Character misbehavior

For all things Mellel

Moderators: Eyal Redler, redlers, Ori Redler

KevinR
Got the auto-title mojo working
Posts: 22
Joined: Tue Nov 15, 2005 8:58 pm

Character misbehavior

Post by KevinR »

As you might have seen from a previous topic (paragraph misbehavior) I am having a bit of a time with Mellal.

At the moment the problem is characters. I don't want to go into the command-b vs F2 dispute (but I think command-B is a part of the standard mac interface, and that ought to be respected. Ooops.). But the point is that having defined F2 to be bold (Regular character style; regular paragraph style which invokes the regular character style) still, no matter what I press (F2, command-b) or even if I choose Palette mainfont face-bold, the word will not embolden. I may be astonishingly obtuse, but even so, the idea that this simplest of text changes can be crippled inadvertently suggests that there are interface-design issues.

Advice? Suggestions?
Thank you
macsailor
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 367
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 1:10 pm
Location: Linköping, Sweden

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by macsailor »

What font are you using? Not all fonts have bold and I am not sure if Mellel supports faked bold.
Peter Edwardsson
..............................
Truth is not always popular, but it is always right.
KevinR
Got the auto-title mojo working
Posts: 22
Joined: Tue Nov 15, 2005 8:58 pm

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by KevinR »

A font from Linguists' Software. It DOES have italic and bold.
macsailor
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 367
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 1:10 pm
Location: Linköping, Sweden

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by macsailor »

KevinR wrote:A font from Linguists' Software. It DOES have italic and bold.
Ok, that’s fine. Good to have that sorted out.

Sorry, then I do not know what it might be.
Peter Edwardsson
..............................
Truth is not always popular, but it is always right.
jannuss
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 843
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 5:35 am
Location: Israel

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by jannuss »

KevinR wrote:having defined F2 to be bold (Regular character style; regular paragraph style which invokes the regular character style) still, no matter what I press (F2, command-b) or even if I choose Palette mainfont face-bold, the word will not embolden.
You have a font that includes bold face, but when you select text and click on Main Font/bold it doesn't change?

That's totally weird. I know some people have had problems defining the F-keys, but no one's reported total failure to change face variations.

Have you tried this with one of the standard out-of-the-box apple fonts [Lucida Grande]? Same results?

What happens when if you define a new character style with the face set to bold? Does that work?

Thought: look at your definition of the character style that's causing your problems. It's theoretically possible to define a style variation named "bold," but to set the face of that variation to "regular." Could you have done something like that?

Janet
DylanMuir
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 248
Joined: Tue Jan 30, 2007 11:31 am
Location: Institute of Neuroinformatics, Zürich

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by DylanMuir »

As an aside (to my forthcoming response), Mellel 2.6 now does respect cmd-B and cmd-I — both italics and bold are preserved across style assignments.

Now for your question: Perhaps you could upload a small file which exhibits the problem?

I have a question which I know is going to sound insulting, and for that I apologise profusely, but: character styles are only applied post-hoc to selected text. Are you selecting text and then changing the character style?

When you hit F2, does the listed character style change in the box at the top of the document window? In a new document, if you hit F2 and the listed character style does change, and you then type text, is that text also not correctly formatted?

I hope we can sort this out for you.

DRM
KevinR
Got the auto-title mojo working
Posts: 22
Joined: Tue Nov 15, 2005 8:58 pm

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by KevinR »

DylanMuir wrote:As an aside (to my forthcoming response), Mellel 2.6 now does respect cmd-B and cmd-I — b�h italics and bold are preserved across style assignments.
YES, THAT'S WHAT GOT BE STARTED WITH THE TESTING

Now for your question: Perhaps you could upload a small file which exhibits the problem?
I WENT TO UPLOAD THE FILE AND THE FILE I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON (SAVED AS OF TODAY 215PM) IS GREYED OUT!! WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THAT? BUT MEANWHILE, HERE IS ANOTHER SMALL FILE THAT IS EQUALLY UNRESPONSIVE. NOPE THAT IS GREYED OUT TOO. CAN YOU THINK OF A REASON WHY I CAN'T UPLOAD MY MELLEL FILES? LEOPARD AND SAFARI, LATEST VERSIONS OF BOTH.

I have a question which I kn[w is going to sound insulting, and for that I apologise profusely, but: character styles are only applied post-hoc to selected text. Are you selecting text and then changing the character style?

NO NO, DON'T APOLOGIZE. I REALIZE PEOPLE OVERLOOK DUMB THINGS. I NEVER HAVE, NOT ONCE, IN MY WHOLE LIFE, BUT I'M TOLD OTHERS DO.
YES, I SELECT THE WHOLE WORD THEN CHANGE THE CHARACTER STYLE. BUT I ALSO TRY CHANGING THE STYLE THEN TYPING A WORD. DITTO.

When you hit F2, does the listed character style change in the box at the top of the document window? In a new document, if you hit F2 and the listed character style does change, and you then type text, is that text also not correctly formatted? YES IT DOES CHANGE IN THE BOX AT THE TOP BUT THE FORM OF THE LETTERS DOES NOT CHANGE

I hope we can sort this out for you.
THANK YOU

DRM
ozean
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 322
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 12:28 pm
Location: Norway
Contact:

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by ozean »

To upload a Mellel file you first have to compress it. (This is because Mellel files are actually packages, that is they are folders that pretend to be single files. Many programs do not know about packages and see only folders – and you cannot upload a folder.)

To compress/zip a Mellel file you have to make a right-click or ctrl-click on it in the finder an then select Compress…

OT: Maybe it would be a good idea if Mellel would go the route that Apple went with iWork '09 and make their files flat? (I think in iWork they are actually just zipped folders anyway, so the solution would be pretty easy – and everybody could still access the contents of the Mellel file, e.g. image files, separately if they want to…)
KevinR
Got the auto-title mojo working
Posts: 22
Joined: Tue Nov 15, 2005 8:58 pm

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by KevinR »

Thanks. I didn't know that Mellel files were packages! Interesting.

Here's the test file
macsailor
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 367
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 1:10 pm
Location: Linköping, Sweden

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by macsailor »

KevinR wrote:Thanks. I didn't know that Mellel files were packages! Interesting.
Mellel changed their file format (from suffix .mel to to the xml driven suffix .mellel) some years ago and at the same time it changed to packages.
Peter Edwardsson
..............................
Truth is not always popular, but it is always right.
DylanMuir
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 248
Joined: Tue Jan 30, 2007 11:31 am
Location: Institute of Neuroinformatics, Zürich

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by DylanMuir »

I don't have either font installed on my machine. But when I look at the character style, I see you've chosen a secondary font (which says "Arabic typesetting" on my machine). The font faces for the character style variations for this secondary font are always set to "regular", even though the main font faces are set to bold, italic, etc. Mellel seems to be taking the secondary font face in preference to the primary font face.

I never use secondary fonts, so I'm not familiar with the way Mellel works here. Maybe someone with more experience could chime in? Is this a bug? How does one specify whether one wants to use the primary or secondary font at any given time?

DRM
jannuss
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 843
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 5:35 am
Location: Israel

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by jannuss »

DylanMuir wrote:I never use secondary fonts, so I'm not familiar with the way Mellel works here. Maybe someone with more experience could chime in? Is this a bug? How does one specify whether one wants to use the primary or secondary font at any given time?
Dylan, the secondary font is pegged to the keyboard. If you have an Arabic secondary font, it will become active automatically when you switch to the Arabic keyboard. [Keyboard switching is accomplished either via the "flag" menu or via keyboard shortcuts. All of this is set up in System Preferences/International.]

About bold font face using main & secondary fonts
1. ad hoc: you have to change both fonts (main and secondary) individually
2. keyboard shortcuts [cmd-b] change both fonts together
3. variation button in the character style menu: this may depend on how your character styles are defined. In my case, selecting variation=bold changes the main menu only
4. f-keys: I don't use f-keys, but I'm guessing that they work like the variation button, the result depends on how the character styles are defined.

does this help?

Janet
nicka
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 677
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 2:55 pm
Location: Oslo
Contact:

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by nicka »

Isn't the rule that if a character exists in the secondary font, that font will be used instead of the primary? (Please correct me if I'm wrong here -- I also don't use the secondary font feature.) If I am right, couldn't that be the source of the problem?
jannuss
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 843
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 5:35 am
Location: Israel

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by jannuss »

nicka wrote:Isn't the rule that if a character exists in the secondary font, that font will be used instead of the primary? (Please correct me if I'm wrong here -- I also don't use the secondary font feature.) If I am right, couldn't that be the source of the problem?
No, that most definitely is not the rule.

The choice of main or secondary font is entirely based on the keyboard in use.

For many of us who write non-Latin texts, the "secondary" font is actually the "primary" one -- terminology here is awkward.

I suspect that the source of the problem is in the character style definition. Add to that the apparent fact that selection of the bold face gives different results depending on the method of selection [f-keys, cmd-sequence, etc.].

I don't have time to play with this now. If you good people haven't found a solution by this afternoon, I'll see what I can come up with.

Janet
jannuss
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 843
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 5:35 am
Location: Israel

Re: Character misbehavior

Post by jannuss »

jannuss wrote:I don't have time to play with this now. If you good people haven't found a solution by this afternoon, I'll see what I can come up with.
OK, here's what I've done: I've crated a character style with both main and secondary fonts and defined style variations for each of the eight standard font faces in Mellel (base, bold, italic, bold italic, etc.)

1. ad hoc: obviously, when I go into the main and secondary palettes and change the faces ad hoc, everything works as requested.
2. variation in the Character Style palette: when I click one of the variations, I get the changes in both main and secondary fonts as requested
3. f-keys: I only have one f-key defined, but it changes the font variation as requested in both main and secondary fonts
4. cmd-b/cmd=i: do not change the font face according to the definitions in the character style. Instead, cmd-b produces bold only if the base font has a bold face.

Getting back to Kevin's initial problem . . . based on the text file he sent, it appears that he hasn't defined bold and italic faces for the secondary font. I suggest that Kevin define bold and italic for both main and secondary fonts and then try the test again.

Janet
Post Reply