Deleting left indent

[Aleksandar Kovač]

 

Set text styles's left indent and apply the style to a paragraph. Position cursor in front of the first letter of a paragraph with left indent set and hit delete. Left indent gets 'deleted' as if it was tabs. (see attached file)

I believe this to be a bug since I am unable to increase the indent (which would make this a function by design), text layout is too easy to mess up, ignores text style.

deleting left indent AP Beta 1.7.2.442.afpub

[Dave Harris]

This is by design. You can increase indent by pressing Tab.

[Aleksandar Kovač]

Thanks Dave, I would like to think so, too. But, unless I am wrong, the following makes me doubt this is by design:

- Pressing tab would add a new tab character in text which is not trivial. (Left indent and first-line indent do not add characters but control distance to the beginning of text).

- New tab characters would be controlled by tab values and not indent values (that were originally defined by text style). 

- Adding tabs negates benefits of having document-wide text styles. (Tabs are characters at the exact position in text, they flow with the text, while indents define geometry of a paragraph form everywhere in the document where this style is applied.)

- it is unclear (to me) how tabs would define left indent vs. first-line indent.

- indents controlled by tabs and vice versa would be (in my opinion) incoherent from UI standpoint. 

 

[Dave Harris]

22 hours ago, Aleksandar Kovač said:

Thanks Dave, I would like to think so, too. But, unless I am wrong, the following makes me doubt this is by design:

- Pressing tab would add a new tab character in text which is not trivial. (Left indent and first-line indent do not add characters but control distance to the beginning of text).

- New tab characters would be controlled by tab values and not indent values (that were originally defined by text style). 

- Adding tabs negates benefits of having document-wide text styles. (Tabs are characters at the exact position in text, they flow with the text, while indents define geometry of a paragraph form everywhere in the document where this style is applied.)

- it is unclear (to me) how tabs would define left indent vs. first-line indent.

- indents controlled by tabs and vice versa would be (in my opinion) incoherent from UI standpoint. 

 

Have you tried it? The paragraph needs to be empty (or a list), and not contain other tabs, and the caret needs to be at the start. It's actually pretty common UI in DTP and word processing apps. MSWord and Apple Pages are examples. In Publisher Tab can also change the paragraph style if the style has Next level set. For example, from the default text styles apply Bullet 1 to a paragraph, then press Tab with the caret at the start. It should switch styles to Bullet 2, then Bullet 3, which will change the indent and the bullet too.

If you don't like it, you can disable it from Preferences > Auto-Correct > Use tab to alter paragraph level instead of inserting a tab. That also stops the delete key from removing the indent.

[Aleksandar Kovač]

Thank you Dave for a detailed answer. I think you are right. After getting into this more, I can see the logic. We are using fixed paragraph based styles, and any structural and stylistic change deserves it's own paragraph style.

I am quite familiar with indentation level concept from DTP/word processing/coding. Maybe out of habit, I expected that increase/decrease indentation level command (tab/delete or cntrl+shift+] and cntrl+shift+[) will always be reflected in 'bullets and numbering' as 'level' value (numerical value) and not change my first-line indent (distance) and left indent (distance). To me, personally, it should not matter whether a paragraph has a bullet/number/letter/spacing in front when modifying hierarchy/subsecting text -- indentation level was always a structural numerical marker assigned to a paragraph.

Actually, in AP, indentation 'level' value will change only if paragraph has bullet type set to anything else but 'no list'. When 'no list' is set, it changes first-line indent (distance) and left indent (distance) in 'Spacing' panel and not indentation level (numerical value) in 'bullets and numbering'. Also, the first-line indent will not be changed by the user-set value for first-line indent, but by 1/2 of defined 'tab stop' value (still have to see why exactly that amount?).

BTW, Apple Pages (verified) do not change First line and left indent values when changing paragraph/indentation level of a paragraph whether the paragraph has numbering/bullet set or not. They do change increase indentation level. Then again, Pages is hardly a proper layout app.

Thanks again.