R C-R

Apologies for continuing with this in yet another tl;dr post but maybe the following will make clearer what I am talking about. Please just ignore it if this is of no interest to you. Consider this RTF formatted TextEdit document & the symbols it uses for indents & tab stops. Compare that to the raw text in the file (here displayed using TextWranger to make everything visible): In a RTF document, everything preceded by a backslash is a "control word." Consider the line "\pard\tx2820\li540\fi740\ri720\pardirnatural\partightenfactor0" in the info section. "\pard" denotes the beginning of a paragraph & "\li540" & "\fi740" denote its left indent & first line indent respectively. (The numbers are in "twips," the RTF unit of measurement equal to 1/20th of a point.) If the paragraph had included tab stops, the RTF document would have included control words for them as well, like "\tx600" to specify a tab stop at 600 twips from the left margin. Other control words define the kind of tab stop. (For the few interested in such things RTF specs can be found on the web, for example at http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/rtfspec_7.html.) From all this I hope it is evident that at least for RTF or anything else that uses similar "under the hood" methods for controlling text positions that tabs & indents are completely different things, even when they have the same effect.

As I mentioned in one of the replies in the other topic, at least on my Mac the First Line Indent value will not remain negative if I do anything that touches that numeric field, like clicking into it or hover the pointer over it & even slightly changing its value using the scroll wheel on my mouse. Doing that immediately causes it to change to 0 again & only increment from there. IOW, it seems to be that the actual value never really goes negative & it is only decreasing the left indent enough that the link to the displayed value of the first line indent makes it seem like it can be taken below zero. It is sort of like entering a negative value in the first line indent field directly -- it will accept a negative number but as soon as the focus is moved out of that field it reverts to zero.

How do you know that there is an "automatic" tab stop at the left indent & it is not just the first line indent setting that is positioning text as if there was an actual tab stop at that setting? It seems to me that if it really was an actual tab stop, even if it was automatically created by the software, it would show up in the list of tab stops for that paragraph. Do you see that or any other indication it is not simply the first line indent function being applied?

No, all that does is insert a tab character in the text at the current text insertion point. It has no effect on the first line or left (or right) indent setting of the paragraph, & it will not do anything to position the following text unless a tab stop is set in that paragraph.

Do you mean pressing the Tab key on the keyboard or the Add New Tab Stop button in the Paragraph panel? Either way, neither one sets any of the indents (first line, left, or right). Each paragraph will have exactly one of each type of indent, but a paragraph can have as many tabs & tab stops as you want. Tabs & indents are not the same thing, nor does one substitute for the other.

There is no tab stop so of course inserting a tab in the text won't do anything besides set the text insertion point to the left or first indent of the paragraph. What did you expect to happen? Edit: an indent is not a tab. Is that maybe what is confusing you?

Your screenshot of the Paragraph panel still does not show that you have set any tab stops. Pressing the tab key does not set a tab stop. It just inserts a tab character in the text at the insertion point. If there are no tab stops set in that paragraph there is no place for it to 'stop' (so to speak) & the next character you type will just be placed wherever the indents, margin, & justifications of the frame dictate. In your first screenshot in your last post, it looks like the insertion point is at the beginning of a new line. If the Paragraph panel in the next screenshot is what it looks like with that insertion point active, you do not have any tab stops set, at least for that new paragraph. If you did, the tab stop would appear as indicated below: The Paragraph formatting online beta help topic is for Macs but it should be the same for windows. Note what it says about how to add tab stops. If you never click on the Add New Tab Stop button, no tab stop will be added. That button is immediately to the right of the tab stop input box, set to "0 mm" in your screenshot.

I cannot duplicate than in any Mac version of Designer or Photo. Are you sure you are not confusing the default tab stop setting with actually setting a tab stop?

I don't see any problems using it with a Mac. On the U.S. & possibly other Apple keyboards, the bullet character can be entered directly by typing the 8 key with the alt/option key held down (Shift+option+8 enters the degree symbol.) But regardless of that, did you see what I wrote about there being no tab stops in the screenshots? If the section below "Tab Stops" in the panel is empty, there are no tab stops set in the currently selected paragraph(s). The text field with the up/down arrows next to the two buttons does not indicate any tab stops have been set, only the value (or increment) that will be set if the add stop button is clicked.

Please refer to this post & this follow up one in the Designer: Indenting bulleted lists topic for the details.

Jack, be sure to read & heed the info in the first post of the beta thread. As it says, saving files in the 1.6 format may make it impossible to open them in 1.5 versions, so it is a good idea to make backups of any of your 1.5 version work that you want to test with the 1.6 betas.

Which Affinity app (Photo or Designer, trial or retail, Mac or Windows) did you download & which tutorial did you watch?

Hmmm. I just checked again in Affinity Designer 1.5.5 for Mac, & in the AD Mac customer beta & in Affinity Photo 1.5.2 for Mac. All of them show the same behavior -- when I set the Left Indent value the First Line Indent value is automatically set to the same value. That may have happened for @modiophile because his screenshot shows both set to the same value: I don't see the first (or any) tab being set automatically to anything other than the default tab stop value. Speaking of that, in both your & modiophile's screenshots, it does not look like any tab stops have been set. The "0.02 in" shown is just the default value that will be used if you click the "Add New Tab Stop" button to the right of that numeric entry field, but until you do that, the list of set tab stops on the left will be empty, signifying that no tab stops have been set. That is probably why your screenshot doesn't match the indentation of the text. I also noticed yet another oddity in the Mac Paragraph panel: when I set the Left Indent to some value & the First Indent adjusts to match it & then reset the First Indent to zero, if I then decrease the Left Indent value, the First Indent value adjusts proportionally to a negative value: However, this doesn't actually create an 'outdent' & the moment I touch that value it reverts to 0 or a positive value. So there is definitely something funky going in that panel, at least for the Mac apps.

@toltec On Windows, do you see the same annoying behavior I mentioned above about setting the Left Indent also setting the First Line Indent to the same value, which is what I see on my Mac? I suspect this is by design, based on the assumption that if a paragraph's left indent is set to >0, then the user usually intends for first line to be indented by the same amount.

You may find it helpful to watch the Affinity Photo - Clipping vs Masking video tutorial, particularly at about the 2:30 mark.