If I go to redefine the style, it doesn’t seem to give an option as to whether it will retain the color of the font or default to black. Is there a way to get it to retain the same color?
Like any other style definition, pretty much:
- format the text the way you want it to look
- click in the text and define (or redefine) the style
- select
save all formattingin the dropdown if you want to, you know, save all formatting - select
save character attributesif you want to do that - either way, the text color will be part of the style
It seems like what you’re saying is regardless of what I do to define the style, there is no way to not make the current font color of the selected text a part of the style.
That has not been my experience.
I have a number of styles created, and if I change a line of text to a different style, it always retains the color of that text. It does not default it to a color saved in the formatting/character attributes of when that style was created.
However, if I add emphasis, the font color defaults to black. If I am using a revision color, that makes the text multicolored, which is not in any way what I want, and probably not what anyone wants.
If I redefine a typical style I’m given the option to either ‘save paragraph style’ or ‘save all formatting’.
But if I try to redefine Emphasis, I don’t get all those choices. It says ‘saves character attributes’, and that is apparently that. No choice.
Except that the color of the font that I am applying Emphasis to is sometimes a revision color. Is not the color of the text in a revision color a ‘character attribute’? It seems like it’s claiming that it saves all character attributes yet it is not saving the attribute that makes that text the color it is when using a revision color.
So what am I missing here?
What I’m looking for is a way to apply emphasis without defaulting the text color to black, which hopefully implies that there is a way to accomplish this.
I did not say that.
And the option to save character attributes. That includes text color.
It is not, I think. Revision coloring is done in a different way. If it were only a character attribute, you couldn’t tell Scrivener to turn off revision highlights easily.
That may be what you’re missing.
Your statement: “… either way, the text color will be part of the style” seems to imply pretty precisely what I said, which is that there is no way to not make the current font color of the selected text a part of the style. That seems to support my point.
If I’ve jumped to a conclusion here, I apologize, but it’s not at all clear what has been said.
But here are the options given when redefining a typical style other than Emphasis:
As you can plainly see, there is no option to save character attributes, and there is no option to save the color of the text, only the color of a highlight box.
In this style I chose ‘Save paragraph style’, and that seems to not include the color, at least the color does not change when I invoke the style.
‘Save all formatting’ is vague. We can’t know if that includes the attribute of color or not, but I don’t select that option anyway, and neither of these two options are available when attempting to redefine Emphasis. That dialog box only says that all attributes are saved. We are not given a choice.
That is the point here, and everything else is beside the point.
Yet your other quote referencing me speaking about redefining a typical style says ‘and the option to save character attributes. That includes text color’.
I don’t think it’s possible to have it both ways. This is a binary single-factor condition. Saving character attributes which may include text color either is possible or it isn’t possible, and in the dialog box, Scrivener is apparently saying it isn’t, by not offering the option of ‘Saving character attributes’.
When terminology is vague and we are not sure which options will deliver certain aspects, the solution is to simply try them all. I have tried them all, or at least all of ones before me. None of them have delivered. Applying emphasis from the style menu still turns the text to black, every time.
So what I am looking for is the option to not have that turn the font to black which may not be intuitively obvious, which is what I’m asking help for.
No way except to NOT use save all formatting or save character attributes. That leaves another choice (save paragraph formatting) that doesn’t include the text color in the style. I think I was very clear.
I am wondering why your screenshot shows only two choices in the dropdown, mine shows 3. It may be caused by putting your cursor in text marked for a revision color, and again, revision coloring isn’t done with simple character attributes. Revisions are based on a behind-the-scenes style architecture.
I suspect, as I said above and was implied in the previous post, that you’re trying to save the revision color as a style, and that doesn’t work. That is, you can’t do it by selecting text with a revision marking. I’ll test that theory, when I get around to it, but it matches your experience (if you’re doing what I think you’re doing).
But I know you can select text elsewhere, give it any color, and define a new style based on it.
We could work this out in a Zoom session, if you like.
That’s not the explanation after all, or at least it doesn’t happen that way here. I find that I do see 3 options, and I can save the revision color using save character attributes, so I’m in the dark on what is going wrong for you.
I have a style called emphasis that I use ALL the time, I have been for a year, and it displays blue text in the Editor, so I know this works.
No time just now, but I sincerely appreciate it.
Let’s see if the expert gurus can explain this first.
Interesting how your dialog box looks different than mine (which does not include that option). I guess it may have to do with the fact of the cursor being in a revision color or in a piece of text that is styled, but I just did a little experiment by placing the cursor in unstyled text without a revision color, and that did not make that option show up in the dialog box.
Maybe you are on Windows? I’m on macOS Monterey 12.2
No one can explain it without knowing precisely what you are doing and how, which I do not believe is possible in a chat session like this.
I’m guru enough to suss out whether you’re doing something that doesn’t match what I’m doing – if anything – or verify that you’re doing the right thing and getting the wrong result.
I’m on Monterey 12.3.1 and Scrivener 3.2.3 (but my emphasis style has been working a long time).
Actually, I’ve worked pretty hard to be crystal clear in describing what I’m doing. One would have to be not reading closely to not understand what I’m saying.
Are you on an Intel Mac or an M1 Mac? Maybe something about the M1 prevents this third option.
Hmmm. If I attempt to redefine an existing paragraph style (or paragraph+character style), there are only the two options “Save paragraph style” and “Save all formatting”. This seems to work as intended.
(Add: drmajorbob’s screenshot shows the creation of a new style.)
It does work as intended.
But if you try to redefine Emphasis, it works completely differently. Neither of those options are available.
I think it is technically in a different category. Styles typically at the top of the list are usually paragraph styles, and this is indeed how those work. Emphasis is a character style.
The central question is this: ‘How can we apply a character style such as Emphasis without that defaulting the text back to black when it is written in a revision Color?’
This would be the case if you try to redefine a character style. Same here.
Regarding your other question, I need to test something. Give me a minute. Or two.
And therein lies the problem. There appears to be no solution to this problem. That makes it no less an annoying problem.
Well, the good news is: I see what you mean. The (character) style messes up the color. It even stays that “wrong” after applying “no style”. That’s not what I would’ve expected. The bad news is: Either it’s a bug or… I’m using it wrong, too.
I usually don’t use any revision colors, so this was unexpected. Why would a style, that’s not even supposed to contain this information (color), set some random color on text, that is supposed to get its color information assigned via its “structure” (revision level)? 
Welcome to my world.
I just discovered something else: if you highlight text (give it a background color using that function in the main toolbar) and then apply Emphasis, the highlight disappears.
That honestly also does not seem like the way things should work.
I agree. Makes no sense. Maybe some friendly L&L staff is able to enlighten us.
Styles that save character settings, i.e. those that save “character attributes” or “all formatting” (paragraph attributes + character attributes), save the state of all character attributes—text colour, highlight colour, weight, italic, underline, baseline, etc.—and will apply that to the selected text. Only the font itself and the font size can be separated out (and these can be saved even in a paragraph-only style). So applying a character stye isn’t the same as toggling the setting for one single bit of formatting, like switching to an italics letter variant, but it applies all the character formatting that was present in the text used to create the style.
Section 15.6.2 The Basics of Styles in the user manual goes into more detail on this for the different style types.
The missing “Save character attributes” option in the formatting dropdown is from this being the Redefine style panel, rather than creating a new style. Paragraph styles can’t be switched to character-only styles, and character-only styles like the built-in “Emphasis” can’t add paragraph attributes at all (so there’s no popup shown in the panel; instead it says simply “Saves character attributes”). The style being redefined in the screenshot is currently a paragraph style and can’t switch to become a character-only style. (Think about the text throughout the project that already may have the style applied and how it—and surrounding text in the paragraph—would be affected if, for instance, a character style suddenly applied paragraph settings.)
Text colour is saved as part of the character attributes and not a separate setting.
Revision mode on Mac simply colours the text the same as you would apply a text colour manually, so yes, the colour is a character attribute. (It’s why, as the manual explains, it’s important not to change the colour you’re using for a revision level midway through a project, because the only way Scrivener can identify the revision state is by matching the text colour.) You can create a character style from text currently marked First Revision and it will save the red text colour and apply that when the style is applied, and the text will be recognized as part of that revision level.
So to go back to the main point: You can select some red, italicised text that looks the way you want emphasised text to appear and redefine the character style “Emphasis”, and it will save that red colour. It will also update all text in the project that already has the “Emphasis” style applied, so it will all become red. If that’s not what you want, you may rather create a new character style (“Emphasis Rev1” or what have you) that you can use to keep the revised colour in the text for now.
With that, removing the revision colour in the text would also remove it from the styled text in the editor. Once you no longer need the red emphasis style, you could redefine the style to use black. Alternatively, you can ensure it compiles black rather than red by either overriding the style in the compile format or, if you don’t need any text colours, simply ticking the Remove text color option under the gear pane. (All this assuming you’re compiling to a format that even uses text colour!)
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Mea culpa, I didn’t test it, thinking the OP must have done and found it didn’t work.
It’s clear why he can’t change Emphasis to a ¶a style, but I have no idea why he couldn’t save a color when redefining it. I changed my blue emphasis to red just now, with no problems.
I don’t believe in alchemy. I’ve never once considered trying to change a paragraph style to a character style or vice versa, just like I’ve never believed you can change lead into gold.
The reason the dialog box for a paragraph style came up in conversation was ONLY to show how different it was from that of the dialog box of a character style, and that the character style dialog box does not include an option to save the color or not save the color, while the paragraph style dialog box does. That’s it. That’s all.
All I was trying to do was show how they are different, and questioning why that ability to not change the color was not available. That has either not been explained or has not been explained anywhere close to clearly.
I also am not really that interested in creating six different Emphasis styles to match revision colors, trying to keep them all straight, and having to invoke them from the menu rather than from keyboard shortcuts, of which there never would be enough. That seems completely unmanageable, so I never considered that.
That is in no way a good or practical solution to this problem.
The question on the table that seems to be being avoided is still the same question:
’How can one configure Emphasis to not change the color of the font?'
It really is just that simple.