Funny Bug in PDF engine - right aligned text

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documan
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2003 1:31 am
Location: Konstanz, Germany

Funny Bug in PDF engine - right aligned text

Unread post by documan »

I tried to build a keyword index with right aligned pagenumbers and dots between keyword an pagereference.
something like
"<INDEXKEYWORD> .................." " <KEYWORDPAGENUMBERS>"
where "<INDEXKEYWORD> ............." is left aligned
" <KEYWORDPAGENUMBERS>" is right aligned.

I set " <KEYWORDPAGENUMBERS>" to NON transparent and
brought it to front. But the dots nevertheless overwrote the pagenumbers.

If set to NON transparent, a space in the same lenght as the characters written should be covered. Right?

I tried multiple times. No error possible. Nothing covered(?)
I tried to set backgroundcolor to grey instead of white.
And discovered the missing covered space.
In the wrong direction.
It's a pity that I can't post a pic, but try it yourself.
Open the PDF Layout Designer, create a text block with right aligned text.
Set it to non transparent and any color apart from white an run the pdf compilation.

Alex: Can you imagine a way to create a keyword index like I described above. Keyword left aligned, pagenumber right aligned an dots between??

It's not possible to add the dots to the right aligned pagenumber, for the keywords will apear on several pages, and the dots will soon overflow the
keyword.
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

I've been playing around with this for around an hour now and I see what you mean. There are two problems
  1. The "reversed" invisible spaces when you set a text object to right-aligned.
  2. The fundamental problem of creating the dots between the index entries and the page numbers.
Problem 1 may be a bug, I'm not sure about that, Alex will have to get onto it. If this can be changed so that the "invisible" spaces are reversed, covering the numbers instead of the space to the right of them, I can imagine that they would overwrite the dots.

However, this still doesn't solve the basic problem of the dots themselves. Since the Print Manual Designer can't create a "dotted tab" like Word or similar programs you have to enter a finite number of dots in the text object manually. Unless all your index entries are exactly the same length this isn't going to look right whatever you do:
  • If you don't have enough dots there's always going to be a funny gap.
  • If you do have enough dots you will eventually have a long index entry that appears on several pages and this will force two lines (long entry + several page numbers), destroying the formatting of the entry in relation to the page numbers.
I think the only real way to solve these problems would be an update in the Print Manual Designer to include a dotted tabs object.

For the time being I would simply do without the dots......... :wink:
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
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documan
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2003 1:31 am
Location: Konstanz, Germany

Unread post by documan »

:? Thanks for your statement, Tim. I was driving crazy with these "reversed" spaces. Seems the programmer mixed up left and right :wink:

A dotted tabs object would be the solution.

I meanwhile found a quick and dirty way:
I added dots to both entries.
Enough to the keyword to avoid "dot gaps",
enough to the pagenumber to avoid an overwriting of the pagenumber
with "keyword dots".
In most cases, there will be more than enough "dotties" :wink:
this means that the dots will overwrite one another and will stretch like
a telescope when needed.

An other problem with keyword entries is the fact that too long entries may run into following sub entries. The only way to avoid this seems to be to enlarge the bands... with ugly results ...
For the time being I would simply do without the dots.........
me too... if there would'nt be such awkward things like Corporate Design...
and these dots are nearly the last matter in a longtime discussion :x

the alternative route would lead through the "doc-to-help" hell...
I lost years of my life in the last 10 weeks because someone in the
company had heard that D2H is "such an easy and handy tool, and is absolute simply because its word based".

I agree with the one who said, that working with H&M is a pleasure, but
working with D2H lets drop your charge straightly through the floor.

Thanks to ec software. :)
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