Paragraph styles

A style is a collection of format attributes which are based on the global format layers, and are uniquely identified by a name. In addition, styles are characterised by an outline level, a type, and, optionally, by a style to use for the following paragraph. The outline level is used to determine which headings should be shown when in document outline view mode. The type, represented by a UID, is used to differentiate between the system-provided styles, which are built in to the wordprocessor and cannot be deleted, and user defined styles, which may be deleted. By default, a paragraph style's type is initialised to KUserDefinedParagraphStyleUid.

Another style type which may be encountered is KNormalParagraphStyleUid. This type is used to distinguish the Normal paragraph style from all other styles. This is necessary because the Normal paragraph style is not a CParagraphStyle object, but a CParaFormatLayer, and represents the global paragraph format layer upon which all styles are based.

The Symbian OS supports paragraph styles only. Character styles are not supported. This means that a style must be applied to entire paragraphs, although both character and paragraph format attributes may be set in the style. Paragraph styles cannot be used in global text, and their use in rich text is optional.