might want to modify but not make available 
on the Toolbar, or Format -> Style listing. An example might be the 
'Notebook' style where we might want to change the background color of the 
notebook. I think that the styles that appear on the 'Choose a Style to 
Modify' menu should include ALL the style names in the Default and Core 
style sheets.  Or there should be some way to get access to these style 
names without modifying the Default and Core style sheets.

The 'Choose a Style to Modify' listing should be decoupled from the other 
style listings.


-- 
David Park
djmpark at comcast.net
http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/