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[Publisher] Dotted lines in tabs behave inconsistently?


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Can anyone confirm this?

I'm making a table of contents with a left-aligned section name, a right-aligned page number and a dotted line in between. I'm now noticing´that a little space placed between the end of the section name and the dotted line kind of disappears depending on what the text is.

Kind of like so:

Content..............................5
Content for you .................5

I thought it was due to the inclusion of an asterisk first, but it does seem to be triggered by any number of little differences in what letters appear etc.

Is there a way to fix this? Maybe through a style setting or a customizing of the fill marks in the tab?

Thanks!
Marco :D

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Hi @Bonteburg,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble!

I've setup a test TOC here and I'm not seeing the same issue - there is no gap between the t or u characters for me, before the dots begin:

image.png

Are you able to attach a sample .afpub file here which demonstrates this issue, so I can investigate it further for you?

Many thanks in advance :)

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35 minutes ago, Dan C said:

there is no gap between the t or u characters for me, before the dots begin:

I guess this possible gaps are not related to TOC in particular but to the auto-leading characters of tab stops and their useful approach to be positioned within a grid (while the tab alignment appears not to matter). So it seems to depend on the text length before the dots start. For instance:

1901624025_tabstopsleaderdots2.jpg.faadcfb3e8c92183ed326fb035caf3d5.jpg

1992281353_tabstopsleaderdots.jpg.a13e198af441bda152af5930d362a3c1.jpg

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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20 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I guess this possible gaps are not related to TOC in particular but to the auto-leading characters of tab stops and their useful approach to be positioned within a grid (while the tab alignment appears not to matter). So it seems to depend on the text length before the dots start.

Correct observation. For typographical reasons alone, I keep a distance to the right and left with the dots.

image.png.84c28e34df3d9f14588f569867fab9f4.png

Thanks to DeepL.

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10 minutes ago, Palatino said:

I keep a distance to the right and left with the dots

With what workflow? Can you replace one of your screenshots above by one which shows special characters + text ruler?

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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It is just a normal space character before + after the tab? In your example the distances look quite the same in every line, maybe it's coincidence because of text lenghts and dots grid? Below it seems to work well after the dots but before I still get different distances:

893544976_tabstopsleaderdots3.jpg.cdbcf51059da274fa6cc9a16da378e3a.jpg

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Yes, only one space. The spacing still differs, it's just not as noticeable (another advantage of the space). I don't think this is a mistake.

(The space character corresponds to the font size in each case, so it is smaller after "Becher").

image.png.131780f187cc6f7670931ec88d4bb6f0.png

Thanks to DeepL.

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6 hours ago, Bonteburg said:

I'm making a table of contents with a left-aligned section name, a right-aligned page number and a dotted line in between. I'm now noticing´that a little space placed between the end of the section name and the dotted line kind of disappears depending on what the text is.

One way to "fix" this is to use a monospaced font for the ToC.

Another way to mitigate the differences is to construct the dots by editing the Tabs' section of the ToC Paragraph style so it would be dot thin space dot thin space dot thin space dot thin space dot thin space... use a thin space, a regular space whatever space you want.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 
Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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  • 1 year later...

Hi, I'm trying to add En space before and after dots in TOC but every time I fail. I can add spaces in TOC panel, I can see spaces in TOC on page, but every time when I click outside the text frame, everything is back. It looks like somewhere TOC is locked :(

This is my setup, but after clicking outside the text frame it is without spaces:

image.png.0dc1dac393a24e5dea644c4b848546ae.png

For TOC I'm using this Tab stop:

image.png.2dd09cddeb9f5dcc188daa0231e49664.png

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This is strange. In my configuration (see signature), it does it without any problem… 

PNG50-Capturedcran2023-10-3022_43_03.png.59b875e1fa7ff045355a97ecd4c3e88d.png

Demo TOC-spaced dots.afpub

Could you share a sample of faulty document or perhaps a video?

 

Affinity Suite 2.5 – Monterey 12.7.5 – MacBookPro 14" 2021 M1 Pro 16Go/1To

I apologise for any approximations in my English. It is not my mother tongue.

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