Paragraph Tabs

[Husbandman]

I have got to be doing something terribly wrong with tabs. I cannot figure out how to use them. I have used so many programs over the years and have never had so much trouble. The only way I can see to add a tab is under paragraphs in the tab section. I can click on the little + tab and it creates a tab, but there is no rhyme or reason to the length. If I select the right justify and want it at say 3 inches and I have a three inches text box it breaks to a new line. If I shorten it, it does not go to the right edge. That is if the justification button even work. The the leaders do not show up. 

[A_B_C]

Oh, you noticed this as well … hmm, I think there is a precision problem with right-aligned tab stops. I filed a bug report here:

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/39387-right-aligned-tab-stops-precision-problem/

 

Hope this will get sorted out. And yes, we need a ruler for text frames … maybe in Publisher …  ;)

[evtonic3]

On 4/27/2017 at 10:36 PM, Husbandman said:

I have got to be doing something terribly wrong with tabs. I cannot figure out how to use them. I have used so many programs over the years and have never had so much trouble. The only way I can see to add a tab is under paragraphs in the tab section. I can click on the little + tab and it creates a tab, but there is no rhyme or reason to the length. If I select the right justify and want it at say 3 inches and I have a three inches text box it breaks to a new line. If I shorten it, it does not go to the right edge. That is if the justification button even work. The the leaders do not show up. 

 

This is terribly broken, plus I can't find any documentation as to how tabs are made, settings of, etc. in the help menu. Can someone on the Affinity team please help out?

 

 

[A_B_C]

From the documentation:

 

 

Hope that helps … 

Alex

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, A_B_C said:

From the documentation:

The Affinity tab stop UI is so counterintuitive I have to wonder if anybody has figured it out without referring to the documentation -- I know I could not. 

 

Part of the problem with that is the popup 'tooltip' for the input box says it sets "Default Tab Stops," when in fact it sets the default increment for creating new tab stops. It might help a bit if it said "Tab Stop Increment" but it is still (to put it kindly) an unusual & awkward way to set them.

 

One thing I found that helps a bit when adjusting them is, if you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, you can just hover the pointer over one of the listed stops & increment or decrement their value with the wheel -- there is no need to double-click to select one, enter a new value, & click elsewhere or hit return to exit the field. Holding down the Shift key changes the value by 10 unit increments & holding down the alt/option key by 1/10 ones, so this works reasonably well as an interactive method.

 

As an aside, I have been looking for a topic to share a couple of GIF's I found about whimsical (I hope!) user unfriendly ways to set volume levels dreamed up by UI designers. This seems like an appropriate topic for that.

   

[Alfred]

23 minutes ago, R C-R said:

As an aside, I have been looking for a topic to share a couple of GIF's I found about whimsical (I hope!) user unfriendly ways to set volume levels dreamed up by UI designers. This seems like an appropriate topic for that.

 

It’s somewhat off topic, really, but very funny and well worth sharing!