I am pretty good at using tabs but I am trying to set a budget and it has specialized needs and I can't figure out how to do it. Below is a shot of what it has to look like (taken from an old book set with XyVision):
The important thing I want it to do is have the text and leaders end on the right (where "Program." ends) and the figures to the right aligned. Those numbers almost act like they set past the right margin and there has to be a way in Design to duplicate this.
Thanks everyone!
You want to set a decimal tab (or right-aligning tab) at the right margin, using a dot leader. Set a left indent, a first-line indent (the same number but negative), and tab stop at the left, to get the hanging indent with the parenthetical numbers. Set a large indent at the right, long enough to accomodate your longest number, so that long description texts will wrap before they get to the number area. When typing, put a tab after the parenthetical number, and another before the budget number. Any more than two tabs in a line can cause buggy behavior. In the example, the right margin isn't constant, but is larger for very large numbers, so if you've got a siutation like that, create several paragraph styles with varying right margins.
If the gap between the dot leader and the number is important, you could try putting in em-spaces after the tab but before the number -- I can't remember if the dot tab leaders honor spaces before numbers in this kind of situation. Try it out. If nothing else works, a couple of Xs filled with the "paper" color would be an awkward kludge.
Note that in fairly recent versions of Indesign these tabs outside the right margin didn't work properly. It was a pain. But versions 5 and 6 do support this, IIRC.
Looks like you've got it, though Peter's solution is much more elegant than forced line breaks. The advantage to using tabs for those left numbers is that once you get to number 10, they'll still align on the wrap. Then I usually do yet one more decimal tab at the beginning of each line, because I like list numbers 9 and 10 to align at the right, which is not only typographically correct, but keeps a consistent space between the list numbers and their text.
a negative last line indent allows the number to hang automatically
Very cool. It never occurred to me that you can offset from the right as well as the left.
The advantage to using tabs for those left numbers is that once you get to number 10, they'll still align on the wrap.
An Indent to Here mark would align the text, this is still tabless
Thanks to everybody but I think I must not have been describing what I am trying to get (maybe my brain isn't working at 4:25 am). What I want is the text including wrapping text and leaders under schedule to all end a specific spot (the red line in the screen shot included below) and the budget dollar amounts to be at the right margin. By the way, I agree that the parenthetical numbers should align on the right as Rob shows in his screen shot.
In my example I added another tab before the Right Indent Tab:
Note that the text has to be justified and if you were to change the column width the tab for the leader would have to be adjusted. The text also has a lot of white space characters to track—tab>number>tab>indent to here>text>en space>tab>right indent tab>number—so if your not used to that a table might be easier to control.
Michael_OSP wrote:
What I want is the text including wrapping text and leaders under schedule to all end a specific spot (the red line in the screen shot included below) and the budget dollar amounts to be at the right margin.
As suggested before, set a right indent on the paraph style (at the position of the red line) and a negative last line indent equal to the right indent. To make the leader stop there as well, also set a right aligned tab with leader at the red line (to which the leader is applied) and another tab, without a leader, anywhere after that (to turn the leader off again, bu tthis tab will never be used). Insert both a regular tab (the right aligned one with the leader) and a right indent tab just before the number:
You can eliminate the second tab that's used to turn off the leader if you don't use a leader at all, but instead create a custom underline to use as the leader, which I think is more elegant, and apply it as a nested character style in the paragraph style definition. Your nested styles would then be [none] up to 1 tab, [custom underline style] through 1 tab.
My third tab has an underline applied, I got the dots via underline options and it could be saved as a character style.
Don't drop the third tab marker exactly on the right indent marker—if you do it doesn't get applied. In your last capture you only have 2 tab markers. In my file you can see the third tab marker slightly to the right of the right indent marker.
I've sort of left the two of you alone to deal with this, but if I'm understanding the last question (and I didn't download Rob's file so I'm shooting in the dark), if you use a right-indent tab rahter than a right aligned tab (and I think you should), the right Indent tab picks up the leader from the last tab set in the paragraph style. You can't, in fact, actually apply a leader directly to a right-indent tab because it never appears in the tabs panel to select. An old trick to make a leader was to set a tab beyond the right edge of the text frame in the paragraph style and apply the leader to that (I learned that from Dave Saunders).
Rob, if you look, you'll see the first and fourth paragraphs in my sample above are only one line. I've just checked again and it works just the same here whther the te text is justified or left aligned. I've tested in CS3 (which happened to be open) and in CS5.5 just to see if something has changed.
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