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Creating a stylesheet

Caution!
Creating a stylesheet is not recommended for inexpert users, since map topology must be correctly defined and inept creation could overwrite existing stylesheets or prevent existing Conception maps of that style from opening and/or behaving correctly. 

For this reason, this command is protected by a setting in the Conception_application_defaults.txt file. Look for this file in the 'plprsrcs' folder. The setting is named 'enable_stylesheet_creation' - change its value to @on and the Create command will become accessible on future Conception runs.
 
Procedure
To create a stylesheet based on a window W of pre-existing style WS :-

1) Create a window W of style WS. Edit it so that it exhibits the required styles, including parent-child node relationships as well as visible styles. Inspect some examples of files of name 'stylesheet_source.xml' in the Styles folder to see how this should be done. Note that the stylesheet that will be created from W will require user-selection of a label from a popup menu in two circumstances: a) where W shows that a node's style may have two or more distinct exiting arc labels, and b) where W shows that a node's style may have two or more distinct child node labels. Stylesheet 'decision_map.pl' illustrates a), stylesheet 'writing_plan.pl' illustrates b), and stylesheet 'argument_map.pl' illustrates a) and b) combined.

2) Use File/Save_special/Save_styles/New stylesheet. Supply a name SSN for the new stylesheet. If SSN is a name that is already in use as a stylesheet name, the old stylesheet will be overwritten.

3) SSN is now immediately available in the File/New dialog for creating new windows of that style.

4) The result of the above is a folder Styles/SSN that contains a file stylesheet.pl. When Conception is launched, it uses this file to define the incorporated styles.  

5) It is useful (but not essential) to generate a file stylesheet_source.xml that reproduces the contents of the original window W in a way that enables the stylesheet to be updated by graphical editing (see Updating). Unfortunately, you cannot generate this file simply by saving W in XML format. This is because W has styles that are defined by reference to the original stylesheet WS. Instead, use File/New to create a window using the new stylesheet SSN. Manually reproduce in it the contents of window W (the original window). Then use File/Save_special/Save_styles/New stylesheet on that window, reusing the name SSN for the saved stylesheet. Finally, restart Conception, create a new window with style SSN, again manually reproduce in it the contents of window W, and save this as stylesheet_source.xml using File/Save_special/Save_XML. This is how the stylesheet_source.xml files provided with Conception were initially generated.

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