Is there a way to base one style on another?

Question

I'm setting up a stylesheet and and finding the process of defining related styles tedious and error prone. In particular, I have several related styles that need to have synchronized settings (e.g., such as "DisplayFormula" and "DisplayFormulaNumbered"). Is there a way to base one style on another, or perhaps simply to copy or duplicate an existing style as the starting point for another?

FWIW I did this here with the method that The Fultz shows. – Mr.Wizard Nov 13 '12 at 22:51 — Mr.Wizard, Nov 13 '12 at 22:51

score 14 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 12 '12 at 00:39

14

This required editing the cell expression (Ctrl+Shift+E, or Cmd+Shift+E on Mac), but it's exactly what you're looking for:

Cell[StyleData["childstylename", StyleDefinitions-> StyleData["parentstylename"]],
    opts...]

To do this, your stylesheet has to either contain the parent style or inherit from another stylesheet which contains the parent style.

You can see many examples of this in the built-in Mathematica stylesheets, such as the "PrintTemporary" style (based on "Print"), "Graphics3D" (based on "Graphics"), and many of the hyperlink-type styles which inherit from "Link".

Note: stylesheet inheritance is available in Mathematica v6 and later. My examples above were referenced from v8 stylesheets, but may not apply to earlier versions.

answered Nov 12 '12 at 00:39

John Fultz

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Will it work as a spec for specific environment? – Kuba Jul 29 '15 at 07:17
Yes, it seems it works, but there is an incorrect syntax reminder for StyleData. – Kuba Aug 06 '15 at 15:38
Is there a multiple inheritance? – McSaks Aug 23 '16 at 11:08

Is there a way to base one style on another?

1 Answers1

Linked