Parent Styles

Styles inherit formatting properties from parent styles. Each style has a "Parent Style" property. Therefore the styles form a hierarchy. For example, the built-in styles contain a hierarchy for Declarations, a portion of which looks like this:

 

Figure 3.7  An example of a style hierarchy.

In the Style Properties dialog, the style hierarchy is displayed visually. See: Style Properties.

Formatting properties in a style are combined with its parent style. Thus, the Declare Struct style inherits the formatting properties of the Declaration style. You can affect changes to all declaration styles by altering the single Declaration style.

The topmost parent style is the "Default Text" style. Its formatting properties are determined by the file type's font settings.

You can change the parent style of any style using the Style Properties command.

In the figure below is an example of how styles might combine for a function declaration.

 

Figure 3.8  Style properties "add up" on top of the default font specified by the file type.