Description: I want to define a character style which applies independently of the actual font size. For instance, the characters should be bold italic both in the running text (12 pt) and in footnotes (11 pt). Writer does not allow this; it forces me to specify a font size for a character style. Steps to Reproduce: 1. CTRL-F5 2. Right click 'Default Character Style' 3. New 4. Font 5. Family: Liberation 6. Style: Bold Italic 7. Size: Delete box content 8. Tab Actual Results: Writer supplies: 2 pt Expected Results: Size should be left unspecified. Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: Forcing 2 pt into the definition is a bug. More generally, a character style may specify just any character attribute, leaving all the others unspecified. Unless the style is hierarchically subordinate to another one from which it inherits properties, unspecified properties should be inherited contextually from the paragraph containing the character thus styled.
This is not a bug, but very awkward implementation. When you create a new character style from a selection without applied character styles and direct formatting, the new style contains no settings at all - you may see it in "Contains" on Organizer tab; but it will show you all fields populated with some data (as if these are set) - taken from some defaults maybe. That is confusing indeed; but the main problem here - just as with any style - is that you simply don't see which property is set *here in this style* (except looking at Organizer tab), and which is inherited/defaulted. Your steps should had not include step 7 to do what you needed. You modified the control, which didn't do what you thought it did - you imagined that removing the value of control means "no value set", while it means "zero", and normalized to minimal allowed value. The new value differed from the original, which meant "I set this setting in this style". So your modification of the value was processed correctly - you just should not had done that modification. If you need to change a style which already had the size set, then you should include step 4.5: "press Standard button to reset all controls on the tab to inherited values before setting Family and Style in steps 5 and 6". *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 88559 ***
Thanks, this did work. As long as this "awkward implementation" remains in vigor, it seems to be a case for an explanation in Help.