4 replies to this topic

[jamierob]

Hi All-

I'm having a lot of trouble understanding how Adobe Illustrator (CS4) manages character styles imported from different ai documents. If I create all character styles in a single .ai document and only use them in in that document, everything works as expected--colors, fonts, and typography settings are maintained in the character style, and newly added text can be quickly styled with the character style.

My trouble starts when i want to re-use those character styles in a new map .ai document. From the character style menu I use the option to import the character styles from another document, and they import correctly--all of the styles work and style text as expected. But then i save & close the document and re-open it to find that the character style entries are there, but the fills and strokes are all messed up--fonts, sizes, typography settings are maintained, but styles with a blue fill are suddenly filed with black, or some other color. I haven't been able to recognize a pattern..

So, why is this happening? Has anyone else experienced this issue? My hunch is that it's a problem with the 'Normal character style' being different in the two documents, as i've read that all character styles are based off of the 'normal' character style. But, i've tried a test making sure that the 'normal' character style was consistent between the two documents and i've still experienced the issue.

What would be TOTALLY amazing is if Illustrator had a way to read all character styles, graphic styles, etc. from a master stylesheet document (much like a linked CSS file on a website), and not actually copy them around to each individual ai document. Any .ai scripters out there want a challenge?

Thanks in advance for any insight on this extremely frustrating problem!

[cartdeco]

Font colour, as defined in your character styles, is defined from the colour swatches palette. For your colours to come across correctly when importing character styles, you should also import the colour swatches from the same file.

I agree, it is a pain to import character styles, swatches, graphic styles, brushes, symbols independently. I usually create a template with all of these features and open the template file when creating maps with consistent features and styles. Note also, if you're a MAPublisher user, that templates also store any MAP selection filters, MAP Views, MAP Themes, etc which can greatly speed up production.

[jamierob]

Hello- Wow, it's been a long time since i've been on this forum, but i like the updates! I'm still having issues managing character styles between Illustrator documents, and was wondering if anyone had any ideas on what i'm doing wrong. Basically, I have a stylesheet document containing all of my swatches, character styles, etc, and i want to re-use those styles in other illustrator documents. My problem is that when i import those character styles, the fill colors change to black after saving the illustrator document after the second time i open it.. very curious. This happens even if i import the swatches referenced in the character styles as well. 

 

I've uploaded a short video (watch at 720p) showing the process i've been going through. If anyone can pick out where i'm going wrong, i would be so grateful. Also, i forgot to mention in the video, but both the stylesheet document and the new documents both have the AI default 'Normal Character Style' of 12pt Myriad Pro. 

 

Thanks!

 

-Jamie Robertson

[canvas101]

Hello Jamie,

 

Same problem here (Win 64bit). I have been having to reapply and double check everything after the fact. In my opinion it appears this is an application issue.

 

Regards

[jamierob]

It looks like this might be an incredibly unfortunate application bug. I've started another thread on the adobe forums for this issue, and others are replicating the issue as well. http://forums.adobe....155289?tstart=0