Tabulation issue

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xtt1944

Hello Scribus folk,

I'm posting this here because I suspect it's a newbie problem. I'm trying to style a paragraph so that one chunk of text aligns left, and then on the same line a second chunk of text aligns right. Sort of like what you do on a resume, where you have an employer on the left and a job title on the right.

To do this, I'm trying to employ tabs. I do the following:


  • Go to Edit > Styles, select the relevant style.
  • Under Tabulators and Indentation, I create a Left tab at 3.0 cm (where my text frame begins) and 18.0002 cm (where it ends). I click Apply.
  • Instead of aligning as it should, my left piece of text squashes in on itself (see screenshot) and my right piece of text gets bumped to the next line.

Any ideas on what is causing this? I use Scribus 1.4.5, Mac OS X 10.10.2.

Thanks!

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a.l.e

hi

strange.

can you share a demo .sla showing the issue?

ciao
a.l.e

xtt1944

Hello,

Sample file attached. Thanks for your help.

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a.l.e

from a short test, the tabs seems to work well in normal cases... but tend to screw it up a bit when the formattings are not well behaved.

in your case, i could not detect for sure the cause, but i'm guessing that the tab is outside of the frame...
at this precise moment i have not more time for testings, sorry..

but, maybe, somebody will jump in!

ciao
a.l.e

Nermander

Quote from: xtt1944 on February 28, 2015, 09:36:51 AM
  • Under Tabulators and Indentation, I create a Left tab at 3.0 cm (where my text frame begins) and 18.0002 cm (where it ends). I click Apply.

The left edge of the frame is at position 0. And you don't need a TAB for that location, because that's where each left aligned line will start any way.

So what you need is just one right aligned TAB at the right edge of the frame (the problem is that the location of that TAB depends on the width of the frame).

a.l.e

one more thing:
for testing the tabulations you have a big "tabulators" button in the "column & text distances" in the test tab of the properties palette (windows > properties)
it's well hidden, but the button is big :-)

it's easier to test things than in the styles, since you see right away what you're doing.

xtt1944

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions. I'll try some more experiments later today and see if I can fix the problem.

xtt1944

Hello again,

I've fixed my problem, although I don't quite know how. I leave this here for other people's speculation.

1. Based on some tests I did elsewhere, I switched the default units in my document from cm to points. The width of my text frame showed up as 425.2 points.
2. Following what Nermander and a.l.e. said, I used the properties tool to create a single right-aligned tab at 425.2. Text still jumped to the next line.
3. I moved the tab to 425.0. This time, the text stayed on the same line.
4. I switched the width of the text frame to 425.0. Text stayed on the same line.

The only theory I can offer is that Scribus dislikes partial points?

Nermander

I think that the problem is rounding issues.

a.l.e

just for your information: generally speaking i would not suggest you to work with cm. mm are -- generally speaking --a better unity.
i would also avoid pt.

if you have to define some units in pt, i would suggest you to type them as is in the box and they will be automatically converted by scribus into the current unit. this works with most if not all measurement boxes.

xtt1944

Quote from: a.l.e on March 09, 2015, 03:29:27 PM
if you have to define some units in pt, i would suggest you to type them as is in the box and they will be automatically converted by scribus into the current unit. this works with most if not all measurement boxes.

I'd been wondering about that, thanks.

Rounding error sounds plausible to me. Either way, it hasn't occurred again. Thanks to both of you for your help. It's my first time using a dedicated layout program, and Scribus is a big step up from Word/LibreOffice for my purposes.