Character Style vs Format

Question

I have been wondering what the real difference is between Style and Format in the Character section of the Properties tab. They both appear to do basically the same thing. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Darin

Captivate 6 user

Lilybiri · Accepted Answer

Oops! I misread your initial post as difference between Character accordion and Format accordion. Sorry about that.

As for difference between Bold style and Bold format, I have noticed that they look different. I am not a typography expert, but my guess is the Style variants are provided by the font set itself (for example, Arial and Arial Narrow) and format variants are supplement the style variants provided by fonts.

Sreekanth

OK, here we go for a small typography lesson

The 'Styles' are the real thing, that means that you'll have only the styles that are available for that font family. Italic, Bold as a style has been designed within that family and it is much more than just having twice the regular character with a small shift between them (for Bold) or slanting the Regular character (for Italic). What I described - twice for Bold, slanting for Italic - is the way the Faux formatting is working, the one you find next to the Format indication: they can be done for all fonts, even those that don't have Bold, Italic... in their family, but they don't look as professional or nice. Mostly I call them the MS-way (I'm not a MS-lover as most know), if you use CTRL-B in a MS-application you just create a 'faux' style, twice the same character with a small shift so that it looks bolder.

Hope this makes sense? A real designer prefers of course the real styles, but I found that sometimes they are not totally supported when having output for text containers with variables. In that case, perhaps no one will see that you 'sinned' by using a Faux format.

Lilybiri

Sreekanth_S · Answer

They don't really perform the same functions as the options in each accordion is different. But I agree that they can be combined under one category.Sreekanth

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded