07 Text styles
The library uses text styles to define the font and the appearance of text in a report. There is a list of predefined text styles which you can use in a report. A text style consists of a font family (e.g., Helvetica, Courier et cetera), some font styles (bold, italic, underline) and a size in points. A text style also defines a text color and a background color.
Text styles have a reference to a default style which acts as a basis for the text style from where the text style inherits attributes. If you do not change any attributes a text style will look exactly the same as its base text style.
The default basic text style (NORMAL) uses the font family Helvetica and has a size of nine points. The text color is black, and the background is white.
The class TextStyles contains the following text styles which all are based on the text style NORMAL. The size attribute can be defined relative to the base style as a delta value in points (positive or negative).
- SmallNormal: one point smaller
- Heading1: nine points taller and bold
- Heading2: six points taller and bold
- Heading3: three points taller and bold and italic
- Heading4: one point taller and bold and italic
- Bold
- SmallBold: one point smaller
- Italic
- Underline
- Footer: one point smaller
- Header: like NORMAL
- TableHeader: one point smaller and bold
- TableRow: one point smaller
- TableSubTotal: one point smaller and italic
- TableTotal: one point smaller and bold
As said text styles uses a base style and can overwrite some attributes. Therefore, a change on the base style can change all other styles. That means if you change the font family in the base style, all the other styles inherit this setting and will use the other font (as long you do not overwrite it). You can define new text styles which are based on any other text style. To access these text styles, you will use their name. I will describe the usage of text styles attributes in detail later in this document.