User support

Frequently asked questions

Using stylesheets in Visual Liturgy 4.0 for Common Worship

Under the surface of Visual Liturgy 4.0 for Common Worship, major changes have been made to the way in which the software deals with individual texts. Every single item has been marked up using XML tagging. Such an approach allows for a greater flexibility both in version 4.0 and future versions as new features are added. One of the immediate benefits for version 4.0 is that styles are supported if text is taken out of Visual Liturgy and into a desktop publishing software package, making it easier to format and manipulate the text.

Within Visual Liturgy, the style support enables users to change formats to suit their own requirements. Some users may wish to use a certain font. Some users may like to enlarge the font to make it easier to read. Those with the knowhow can even create their own CSS stylesheets and bring them into Visual Liturgy for use with the software.

Where can I find my stylesheets?

Within your Visual Liturgy program folder (usually c:\program files\visual liturgy 4), you will find a separate folder called stylesheets. All the stylesheets supplied with Visual Liturgy 4.0 for Common Worship can be found there. If you want to add your own stylesheets to Visual Liturgy, they must be saved in this folder to be available within the software. Similarly, any stylesheets downloaded from this web site must be saved in this folder.

Editing styles within individual Content items

The heart of Visual Liturgy lies in the Text details dialogue box. It enables quick and easy access to the styles tagging through a pair of dropdown boxes for those who don't want (or don't know how) to deal with the raw code that lies beneath. The two dropdown boxes give access to paragraph styles and inline (character) styles. To change a paragraph, click inside the paragraph and use the dropdown to change the style. To create an inline style, highlight the text to be styled and then use the dropdown to make the change.

Under the surface

For users wanting to get their hands dirty, the raw code under the surface can be accessed in order to make changes manually. As the screenshot shows (click on the image for a larger version), text formatting is defined using XHTML and CSS. For users who are familiar with HTML from creating and maintaining parish web sites, much of the code may look familiar although the "XHTML Strict" that is being used has a few noticeable differences.

Choosing different stylesheets

In order to apply a different stylesheet to your service, follow these instructions:

1. Open the service and choose Service properties from the Service menu.
2. Choose the Styles tab from the resulting dialogue box.
3. Use the dropdown menus for each view of the service to choose the stylesheet you require.
4. Click OK to apply the new stylesheet to your service.

Editing the stylesheets

The stylesheets use the standard CSS format. If you want to see what it looks like, open one of the CSS files in Windows® Notepad. If you have the knowhow, you can create your own stylesheets or edit the ones supplied with Visual Liturgy. If you have never edited CSS files before, open some of the different CSS files available in Visual Liturgy to compare and contrast how different effects are achieved and experiment for yourself!

If you are making changes to the standard stylesheets supplied with Visual Liturgy, we recommend that you work on a copy of the file and not the original!

If you would like to know more about study Cascading Style Sheets in some detail, we recommend Eric Meyer's book Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, (O'Reilly, 1-56592-622-6).