Modifying the Appearance of Characters
To modify the appearance of individual characters or words within a paragraph, you can use Style Designer to adjust the appearance of any character styles used in the source documents. This process allows you to optimize styles for print, using the styles in the source documents, and optimize the content for online presentation using the styles defined in ePublisher.
The Prototype Style for Characters
The Prototype style is the parent to all other styles. When you set a property for the Prototype character style, other character styles inherit the value of that property. You can then override that value for specific styles as needed. The Prototype character style allows you to quickly change a default property and apply that change to all character styles within your Stationery project.
Depending on how you organized your styles in Style Designer, you may not have one style as the parent style on which all others are based. The Prototype style ensures that each of your styles has a parent style within your Stationery project.
Setting the Background Color of a Character
In terms of the CSS box model, the background for a style refers to the background of the content and the padding areas. If you increase the padding for a style, the background color area for that style also increases.
To set the background color of a character
  1. Open your Stationery design project.
  2. On the View menu, click Style Designer.
  3. In Character Styles, select the character style you want to modify.
  4. On the Properties tab, click Background.
  5. In the Color field, select a color from the list, or specify the RGB value of a color, such as #FFFFFF.
Setting the Border Style and Color of Characters
Borders are lines that can be drawn around any or all of the four sides of a style. In terms of the CSS box model, increasing the padding for a style increases the space between the content and the border.
Not all browsers display border styles the same way. For example, some browsers may not differentiate dotted lines from solid lines. The size and spacing of the dots in a dotted line may also be different between various browsers and operating systems.
To set the border style and color of a character
  1. Open your Stationery design project.
  2. On the View menu, click Style Designer.
  3. In Character Styles, select the character style you want to modify.
  4. On the Properties tab, click Border.
  5. Click the tab for the side of the character you want to display a border, and then specify the color, style, and width for that border. For more information about a property, click Help.
Setting the Font for a Character
Setting fonts for online output is an important step in making sure your content is properly displayed for your audience. Because many browsers and help systems use only the fonts available on the user's computer, you may not be able to use specific fonts, such as Times New Roman, as some computers may not have those fonts installed. You can specify a font family, such as sans-serif, to ensure a font of a similar type is used on each computer. You can also specify multiple fonts, separated by commas, to allow the browser to display the first available font.
To set the font of a character
  1. Open your Stationery design project.
  2. On the View menu, click Style Designer.
  3. In Character Styles, select the character style you want to modify.
  4. On the Properties tab, click Font.
  5. Specify the family, size, style, and other properties you want to modify. For more information about a property, click Help.
Adjusting the Space Around Characters
You can adjust the white space in all directions around characters by adjusting the margin and the padding. You can also adjust horizontal spacing by adjusting the kerning.
In terms of the CSS box model, modifying the padding property adjusts the space inside the border area. For example, if you create a border or background color for a character and you increase the size of the padding, the border moves away from the character.
Modifying the margin properties adjusts the space outside the border area. For example, if you create a border or background color for a character and you increase the size of the margins around the character, the border remains the same distance from the character. However, the position of the character changes since there is more white space between the modified character and other elements on the page.
To set the margin, padding, and kerning of a character
  1. Open your Stationery design project.
  2. On the View menu, click Style Designer.
  3. In Character Styles, select the character style you want to modify.
  4. On the Properties tab, click Margin.
  5. Specify a value and select the unit of measure for the Left, Right, Top, and Bottom margin properties.
  6. On the Properties tab, click Padding.
  7. Specify a value and select the unit of measure for the Left, Right, Top, and Bottom padding properties.
  8. On the Properties tab, click Text.
  9. In the Letter spacing field, specify a value and select the unit of measure to adjust the kerning. For more information about a property, click Help.
Setting the Color and Other Characteristics of Characters
In general, ePublisher generates output based on the properties of the content from the original source documents. You can modify the appearance of your online content without modifying your source documents. The text properties allow you to modify several important characteristics of characters:
  • Color
  • Kerning between letters and words
  • Underlining, overlining, and strikethrough text
  • Vertical alignment to create subscripts and superscripts
To set the text characteristics of a character
  1. Open your Stationery design project.
  2. On the View menu, click Style Designer.
  3. In Character Styles, select the character style you want to modify.
  4. On the Properties tab, click Text.
  5. Specify the appropriate values on the text-related properties, such as Color and Letter spacing. For more information about a property, click Help.
Modifying Characters for Bidirectional Languages
In some documents, such as those written with the Arabic or Hebrew script, and in some mixed-language contexts, text within a single paragraph may appear with mixed directionality. For example, some characters are read from left to right, while others within the paragraph may be read from right to left. This phenomenon is called bidirectionality, or bidi for short.
If a document contains right-to-left characters, and if the browser can display the language with the proper character set, the browser must apply the bidirectional algorithm. If you prefer to control the handling of a particular phrase, you can apply a character style to that phrase and then define the character style with the Direction and Unicode Bidi properties.
To set the Unicode direction of a character
  1. Open your Stationery design project.
  2. On the View menu, click Style Designer.
  3. In Character Styles, select the character style you want to modify.
  4. On the Properties tab, click Text.
  5. Under Unicode, set the appropriate values for the Direction and Unicode Bidi properties. For more information about these properties, click Help.
Was this helpful?
Last modified date: 01/28/2026