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• • February 23, 2016 at 2:55 am #82184
    Brendan Neale

    Member

    Wondered if anyone has had the need to, and solved this problem.

    I have a text box that is (for example) 100mm wide with tabs set at 60mm and 80mm for pricing, as per example below:

    ITEM CODE <Tab> PRODUCT TEXT <Tab> WAS PRICE <Tab> NOW PRICE
    Fixed Width Variable Width Variable Width Fixed Width
    9874325 Childs Bike £84.99 £69.99

    My issue is I have 1000s of these as I work on a catalogue and the text box width changes over many of the pages.
    If I expand the box to 125mm wide I then have to move the tabs over 25mm in my paragraph styles so the prices are still the same distance from the righthand side of the text box. This works with tables but I also need a way to do this without.

    Does anyone know if there is a way the tabs can follow the right hand edge instead of the lefthand side so as I expand the box the 2 columns of prices follow?

  • February 23, 2016 at 9:47 am #82186
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I don’t think there is a specific feature you could use for that. A custom script might be able to manage it.

    That said, here is one way to add “variable” width spaces between columns:
    https://creativepro.com/using-flush-space-to-add-equal-space-between-text.php

    In general, tables are the way to go.

  • February 24, 2016 at 4:21 am #82213
    Brendan Neale

    Member

    Thank you for you reply David,

    I’ve had a go at using the flush space as you’ve mentioned but unfortunetely it has turned out like the last example you show on the feature. We do use tables as well for the more complex layouts but these require a lot more work to use on the page so we try to aviod using them on the simple pages, With 5 to 15 items on a page and over 1600 pages on just one of our catalogues I try to keep it as quick as possible as i’m sure you can imagine an extra minute or two spent on a page works out a lot of time overall.

    Will keep trying and as you say a script may achieve this, I might have to look at learning scripts :)

    Thanks Again

  • February 24, 2016 at 6:34 am #82216
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Or, another option is to consider using a third-party plug-in. If you’re creating catalogs with many tables, you might want to look at something like EasyCatalog (65bit.com) or DesignMerge (meadowsps.com) or something like that.

  • February 24, 2016 at 7:50 am #82220
    Chris Thompson

    Member

    What about:
    – Standardise your box widths to a small set, say 100mm, 125mm, 150mm
    – Set up a series of styles with tab stops included in the styles, one style for each of the standard widths
    – Then choose your style to match the required standardised box width.

    Keyboard shortcuts for the series of styles might speed things up too.

    Chris.

  • February 25, 2016 at 6:06 am #82242
    Brendan Neale

    Member

    Thanks Chris but unfortunately the boxes can change by millimetres sometimes so I would need a lot of different sizes set up to cover all variations. I’m thinking there is no straight solution to this unless Adobe build in right align tabbing into InDesign, will keep trying to find a way around the problem. I can only assume it’s a problem not many people haven’t come across, will have a look on the Adobe site and see if there is a feature request page that I could flag it up on.

    Bren

  • February 25, 2016 at 8:40 am #82245
    Brendan Neale

    Member

    I have just been to the Adobe Wishform page: https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html to request a feature, to see what happens if anything, sure they have many requests and very few make it through but have to give it a go. I have posted the following.

    How would you like the feature to work?
    Text tabs always align with the lefthand side of a text box, I would like to see a feature that allows you to choose to align tabs to the righthand side of the text box when necessary.

    Why is this feature important to you?
    I work on catalogues which have thousands of text boxes that run as follows:
    Product Code <tab> Product Description <tab> Was Price <tab> Now Price
    The prices tabs need to stay a certain distance from the righthand side no matter what size the text box is to align with other price boxes of many sizes. This means as soon as you extend a text box width you also need to change the tab positions as they align to the left whereas if you could choose align right for some tabs they would follow the box width and stay a set distance from the righthand side.

    Hope you can see this as a handy feature, it’s probably one that people do not realise they need until they are shown how useful it could be. If you require screenshots of the process/problem please let me know and I will be happy to provide some.

    Hopefully I may get a reply but it could be a slow burner so any other ideas would be welcome, Thanks

  • February 25, 2016 at 8:42 am #82246
    Chris Thompson

    Member

    “the boxes can change by millimetres sometimes” – ah, the benefits of standardisation! My sympathies.

    Off the wall suggestion – would a right-to-left paragraph or story direction, as in Arabic/Hebrew, solve the tab positioning? There could be some interesting side-effects with the numbers if you’re not careful though. I would try it out but I’m in the middle of something else right now.
    See also this forum thread where the tab ruler is displaying right to left:
    https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1599827?start=0&tstart=0

    Chris.

  • February 25, 2016 at 9:52 am #82249
    Masood Ahmad

    Participant

    Chris, this has nothing to do with the ME version, the Justify-Right can align the table to the right. But Brendon wants the tables/tabs to squeeze/expand as the width of the text frame changes.

    I don’t recall any such feature in InDesign, may be some script can do this magic.

  • February 25, 2016 at 10:09 am #82250
    Brendan Neale

    Member

    Thanks Chris and Masood, had a look at the right to left solution but my prices need to align to the right of the box and my product text needs to align to the left so I need to align tabs to both sides. After looking into Scripts (don’t know too much about them) I need this to run in the background automatically and scripts have to be run on a page (or maybe batch) manually.
    As you say Chris, standardisation would be heavenly but impossible to apply unfortunately, thanks for the sympathies though, you sound like you’ve been there before :)

    Thanks for the suggestions, will keep on trying

    Bren

  • February 26, 2016 at 7:53 am #82291
    Chris Thompson

    Member

    Masood – yes, it was something of an “off the wall” solution that I didn’t have time to think through or try out.

    Brendan – can you tell the people specifying it “it’ll cost X for variable width boxes, but X minus a discount for standardised widths” ??
    Some bosses don’t understand “it’s too difficult”, but they do understand “it’s too expensive”.

    Good luck,
    Chris.

  • February 26, 2016 at 9:25 am #82301
    Brendan Neale

    Member

    I find that even if the idea doesn’t work it’s good to throw suggestion out there as you never know what chain of thought may link it to an idea that may work so all relevant suggestions (within reason) are welcome.

    The catalogue won’t be changing to accomodate unfortunately, have tried to change things to work around the problem before but there is no budging so looking for a solution, until I find the Holy Grail I am stuck with the manual option.

    Bren

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