Style Types

All styles in HelpSmith are divided into the following types: text styles, paragraph styles, and list styles.

The type of a style specifies what kind of information is stored in it. So a text style stores font information such as font name, font color, size, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough attributes, etc.; a paragraph style stores text alignment, line spacing, and so on. Similarly, a list style specifies settings of bulleted or numbered lists.

Reserved Styles

For you convenience, HelpSmith has a predefined set of reserved styles (Heading1, Heading2, Heading3, Normal, Hyperlink, Active Hyperlink). You can modify settings of reserved styles, but cannot delete them.

Automatically Created Styles

HelpSmith's word processor is completely style-based. This means that there's no difference between when you apply font, paragraph, or list settings by using traditional tools such as the Formatting toolbar, and when you set those settings by applying styles. In the first case, HelpSmith simply creates new styles or links an existing style to the selected text. Automatically created styles (which do not have the User Style attribute checked) may be deleted by HelpSmith from the project when become unused. However, user-styles can only be deleted by the user.

Also, when you apply attributes by using the Formatting toolbar to the text which already has a style that was created automatically, HelpSmith will create a new independent automatical style. However, if the text has a user style applied, the new automatical style will be created as a sub-style of this user style. In other words, the user style will be used as the base style for the new one.