12,7 mm?

[Joachim_L]

Just curious: Are there historic reasons for inserting tabs first at or every 12,7 mm? When I use the metric system on my document I want to use this also with the tabs. I mean 10 mm instead of this unbalanced 12,7 mm. Dividing 12,7 by 2,54 equals 5, which confuses me even more.

 

[dominik]

14 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Dividing 12,7 by 2,54 equals 5, which confuses me even more.

2,54 cm is one inch. So I assume the idea is to have a default spacing for tabs of 1/2 inch.

d.

[Joachim_L]

2 minutes ago, dominik said:

So I assume the idea is to have a default spacing for tabs of 1/2 inch.

Good explanation, but why using 1/2 inch in a "metric environment"?

[dominik]

6 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Good explanation, but why using 1/2 inch in a "metric environment"?

That's the 'historic' aspect of your question 🙂

Especially since they are using metric units in the UK as well. I have not found an explanation but it seems to be a common unit for default tab stops. Our typography experts around here may come up with a solution to this 😉

d.

[Alfred]

29 minutes ago, dominik said:

I have not found an explanation but it seems to be a common unit for default tab stops.

I suspect it’s to do with the origins of the concept of tab stops. On a mechanical (or electromechanical) typewriter, you can set physical tab stops which make the platen jump across to the next preset column position; fixed-pitch typewriters work at ten or twelve characters per inch, rather than some number per centimetre, so the half-inch default isn’t very surprising.

[Joachim_L]

8 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I suspect it’s to do with the origins of the concept of tab stops. On a mechanical (or electromechanical) typewriter, you can set physical tab stops which make the platen jump across to the next preset column position; fixed-pitch typewriters work at ten or twelve characters per inch, rather than some number per centimetre, so the half-inch default isn’t very surprising.

Sounds like a good explanation, but the typewriter era is a few years away. Call me strange or pedantic or whatever, but wouldn't it be far easier getting 10 tabs into a 10 cm text frame not using an ancient typewriter position? And without redefining the tabs?

[dominik]

57 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I suspect it’s to do with the origins of the concept of tab stops. On a mechanical (or electromechanical) typewriter, you can set physical tab stops which make the platen jump across to the next preset column position

Thank you. That's exactly what I was reading but I did not (yet) find a clear definition like there was a norm or something like that.

There is also a relation to the original ine lenght on early monitors. It was fixed to 80 characters. Thus a tenth of a line was 8 characters and it made sense to have something like 10 tab stops per line as default.

d.

[dominik]

58 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

And without redefining the tabs?

I assume you know that you can save your personal preference in the 'Base'' text style and save as default?

d.

[Joachim_L]

5 minutes ago, dominik said:

And without redefining

[dominik]

37 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Perhaps I misread your post. I thought you mean 'redifine every time once you start a new document'.

As soon as this gets changed our american fellows will complain because they are used to inches. This undoubtedly leads to the conclusion to have the default tab stop value as an option in the settings 🙂

d.

[Pšenda]

10 hours ago, Alfred said:

On a mechanical (or electromechanical) typewriter,..... , so the half-inch default isn’t very surprising.

12.7 mm is also the width of the typewriter tape.