create character format – have I forgotten something?

[FieryPantone]

A few weeks of checking documents ahead, after corporate decisions to change fonts and colours … actually going pretty smoothly, now I've created a single stylesheet file, but every now and then I find unexpected special cases. Creating or updating a paragraph style is easy, with the Esc opn and Esc opu shortcuts: but where are the equivalents for character styles?

[Winfried Reng]

Hi

When you miss any shortcuts, please make a report in the Adobe Tracker:

https://tracker.adobe.com/#/home 

I do not know which settings are in your character styles. I set only those which are different to the regular text. Therefore I have to click outside of the text frames so that all settings are As Is. Then I check the style in the character designer and make changes.

As I have to use the mouse anyway, I do not use any shortcuts here. But that's just me.

Best regards

Winfried

[LinSims]

Open character designer: Esc ocd

Open character catalog: Esc occ (F8)

Set character styles to default: Esc ocp

As far as I know, there's no esc sequence for creating a new character format, but then I hadn't known about opn, either. 

[Barb Binder]

As I recall, those paragraph and character shortcuts used to align. So Esc opc (open paragraph catalog) mapped to Esc occ (open character catalog) but that doesn't work for me in 2019.

Similarly, Esc opn (still works) doesn't map to Esc ocn for me either. 

F8 (and Ctrl 8) do open the context character catalog, F9 (and Ctrl 9) open the context paragraph catalog, but not the regular catalogs.

But while we're on the topic, I do want to point out that Shift F8 is invaluable shortcut. When you are creating a new character style and want to set window to as, just tap Shift F8. 

~Barb

[LinSims]

Esc+occ works for me in 2019, BarbBinder, as does Esc+ocd.

FieryPantone, Klaus Daube has an extensive document on keyboard shortcuts here: https://www.daube.ch/docu/files/FM-ESC-sequences.pdf

As far as I know, there's never been a shortcut for creating a character tag based on where the cursur is. 

[FieryPantone]

Thanks for all the input! In long-past days, with a real pre-cubicle office, I used to have a couple of sheets of A3 with all the FM shortcuts :-} and now I've (finally) got my hands on FM 2019 I'm trying to pay attention every time I reach for the menus.

@Winfried: I've added the feature request; thanks for the tip.

[Bob_Niland]

Ideally, only update the self-documenting example-containing master template file, then Import Formats from it to each production document as needed.

[FieryPantone]

So here we are again, with another observation. I've just used Copy special > character format to bring in a new style, and now I'm stuck because there's no [Create] option.

no [Create] option after pasting new style into document

But then, in a moment of inspiration, I typed a random name into the the Style name field: voilà! [Create] option. Then I typed the style name which the dialogue had already been showing, which had arrived along with the style when I pasted it, and the [Create] option magically stayed available. Is this what they call a "feature"?

Anyway: I'll share my experience in case it helps anyone else some day, and in t hope I'll remember where to find my answer next time I need it.

@Bob – of course! but it does occasionally happen that a particular chapter suddenly requires a new style, so then I would add and test it where required before adding it to the stylesheet.

[Barb Binder]

Hi FieryPantone:

You can also click Apply, then Update Style to add the character style to the new document after pasting, but be aware that your way and mine both ignore Set Window to As is from the original definition. You will have to fix it manually. You may be better off using Import Formats.

~Barb