Restricting the size of fonts displayed in the Visual Mode of Content Station 9

When viewing an InCopy article in Content Station, a user can enable the Visual Mode to show the text of the article in the applied formatting.

Figure: When viewing an article in Content Station with Visual Mode enabled, the text is displayed in the formatting that has been applied to it.

Although this provides the user with a good view of how the final article will look when published, it may also create some practical issues:

• Text in a very large font size may increase the height of an article component in such a way that the article components that follow it are pushed out of view
• Text in a very small font size may become difficult or impossible to read

Controlling the maximum and minimum font size

Info: This feature requires Content Station version 9.3.0 or higher.

To prevent the above described issues, Content Station limits the displayed font sizes to the following default values:

• Minimum size = 10pt
• Maximum size = 32pt

This means that:

• Any font that is smaller than 10pt will be displayed in a size of 10pt
• Any font that is larger than 32pt will be displayed in a size of 32pt

This can be further controlled by the following options:

Setting the minimum font size

• File: WWSettings.xml
• Name of option: EditorMinFontSize
  
• Area: Anywhere between the <SCEnt:ContentStation> and </SCEnt:ContentStation> tags
• Possible values: any numeric value; it will be expressed in points
• Example:

Example: Here, the font size is set to be displayed no smaller than 24pt: <Setting name="EditorMinFontSize" value="24"/>

Important: Make sure to validate the WWSettings.xml file for correct content. See Validating the WWSettings.xml file.

Setting the maximum font size

• File: WWSettings.xml
• Name of option: EditorMaxFontSize
  
  
• Area: Anywhere between the <SCEnt:ContentStation> and </SCEnt:ContentStation> tags
• Possible values: any numeric value; it will be expressed in points
• Example:

Example: Here, the font size is set to be displayed no larger than 72pt: <Setting name="EditorMaxFontSize" value="72"/>

Important: Make sure to validate the WWSettings.xml file for correct content. See Validating the WWSettings.xml file.

Tip: To remove any restrictions in the way the font size is displayed (and thereby make it work as it did in versions earlier than Content Station 9.3), set the minimum font size to 0 (zero) and the maximum font size to 1000.

Note: These settings only affect the way the font size is displayed when viewing the article in the Multi-Channel Text Editor; the size of the font in the actual article is not affected.

Figure: On the left: an article is shown using unrestricted font size settings. Note the large font size of the header and the small font size of the other components, especially the body text. On the right: the same article shown with a minimum font size set to make the body text better readable, and a maximum font size set to limit the amount of space that the header takes up. Even with these adjusted font settings, the user will still get a good impression of how the article will look when published.

Troubleshooting

After setting a minimum and maximum font size, the size of the displayed fonts is not as expected

This happens when the value of the maximum font size is set as equal to or lower than the value of the minimum font size. When this happens, the value of the maximum font size overrules the value of the minimum font size.

Example: Here, the maximum font size is set lower than the minimum font size. <Setting name="EditorMinFontSize" value="24"/> <Setting name="EditorMaxFontSize" value="12"/> Any text that is smaller than 12pt is now displayed in a size of 24pt; any text that is larger than 12pt is displayed in a size of 12pt.