Styles continually misbehaving

[JohnWasilewski]

TextMaker Professional 2021 (rev S1014.0529) 64bit

I am continually having all kinds of problems with styles, in which TM fails to format both paragraphs and characters in accordance with saved styles. This occurs both when

• TM shows that paragraph and/or character styles are shown already as attributes of a block of text, but the text is not formatted with the indicated styles, and when

• I select a block of text, then select a style, then click on the 'Apply' button, and TM then fails to apply the selected style

TM is displaying paragraphs, one after another, all with the same style assignments but with different formatting.

I have tried selecting one of the blocks of text that ARE formatted correctly to the required paragraph or character style, then updating the style from the selected text. When, after doing this, I try again to apply the intended style to incorrectly formatted text, it still doesn't work.

A common problem is when TM indicates that a block of text has been assigned a certain style, but TM fails to format it to that style, and all my repeated attempts to apply that intended style to the text produce no effect, here is something I have found that sometimes works, as a 'workaround': (1) Starting with the style assigned that I want but don't have in the test as formatted, I apply a different style to the offending block of text. This often cause all styles to disappear, leaving just a blank list. I correct this by switching from Para styles to Char styles then back to Para styles (or the other way round). (2) I then change the style back again to the one I want. This seems quite often to force TM to format the text to match the selected style.

To put together a report like this, I have to draft the report, prepare and save screenshots, then load them into the report, then submit the draft in order to obtain a URL, then prepare an email, attach the document, and my sminfo.txt file, paste into the email the forum-report URL, then revert to the draft forum report, enter the email date, time and subject, and finally submit the forum report. This is very time-consuming, but I do it because I use SMO, I like it, I want it to be fixed so everything works, and I N E E D it to work properly because I use it for heavy and complex report-writing.

I have encountered a great many problems with styles, sometimes as described above, sometimes as variants of what I describe, and I simply don't have the time to give separate reports, with examples and copy documents, for each one. I hope SM can manage, therefore, with just this one report about misbehaving styles, as an aide to thoroughly investigating and correcting all the bugs in Styles functions.

Please see the file I have emailed. Email details are:
from: John Wasilewski <john@wasilewski.co.uk>
to: forum@softmaker.de
date: 5 Jun 2020, 13:05 [UK time GMT+1]
subject: Files for SMO2121 TM Linux forum report: 'Styles continually misbehaving'

Please now look at the attached screenshot.

By clicking on the text in each of footnotes 7, 8 and 9, one can see that TM shows all three as having Char Style 'Footnote Text', but only footnote 9 is correctly formatted to its listed style.

I accept that this might be because something I did caused the font type and size in the 'Footnote Text' style to be overwritten with a different typeface. BUT, selecting all the text in footnote 8, then selecting the Footnote Text style, then clicking on APPLY, will not change the text format to match the selected style. Also, selecting the text in footnote 9, then selecting style 'Footnote Text', and then right-clicking to 'Update from selection', will ALSO fail to correct the error.

This is all very frustrating when I am trying to do a lot of work with TM2121, so I really really hope it can be fixed very soon.
---
John

[SuperTech]

Thanks for reporting this problem and for your time and efforts. I was able to reproduce it and forwarded the details to our development team.

This often cause all styles to disappear, leaving just a blank list.

We already reported this to our developer team. I forwarded this again now.

then revert to the draft forum report, enter the email date, time and subject, and finally submit the forum report.

This part is actually not required. You can simply post your problem here with screenshot and send an email(if required) with document and forum post URL.

[SuperTech]

1. The character style 'Footnote text' is based on the 'footnote sign' char style but doesn't contain any extra formatting. It's assigned to footnote 7 and 8.

2. Footnote 7 contains hard formatted text (probably to compensate for #1), applying a new paragraph style should not remove the formatting.

3. Footnote 8 is the same.

4. Footnote 9 has the 'Normal' paragraph style applied, here setting the paragraph style works

Solution:
- Remove the hard formatting in Footnote 7 and 8: select all and call Format/Standard (Ctrl-space)
- Format the footnote markers again by applying the character style 'Footnote reference'
- Then apply the paragraph style 'Footnote text'

Thanks