text handling still a mess in 22.1
Text handling in the 22.1 build - meaning the interactions between the Paragraph, Character, Paragraph Styles, and Character Styles panels - is still fraught with bugs and/or undesired oddity compared to previous versions. (2015.3 being the last completely -- or mostly -- working version.)
Open Illustrator 22.1 (Windows) and create a new blank document.
Draw a text box and fill it with placeholder text.
Create a new paragraph style (‘body text’) and set the font, size, and leading to something different from the default. (e.g. font: 10pt Avenir LT Std Book, 16pt leading).
PROBLEM 1: Select a word or words in the text and change the style (by pulling down the list in the Character panel) to (for example) ‘Black’ instead of ‘Book’. The selected text leaps to 12pt/14.4pt leading, though it does stay in the chosen font.
PROBLEM 2: Undo. The selected text reverts to Avenir Book, but stays at 12pt/14.4pt.
PROBLEM 3: Undo a second time. The selected text goes back to the original state (Avenir Book 10pt/16pt), but the entire block of text is now selected (?!?).
Deselect.
WEIRDNESS: Select a few words, and change the style (again, to Black), but this time do it by clicking in the Style box in the Character panel and scrolling through the values via the mouse wheel or the up/down arrows – not by pulling down the menu and making a direct selection. The text correctly changes style without changing its size.
Delete the entire text box. Draw a new one. Make sure the ‘body text’ style is selected in the Paragraph Styles panel and fill with placeholder text.
PROBLEM/WEIRDNESS: The text displays in the correct style (Avenir Book 10/16), but in the Paragraph Styles panel the ‘body text’ line has a ‘+’ after it, indicating that the text doesn’t match the saved style in some way. Also, in the Character panel, the leading shows no value (empty space) in the control. And the pulldown menu in the Paragraph Styles panel has ‘clear overrides’ dimmed out...
Further WEIRDNESS: If one then selects some words and opens the Leading pulldown menu (in the Character panel), it shows 16pt as the first item in the list (above ‘Auto’ and the list of default sizes), with a checkmark... it just isn’t displaying inside the text box.
Close the document and Illustrator.
Start Illustrator and create a new document.
Draw a text box and fill with placeholder text. Click outside the box to remove the keyboard focus (and cursor) from the contents, but leave the text box object itself selected.
Create a new Paragraph Style in the Paragraph Styles panel, called ‘body text’, font settings ‘Avenir Book 10/16’.
WEIRDNESS: The displayed text updates correctly, there’s no ‘+’ after the style name in the Paragraph Styles panel... but the Character panel still shows ‘Myriad Pro Regular 12/14.4’. De-selecting the text box and re-selecting it gets the Character panel to update (‘Avenir Book 10/16’).
Start Illustrator and create a new document.
Draw a text box and fill with placeholder text. Click outside the box to remove the keyboard focus (and cursor) from the contents, but leave the text box object itself selected.
Create a new Paragraph Style in the Paragraph Styles panel, called ‘body text’, font settings ‘Avenir Book 10/16’. Deselect and reselect the text box to get the Character panel correctly updated.
Select a few words. Then, in the Character Styles panel create a new character style called ‘italic’. Set the font to Avenir, Book Oblique, but do not touch the size or leading boxes.
Close the dialog box and click the character style name to apply it to the selected text.
Select an entire paragraph (or several) that includes the italicized text. In the Paragraph panel, change the size/leading to, say, 8pt/20pt. Everything works as it should.
Deselect everything and double-click the ‘italic’ style name in the Character Styles box to verify that the style displays no values in the size or leading controls, nor in the text summary, implying that size/leading are not specified and will not be affected/overridden by this character style.
Select the previously italicized text. The character style name shows as ‘italic+’ indicating that the selected text doesn’t match its character style definition, even though it should.
PROBLEM: Select some other text in the same paragraph. Click ‘italic’ in the Character Styles panel. The selected text changes size to 10/16, even though the size was explicitly not specified as part of the Character Style definition.
I could go on.
--John Bradley
John Bradley
shared this idea
We have the fix available in the latest release. Please update Illustrator using Adobe Creative Cloud application to the latest build for version Illustrator CC 23.0.
Please refer to our knowledge base FAQ – https://illustrator.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/1844590 if you face difficulty in update.
Or get in touch with us at any of the other support channels – https://helpx.adobe.com/support.html
Warm Regards,
Ashutosh Chaturvedi | Sr. Quality Engineering Manager – Illustrator
Adobe. Make It an Experience.
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John Bradley
commented
Michele: Yeah, there's still various 'issues' with text handling and the interactions between the character/paragraph styles and the character/paragraph panels. Since this bug is marked 'completed', maybe you could upvote my other bug (assuming you see the behavior I document there) and we can help get this fixed. Thanks!
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Michele
commented
I am experiencing the same issues and have already updated to 23.
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John Bradley
commented
No one ever thanks you guys, they just complain. I've just started using 23.0.1 (had to wait until my Astute Graphics plugins were ported - can't function without Phantasm!) and it appears that all my myriad (get it?) complaints about the text handling in v22 have been addressed and resolved.
Thank you!
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Anonymous
commented
Just wanted to say thank you for creating Creative Cloud. I'm so excited that we all get to pay to beta test your poorly written code! It's been a pleasure watch CS 6 evolve into a slow moving train wreck, with few added features, and long standing bugs that still haven't been addressed! /s
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Simon Bowland
commented
Agreed. Character and Paragraph Styles are both broken.
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Anonymous
commented
A problem that was marked as "COMPLETED" for version 22.1 has NOT been fixed!
Apply a paragraph style to text.
Select one word of that styled text.
Change the font for the word.
The font is changed, but all other character attributes revert to the default: size, color, leading, etc. -
Cara Combs
commented
Thank you for writing this up! I'm fighting similar issues and am about to pull my hair out!! I don't know where to start to try to fix this!
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John Bradley
commented
Here are some more examples, including the occasionally insane behavior of the up/down arrows when leading is set to 'auto'.
Start Illustrator and create a new document. Draw a text box and fill with placeholder text. Select all the text.
Create a new Paragraph Style in the Paragraph Styles panel, called 'body text'.
Double click on the style to open the dialog box. Set it to Myriad Pro Regular 10pt, 16pt leading. Close the dialog.
WEIRDNESS: the Character panel incorrectly displays "Myriad Pro Regular, 12pt, (14.4pt) leading"
Click outside the text box to deselect the text (the box itself is still selected). The Character panel (lazily!) updates to the 10/16 values.
Select some words in the text box, then click the 'font family' field in the Character panel and type "Adobe Garamond Pro" and hit Enter.
WEIRDNESS: the text changes to Adobe Garamond Pro Regular (as desired), but at 12 pt/14.4pt.
Click the 'body style' paragraph style to revert back to Myriad.
Click the pulldown next to the 'font family' field and select Adobe Garamond Pro via the menu rather than by typing the name. The font (correctly) changes to Adobe Garamond Pro 10/16.
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Start Illustrator and create a new document. Draw a text box and fill with placeholder text. Select all the text.
Create a new Paragraph Style in the Paragraph Styles panel, called 'body text'.
Double click on the style to open the dialog box. Set it to Myriad Pro Regular 10pt, 16pt leading. Close the dialog.
Deselect everything. The Character panel correctly displays Myriad Pro Regular 10/16.
Select a paragraph within the text. Click the pulldown arrow next to the leading field in the Character panel, set the leading to 'Auto'.
WEIRDNESS: the panel (and the selected text) goes to Myriad Pro Regular 12/14.4.
Click the 'body text' paragraph style to re-assert the desired settings.
Set the leading to 'Auto' again, and again the text moves to 12pt/14.4pt. At least the randomness is semi-consistent.
Re-assert the 'body text' paragraph style again.
Click the up-arrow on the leading field in the Character panel and bump the leading up to 18pt. Now use the pulldown to set the leading to 'Auto'. The font size stays at 10pt and the leading correctly goes to (12 pt).
Select a few words in a different paragraph and bump the leading up to 18pt using the up-arrow next to the leading field. Select the entire paragraph containing those words. The leading field shows blank, which is understandable given that there are multiple values in the selected text.
WEIRDNESS: Use the pulldown to set the leading to 'Auto'. The computer beeps, the selected text is set to 12/14.4, and the font size and leading fields in the Character Panel both show blank!?! They (and the selected text) should be at 10pt/(12 pt) at this stage.
FURTHER WEIRDNESS: Hit the up-arrow next to the font size field in the Character Panel. The selected text (and the fields in the panel) jumps to 11/13.2, implying that it still thought the size was 10pt but for some reason got it wrong in both places.
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Delete the text block, draw a new one and fill with placeholder text. Select all text and apply the 'body text' style to it.
Select a few words in a paragraph, bump up the font size and leading a few points using the Character Panel controls.
Select the entire paragraph contining those words. Size and leading boxes show blank (multiple values in selected text), which is fine.
WEIRDNESS: Using the pulldown on the size field, select '10 pt'. The selected text changes to some other size (looks like 12pt), but with the larger leading (either the 16pt from the paragraph style, or the larger leading from the selected words, hard to tell). The fields in the Character Panel both show blank.
Type "10pt" into the size field and hit Enter. The selected text reverts to 10pt, and "10 pt" is displayed in the field.
Using the pulldown on the leading field, select 'Auto'. The computer beeps, but the leading field now displays "(12 pt)" and the selected text appears to be in 10/12.
WEIRDNESS: Hit the up arrow next to the leading field. The leading goes to 1 pt (!), as does the selected text.
WEIRDNESS: Use the pulldown to re-assert 'Auto' leading. The leading goes to (12 pt) - no beep this time. Hit the down-arrow next to the leading field. The leading (and selected text) goes to 1295pt!
Needless to say, that is so not the desired behavior. Whenever the leading is set to auto, the up/down arrows *should* inc/dec to the next integer value above or below the computed 'auto' value.
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Lindsey Thomas Martin
commented
Thanks for writing this up. The behaviour of text and styles is so odd that I haven't been able to figure out where to start testing. This may be an anomaly of the graphing function but I find that text to which a para. style has been applied loses its connexion to the style even when I haven't modified it or updated the graph.
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John Bradley
commented
Tell me about it! The eyedropper behavior is utterly inexplicable at times.
Another one: some sequence of events will result in the "leading" control in the Character panel showing nothing at all -- even though the selected text most certainly has a single leading value. If I then set it to 'Auto', (which it already was, but wasn't displaying), the text correctly stays as it was.
But then, if I hit the little up-down arrows next to the control, rather than going from the auto value to the next integer value (e.g., from 14.4 to either 15 or 14), it'll go to either 1pt or 1295pt!
I haven't come up with a repeatable sequence to make that happen, but I sure do see it happen frequently enough!
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Anonymous
commented
Thanks for taking the time to write this all up, John -- all of these things are a daily experience in my shop as well. You didn't even mention the subject of copying text formatting with the eyedropper when text styles are applied, but there are many more issues we can add. Illustrator has sucked at text for years, and every one of these incremental build releases just makes things worse.