Style sheets are features in desktop publishing programs that store and apply formatting to text. Style sheet is a form of separation of presentation and content: it creates a separate abstraction to keep the presentation isolated from the text data.
Style sheets are a common feature in most popular desktop publishing and word processing programs, including Corel Ventura, Adobe InDesign, Scribus, PageMaker, QuarkXPress, WordPerfect, and Microsoft Word, though they may be referenced using slightly different terminology.
Individual styles are created by users and can include a variety of commands that determine how the selected text section is formatted:
- Typeface or font
- Boldfacing
- Italicizing
- Underlining
- Justification (left, right, center, justify, force justify)
- Spacing before and after paragraph
- Tabs stop and indent
- Type in size
- Lead
- Kerning
- Track
- Colors
- Borders or strokes
- Superscript or subscript
- Dropcaps
- Uppercase
- Strike through
- Sort font style
In most programs with style sheets, there is a window or menu listing the style sheet associated with the user with the document. For example, newspapers may have a style sheet for the text of their story called "Copy of body" which sets the type at 10 point Nimrod with 11 leading points and a justified majors.
Most programs allow users to name their own style. Usually a memorable name is used which describes what style is used for. Common names may include "title," "sub-heading" and "byline."
To apply a style to a text section, most programs allow the user to select text with their mouse and then click on the desired style in the style bar.
Style sheets help the publication maintain consistency, so common elements like story text, [[title]] and [[byline]] always appear the same. Style sheets also help save time that allows a designer to click once instead of having to apply each element one by one and risk using the wrong value.
Finally, style sheets are also useful if a publication decides to make changes to the design - say, make the story text slightly smaller. A user with proper administrative access can make changes to the master style sheet and then "send" the revised style sheet to all users, so changes are automatically reflected.
Some programs split style sheets into two classes: paragraphs and characters.
A paragraph style sheet is applied to the entire paragraph while character styles are applied to only a select number of characters. Character style is useful when the user needs to format only a small part of a paragraph. For example, a newspaper can publish a list of current movies by starting with a movie name in bold, without a serif letter. Then, without starting a new paragraph, the review begins in standard story text format. In this case, the designer can highlight the movie title and select the appropriate character style to apply formatting to the title only. The remainder of the paragraph can then be organized independently.
More advanced layout programs allow users to format more complicated paragraphs with single-paragraph styles. Using our movie review example above, let's say the newspaper always places a colon after the movie title and runs the 10-minute short film as one big story. In this case, the force can be programmed to apply bold, sans serif at the beginning of a new paragraph until it finds a colon. After colon, the style switches to the standard story text style. Therefore, the designer can highlight the entire collection and apply only one style that will automatically format the entire story without having to go through and apply separate character styles for each of the 10 reviews.
Some scorewriters, including MuseScore and Sibelius, apply style sheets to control the appearance and layout of sheet music.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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