[scribus] regular tab stops = update =

[Gregory Pittman]

On 2/7/22 04:18, Martin Zaske LINGO wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> last night I was designing a special calendar page for a friend's
> birthday. Since it was a one-off I quickly did the calendar part (days
> of the week and dates) with spaces and tab stops.
> 
> 
> Then I realized that I could not find where to set the default width of
> "a tab stop".
> 
> 
> I am aware that in Text Properties F3 pop up window I can have full
> control over each custom tab stop and its position and its orientation.
> Same again where I define styles.
> 
> But I had a list of 10 dates and nine tab stops in-between and did NOT
> know where I needed them, I was experimenting.
> 
> 
> I wanted to change the width of the inbuilt default tab-stop (as I used
> to in Corel Draw many years ago) so that I could test several layouts.
> If I had to manually place nine customs tab-stops and do the math and
> then do it several more iterations to find a good and pleasing layout,
> that would be painful. The custom tab-stops are great for planned
> layouts but not for "creative messing about". So last night a used a
> dirty hack with manual tracking feature.
> 
> 
> If there is a way in the GUI to find and set the default tab-stop width,
> please advise. Sorry, still on version 1.5.7 but 1.5.8 already
> downloaded, just not much time due to project surprises.
> 
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> Martin
> 
> 
> PS: I made a test document with a row of numbers separated by simple
> tabs from my keyboard and had a look inside the .sla file and found
> <DOCUMENT ... TabWidth="36" ... and since I had not set anything, the
> value of "36" seems to be the default. I changed it to another value and
> re-opened my document and the results were as expected, i.e. very good.
> 
> So I have a clumsy solution for my request, to access the default, again
> not very suitable for creative experimenting for a new layout, but still
> much better than calculating and setting many customs-tabs manually.

Hi Martin,

Rather than fiddling with the XML of a document, you can go to File > Document Setup > Item Tools > Text tab. There you see the default tab setting for the document. With no document open, you can change the default for future documents at File > Preferences > Item Tools > Text tab.

In addition you can create an irregular tab stop setup as part of a Paragraph Style.

Greg