Text with globally applied formatting.

Global text uses a single set of paragraph format attributes to describe the appearance of every paragraph and a single set of character format attributes to describe the appearance of every character.

The paragraph formatting is stored in a CParaFormatLayer and the character formatting is stored in a CCharFormatLayer. A format layer is a set of character or paragraph format attributes, which may own a pointer to another format layer. This pointer is called a based-on link. The effective formatting of a global text object is the set of attributes specified in its two format layers, as well as any attributes inherited from the layers' chain of based-on links. To get the effective formatting, the links are read in turn, so that each attribute's value is taken from the first layer in the chain in which it has been set. Use GetCharFormat() and GetParaFormatL() to get the text object's effective formatting.

A global text object references the two format layers; it does not own them. This allows more than one global text object to use the same formatting. The format layers may be modified (see ApplyParaFormatL() and ApplyCharFormatL()) or replaced (see SetGlobalParaFormat() and SetGlobalCharFormat()) during the text object's lifetime.