error in paragraph styles on export through Pathway

[Natasha Warner]

I'm exporting a dictionary and reversal dictionary from FLEx using Pathway.  Before exporting, I use the Tools: Configure: Dictionary and Tools: Configure: Reversal Index dialog boxes to set up the correct format for each field.  In both Dictionary and Reversal Index, I have the field Lexical Relations: Abbreviation set to a new user-defined style "New Character 3" that should be 10 point font, no bold or italics.  I've checked, and it's set to the same thing for both Dictionary and Reversal Index.

I do the export, and in the resulting document in Open Office, the Lexical Relations Abbreviation shows up in the Mutsun-English dictionary in 10 point bold italics, but in the English-Mutsun reversal index as 10 point plain font. 

I've had problems with the export process or Open Office overriding the formatting settings before, so what I normally do in this situation is to put the cursor in the offending field within the Open Office document and right click, and choose Edit Paragraph Style. I change it to what it's supposed to be, and normally this works to change the font for that field type throughout the document, but for no other field types.  However, in this case, when I do "edit paragraph style" for the Lexical Relation Abbreviation in the Mutsun-English dictionary, the paragraph style thinks the font already is 10 point plain text, even though Open Office itself clearly reflects that it's 10 point bold italic according to the information in the ribbon at the top of the window.  If I try to use Edit Paragraph Style to change the font to actually be 10 point bold italic just as a test, it affects the entire entry, not just the Lexical Relations Abbreviation field.  I have not seen Open Office do that with an exported dictionary before (failing to recognize that a paragraph style applies to a particular field, not to everything).

Does anyone know how I could go about getting the Lexical Relation Abbreviation to be 10 point plain text, as I've set it to in the export settings, given that editing the paragraph style after export isn't solving the problem?  My version of FLEx is 8.1.4.  Is this likely to be something that's been fixed since then?

[Andreas_Joswig]

Dear Natasha,
I have encountered similar glitches while exporting from Fieldworks via Pathway into LibreOffice (I don't think it matters much whether you are using LibreOffice or OpenOffice). For me the problem is that LibreOffice seems to ignore the correct font for Ethiopic characters, and uses an unsuitable replacement font. For quite some time I struggled how to fix it, until a colleague helped me with that.

You are doing almost everything right. Highlight a word in OpenOffice that you want to have in a different font or style. On the styles and formatting sidebar, you will see the paragraph style that applies for this particular entry. But since you do not want to change the whole paragraph, but only the font of a particular section, you need to click on the Character Styles button on the styles and formatting sidebar. You will now see a different choice of styles, one of them highlighted to indicate the one used for this particular bit of information of your dictionary. Pathway has assigned a different character style to each and every bit of information in your entries, and you can manipulate them individually.

Now, with your and my problem, it should work to right-click on the correct button, and then change the style as you want it; but as you observed, something is wrong here. So you need to change the formatting for your highlighted bit of text manually, in your case taking out the italics by clicking on the italics button on the formatting bar. When this is done, on the styles and formatting sidebar, click on the New Style From Selection button, and choose update style from the drop-down menu. This should fix your formatting throughout the dictionary, and set your character style for this bit of information straight. At least it does that for me in LibreOffice.
I hope this helps!
Andreas

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[GregT]

Ms Warner,

Thanks so much for your query. You basically have the steps right although some clarifications might be needed.

1. The FieldWorks development team is in the process of improving the export which is projected for the 8.3 release. It is to be available for alpha testing later this month.

2. The latest stable release (8.2.5 or maybe 8.2.6 which may come out today) does not export the style information for the custom character style so as you can see, Pathway cannot display this automatically.

3. Your process for post editing is basically right but needs minor clarification. I am attaching a screenshot:
https://goo.gl/photos/yWdXzxkPg92EcSUJ7
3a. Pressing F11 brings up the style panel which I have chosen to dock on the right side of my Libre Office window.
3b. clicking the T (circled in green) displays text style formatting.
3c. Clicking the a (circled in purple) displays the character styles (as opposed to paragraph or some other style list). You refer to paragraph styles in your query and that may be the source of the formatting not being applied to just the field you want.
3d. clicking on a lexical relation abbreviation (circled in orange) will cause the style for that relation to be highlighted in the list of styles on the style pane. (Note that I have chosen Applied styles in the drop down at the bottom of the style pane as it reduces the number of displayed styles to just the ones that matter.)
3e. Right click on the highlighted style name and choose Modify from the pop up menu. This will bring up a dialog allowing you to change the font from bold italic to regular. When you close the dialog the style is applied to the various abbreviations throughout the document (at least it was for me).

I hope this helps and let us know if you need more clarification.

-Greg

[Natasha Warner]

Thanks very much for both of your replies!  This worked just fine for several fields that needed the font fixed.  The remaining problem is the Grammar Note field on sub-entries in the reversal index, which somehow has gotten assigned to the "Default" character style.  I can't edit the default.  I'm having trouble getting Open Office to re-assign a different character style to that field.  Is there a way to do this, or to avoid the Grammar Note for sub-entries in the reversal index being assigned to Default style?  Thanks again.

[GregT]

I looked at the export of Grammatical Note. As you said in your message, Flex does not export this field in XHTML. It inserts a bit of XML in the output stream. So it comes out as the default style in Libre Office. Hopefully with Pathway supports version 8.3 of Flex, these problems will be resolved.

For the time being, it is necessary to preprocess the Pathway input correcting the issue. You can do that using this file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzU-ZU9yEuc5YVZ1ZFNuLWVsSHc/view?usp=sharing
It should be downloaded and then copied to:the folder:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\SIL\Pathway\Dictionary
where <username> is replaced with your user name. On my system, the name of the downloaded file is:
Remove Extraneous Grammar Note Tag.xsl

After this file is in place, when you export the data from Flex using Pathway. In the Export Through Pathway dialog, Click the More... button and then the Processing Options tab. On the Processing Options tab, you will see Remove Extraneous Grammar Note Tag as one of the Processing Transformations. Click so there is a check next to this processing Transformation. Then when you complete the export to Libre Office, you will find the default style is no longer the style attached to the Grammar Note. So you can follow the procedure given in the previous message to modify its style.

Hopefully this will allow you to get the styles attached to all your data. It is somewhat infrequent for users to output the Grammar Note field and want to attach a style. But with this procedure, it should be possible. When 8.3 is released and Pathway is updated to work with the output of 8.3 (which may take a couple of months), then hopefully these kind of processes won't be necessary anymore.

[Natasha Warner]

Thanks for the detailed reply and help!

Natasha