Some of the new features of Power Headers need some explanation to understand what they can do. In this demonstration, we are going to show you how we created the headers of the Power Headers manual using some of the new features.

Problems:

In the manual there are two levels of header styles: Section Headers and Sub-Headers. The Section Headers are shown in green, while the sub-headers are shown in orange.

We wanted both the section header text and sub-header text to show in the headers, but the section headers should only be shown when it is the sub-header of the shown section. Additionally, we wanted a forward slash to be displayed to separate the two, but it should appear black, and not orange or green like the main text.

Here’s how we did it:

1. We set up two variables:

2. The first variable was very straight-forward:

We basically just set up a “First Instance” variable, with everything basically at the default values.

3. The basic setup of the second variable was pretty simple as well:

The main difference between the two variables in the basic settings dialog was that we added “text before” of a space-forward slash-space.

Now, here’s where things get interesting!

4. We needed to make sure the forward slash gets its color changed to black, so we created a GREP Processor:

5. We set the GREP Processor to find forward slashes, and change the character style to “Black”.

Now we need to make sure that the sub-headers will not show if they are not a sub-header of the currently displayed section header text. here’s how we do that:

6. We created a “Resetter Style”:

7. We set the styles of the Resetter to Character Style: Any, and Paragraph Style: Section Header.

8. The options in the Resetter Styles can be a little confusing. There are two separate settings: One setting is for the behavior on pages where source text is found, and the other is for pages which follow a page where source text is found. In the first option, we selected to use instances after the first resetter style. This means that Power Headers will disregard any instances of Sub-Headers which appear before the first instance of Section Header on the current page. So, in a situation such as the one pictured:

the instance of Sub-Headers will be disregarded, and you will get this:

However in situations wher you have a sub-header following a section header, like this one:

You will get a header which looks like this (notice the black forward slash):

The “Reset After Page” option will similarly wipe out any instances of Sub-Header which appeared before the last instance of Section Header from pages following the current page.

We hope that this demonstration is useful to help understand some of the awesome power of Power Headers!

Please read the manual for some more info on the awesome features of Power Headers. Here’s a direct link to download the manual.