The text system stores and manipulates styling information along with the character data in the same instance of text. Unlike many systems, where style information is often lost when you cut and paste text between applications, you can freely move text around the CommonPoint application system without losing any styling information. You can, for example, cut and paste text within a document or between documents without losing the character formatting information. You can also manipulate the character data and the style data separately.

Information about each style applied to character data is encapsulated by an instance of the correct style class. You instantiate the correct style class, for example, the color style, and give it a particular value, for example, red. You can then apply this style to any character or range of characters in your text instance. The editable text document component provides higher-level interfaces that allow the end user to apply styles to text selections from a menu.

The system includes a complete set of character style classes, covering styling aspects such as:

• Character appearance--for example, font, point size, and color
• Lining features--for example, underlines and strikethroughs
• Positioning--for example, kerning and superscripting

• Margin justification and indentation
• Line spacing
• Word breaks