> I think there would be some value in my original assertion: that nested
> styles in a paragraph were allowed, with the child overriding only the
> font attributes of the parent. But I'm not sure it would be worth the
> complexity, especially if it is not needed for loss-less transfer of
> formatting between AbiWord and other word processors.
You need to maintain a distinction between paragraph and
characters styles. You should not be able to have two para styles
applied to the same paragraph, that beats the very purpose of
styles, i.e., a set of formating is represented by a single name;
merging multiple paragraph styles would have the same effect as
formating without styles; if you need to apply formating that
corresponds to a union of two existing styles, you create a new
style with such formating.
Further, if you only allow the font formating to be changed/merged,
then really you should use a character style for the second style,
that is why there are two types of styles. In Word's behaviour,
which I thing is very sensible, the character style overrides the
paragraph style.
I use styles extensively, and in my view Word's concept of styles
is difficult to improve on: it is simple, unambiguous, and allows you
carry out a uniform change of appearance in a 300 page doc in a
few mouse clicks.
with best regards
Tomas
