Table of Contents
Advertisement
10
H o w e l e m e n t s i n h e r i t f o r m a t t i n g i n f o r m a t i o n
Element (Container): Head
General rule: <TEXT>
Text format rules
By using context-dependent format rules, you don't need to define and maintain a separate
paragraph format for each place in which an element can occur.
Any part of an element's formatting information can be inherited from an ancestor's
definition. For example, you might want to indent a Section element and its descendants
when it is nested within another Section. You could specify the change in indentation
once, in a format rule for Section, and the descendants of Section would inherit this
information:
Element (Container): Section
General rule: Head, (Para | List)+, Section*
Text format rules
To write text format rules that are easy to maintain, you should normally define as little
formatting information as possible in each element definition and let the elements inherit
whatever properties they share with their ancestors. Using inheritance judiciously can
greatly simplify your format rules.
The only table-part elements that can contain text are table titles and cells. Although you
can write format rules for table, heading, body, footing, and row elements, in these cases
the rules specify text formatting only for their descendant titles and cells.
In a document, if an end user applies a different paragraph format to an element or applies
formatting changes to an element, the changes are considered format rule overrides. When
the user re-imports element definitions, he or she can either leave the overrides as they are
or remove the overrides so that the formatting in elements with text conforms to the text
format rules.
How elements inherit formatting information
In a typical document, many elements can not only use the same paragraph format but also
share changes to the format. Text formatting in FrameMaker is hierarchical, which means
that elements can inherit all or part of their formatting information from ancestors. This lets
you control common formatting information in parent elements.
Structure Application Developer's Guide
Element paragraph format: head
1. Count ancestors named: Section
If level is: 1
No additional formatting.
Else, if level is: 2
Default font properties
Size: 14pt
1. If context is: Section
Basic properties
Move left indent by: +0.5"
The base paragraph format for
all Head elements
If a Head appears in a second-
level Section, the format rule
changes the point size to 14.
If a Section is nested, the
Section and its descendants
are indented .5 inch for each
level of nesting.
127
Advertisement
Table of Contents
