tabs do not move in line with indent

[terick]

Hi.
I have a simple ordered list like this

1. Apples               Red
2. Oranges              Yellow

If I press the indent key, the ordered list normally moves to the right one indent stop, and the tabs move as well, so that the moved ordered list has the same gap between the first and second words

      1. Apples                Red
      2. Oranges               Yellow

This seems to be the default behaviour as that it how it works when I install LO-writer and work with a blank document.

However, sometimes when I have been pasting other material into my document, the default way in which this works gets changed. Then when I indent the list, the tab is not moved. It stays in the same position and the list gets squashed and looks like this

      1. Apples         Red
      2. Oranges        ellow

I just can’t find the setting that governs this. I want the default setting honoured but how do I get back to it once it gets changed.

[mikekaganski]

https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/shared/guide/tabs.html

[ajlittoz]

Attach a sample file to your question so that we can have a look at the formatting and how you implement it (with styles or direct formatting). When you tab, is your cursor just before the first character of the paragraph?

[terick]

Hello Mike. I have created 3 files as followed and uploaded them to one of my websites so that you can review them

Case 1 – Tabs and Indents working as expected

http://vrwc.org.au/documents/Case-1.odt

Case 2 - Default Tab behaviour being changed after a cut and paste insert

http://vrwc.org.au/documents/Case-2.odt

Document 3 -the pdf document from which the cut and paste was done

Document-3.pdf

You as when I tab. I create the tab by left clicking on the top ruler. Then I position teh cursor to the left of the word to be tabbed and his the Tab key.

Thanks…Tim

[EarnestAl]

In the last example you gave, if you right-click in the text, does the bottom of the context menu say Table Properties? If so it is a table, not a list.

You can convert it to text, with the cursor in the text select the whole table by pressing Ctrl+A (maybe twice). With the table selected, in the menu click Table | Convert | Table to Text.., in the next dialog under Separate Text As, select Tabs as the separator, OK out. Cheers, Al

[terick]

Hi. No,I am not working with a table but with the simplest possible ordered list.

[EarnestAl]

You start with a list, I understand that. I meant the other pasted material that is acting the way a numbered list inside table acts when you tab inside it

[terick]

Oh I see. It is hard to pinpoint (as I don’t realise the default behaviour has been changed until later) but I think it occurs when I copy and paste text from a pdf document.

[ajlittoz]

I don’t know what you’ve done in Case-1.odt but this is surely not the standard behaviour. When I type Tab at the beginning of any or your list items, the left indent of all list paragraphs is increased. Similarly, with Shift+Tab the left indent is decreased and the paragraphs can even be sent in the left margin. In both cases, the numbering level is not changed.

In principle, typing a Tab at the beginning of a list item should change the item level.

Pressing the “increase indent” button, moves the paragraph as a block, keeping the tab in its relative position viz. the left indent. What is not expected is the simultaneous change in all similar paragraphs.

In Case-2.odt, the behaviour is a little better but there are still anomalies. When I press Tab at head of a list item, the item is promoted to a higher level as you expect for a list item and Shift+Tab can’t demote below level 1. Since a level change in a list is controlled differently from an indent increase, the formal left indent is unchanged and tab stops remain fixed in this reference. The actual left indent is customised in Format>Bullets & Numbering, takes precedence over what’s defined in the paragraph but will not otherwise influence paragraph attributes like tabs.

If I use the “increase/decrease indents” buttons, I get the same behaviour.

Note also that a list is formatted with two style categories: a paragraph style and a “list” style responsible for the numbering/bullet formatting. The paragraph style is common to all levels and therefore you should expect issues with tab stops (i.e. they are fixed relative to the paragraph left indent and won’t move with the dynamic indents brought in by the list style).

Considering the complexity of the interactions between paragraph and list formatting, I’d recommend to avoid direct formatting, i.e. the use of toolbar buttons, and to design a tuned user style where you control with precision all parameters.

To show the community your question has been answered, click the ✓ next to the correct answer, and “upvote” by clicking on the ^ arrow of any helpful answers. These are the mechanisms for communicating the quality of the Q&A on this site. Thanks!

[mikekaganski]

… but this is surely not the standard behaviour. When I type Tab at the beginning of any or your list items, the left indent of all list paragraphs is increased

I can’t repro the any piece: the list only shifted as a whole, when I press Tab at the beginning of the first list item, as expected; it indents only active item when it’s not the first (e.g., “Oranges” or “Bananas”).

The two document differ in the “TabRelativeToIndent” setting (see tdf#76005). The setting is a compatibility setting without an UI, and is usually set for Word documents… but here it is obviously changed at paste. Worth a bug report.

[ajlittoz]

@mikekaganski: I did not know there was such a setting. I looked for it in “Advanced” but didn’t find it. Is this what you mean with “no UI”? Not even listed in “Advanced”?

Beyond the present case, there is a problem in specification: tabs in paragraph style definition are relative to left indent. When list is activated, list indent takes precedence over paragraph but tabs remain relative to the original para indent. Nice to align across different levels but if list indent goes beyond the tab, we align on next tab or default evenly spaced tabs after the last explicit tab. On a theoretical point of view, what should be the rule: tabs frozen at their absolute position or tabs relative to present level indent?

[mikekaganski]

the compat setting switches between “tabs relative to indent” (normal for Writer) and “tabs relative to page margin” (normal for Word). And yes, it has no UI. Uou have to open/edit XML to see/change it. That’s what the cited bug is about. Yet, the setting changing at pasting of some content is a different bug.

[terick]

Hi all. Thanks for your indepth discussion. I now know what setting has been changed by the paste of pdf text. I would certainly like to see a UI to allow the “TabRelativeToIndent” setting to be modified either way, as both ways of displaying items in lists seem valid to me. I actually prefer the “tabs relative to indent” setting and would certainly appreciate a way of reactivating it if it somehow gets changed to “tabs relative to page margin” within a document. I am happy with the answer as described in the final discussion.