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A
Anonymous
March 28, 2013
Question

How to format index entries

  • March 28, 2013
  • 1 reply
  • 4234 views

I have been working on a large FM9 document with an index. Many of the index entries are quite long and appear on a large range of pages. Currently I have the page numbers tabbed to the right of the column with a dot leader. On wrapping to the next line, following page numbers are (unsurprisingly) ranged to the left margin.

Ideally, I would prefer wrapped text (of a long entry) to range to the left, but wrapped page number to range to the right. I have been trying various things in the IX reference page, including defining IndexIX as right-aligned (no joy), and definging Level1IX and Level2IX as run-in heads (also no joy).

Is it even possible to achieve what I want, or am I banging my head on a brick wall?

many thanks,

Ruth

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1 reply

Arnis Gubins
Arnis Gubins
Inspiring
March 28, 2013

To get all of the entries to have the text wrap a bit before the right margin and have the numbers tab out to the margin, in the Paragrpah designer for the various Level IX tags, on the Advanced tab, set the Word Spacing Minimum value to be substantially more than the Maximum value. This will force the content to wrap well before the right margin. The exact point depends upon the ratio of the min to max. Start at 150% and work up or down from there as the location is also a function of the typeface and font size. Use larger increments such as 25%.

Example

BEFORE

AFTER

A
Anonymous
April 2, 2013

Thanks Arnis - that's an interesting idea and one I never would have thought of trying. Unfortunately it only shifts the problem to a different selection of the index entries. The entire index comprises 14 pages of closely spaced 3-column entries so there is lots of scope for headings that are too long or have too many associated page numbers.

Before:

After:

Arnis Gubins
Arnis Gubins
Inspiring
April 5, 2013

Hi Arnis,

I have been playing around with my reference page, removing tabs and spaces and replacing them individually to see exactly where the changes appear. It has been an interesting excercise, but wherever I put the tab stops (or how many - I am still experimenting), I can't get the last tab to wrap to the next line, so it is always the second wrapped number which is tabbed, rather than the first.  I'll try some more after the weekend.

I will still have to deal with the problem of getting rid of the dot leader on wrapped lines, so I will have to do some editing to achieve that anyway. It won't be a hard job as I can do search/replace/paste for most of it anyway.

regards,

Ruth


Hi Ruth,

You also need to play around with the min/max word-spacing values to get the tab symbol to wrap to the next line. Sometimes a tab followed by a hard-space does the trick.

It would be a lot easier, if FM also had a Document > Text Property entry that allowed one to specify a line break *before* a particular symbol, i.e. tab.

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