Precautions in editing existing formats and styles

Build 1501 on 14/Nov/2017  This topic last edited on: 26/Oct/2016, at 16:05

It is possible to edit any text formatting element in the system.

_caution Warning: be careful when editing existing formatting elements, because improper changes can seriously compromise the functioning of GN4 text formatting. Export the formats and style libraries in files before proceeding, so you can reload them in case of problems, restoring in such way the working configuration.

The most common problem in applying the changed formats and styles is the appearance of justification errors on text or pages which use to be error-free before the changes.

hmtoggle_plus1Example

A text was created by user Jack on February, 13 and it was formatted by the format Body which contained libraries of styles J, BodyStd and BodySpec, and in particular, the 2nd paragraph of the text was tagged by the style with the tag name by24 and the style name "Byline" stored in the library BodyStd. The text was saved in the private folder of the user Jack and almost forgotten there.

On February, 25 user Jack opens the text and justifies it without any problem and closes it again. On February 27, the art director Jim decides to replace the style by24, stored in the library BodyStd with the style with the tag name by24a, keeping the same style name. So he deletes the style by24a and creates the new style by24a. Actually, he believes that the users will never notice the slight change applied of the byline, so everything will work seamlessly, especially because the style name in the style catalog remained the same. And it is true for all the users, except for Jack - when on February 28 he opens again his text, a justification error message pops up and the text cannot be justified any more. Why? Because the 2nd paragraph of the text contains the tag by24 which does not exist any more, therefore it cannot be interpreted!

The point is following: any tag which is present in any GN4 text, must remain available with the same tag name, same number and type of parameters for all the lifetime of such text.