paragraph / characer style based-on?

[Dirk Becker]

Hi,

does Illustrator support a concept of "based-on" inheritance for styles?

When I open the Paragraph Style Options dialog, "General" panel, the top line "Style Settings:" is apparently a label for the static field "[Normal Paragraph Style] +" which is shifted one pixel down. Coming from InDesign, I'd expect that field to be a dropdown.

In the matching script object, I don't find a property where I would eventually change the inheritance (similar InDesign's "basedOn" property).

On the other hand, the plug-in SDK has getter and setter for "parent".

So, is this something incomplete, left over from long ago times and not to be modified, or did I miss any option / gesture in the UI? Must I consider style inheritance when I deal with styles within a plug-in? Is this supposed to work for CC Library styles (incoming from InDesign did not work)?

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

There is no "based on" in Illutrator. Illustrator's styles also work differently than InDesign. In Illustrator the [Default character style] is the "mother" of everything.

They are not based on the same code, so if they can somehow sometime work the same, is written in the stars.

You might want to search for every feature request on Uservoice that remotely touches this issue and support it.

[Dirk Becker]

Thanks Monika.

When I set that "parent" via plug-in, the value is modified and the newly assigned style is returned later on. It even survives a save/close/open cycle.

Beyond that, the mentioned static field in the dialog remains unchanged (the name is still from the root style) and there is no inheritance mechanism in place - tried with the font.

Given that the font is a character attribute, I also modified the left indent of the parent (based-on) style - and it worked, the value is inherited by the child style.

Seems like inheritance was half implemented (missing the character attributes) and therefor not activated in the UI.

[Dirk Becker]

After some more experiments, I ended up with multiple copies of the child style that would re-appear after delete, and other inconsistencies. Leaving it there.