tab stop in a table cell

[Vicki38950098ejye]

Hello,
How do I create a tab stop in a table cell? 

I have text I need to separate, within the cell, and FM does not have a split cell function (?)

in the table cell:
Name Date

Thank you,
Vicki

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

What version of FM? Structured or Unstructured?

[Vicki38950098ejye]

Structured - I am using a template that has elements.

[Bob_Niland · Accepted solution]

As ␉ is used for Table navigation, to insert a ␉ character in a Table, use:
␛␉

re: FM does not have a split cell function (?)

No. The usual workarounds are:
▦ common: insert a new Column, and Straddle it in all other Rows, or
▦ less common: have the cell contain an SVG object that mimics the intent
▦ rare: insert a new Table in the Table cell
Structured mode may not allow you to do #1 or #3.

[Vicki38950098ejye]

Hi Bob,

what is:
As ␉ is used for Table navigation, to insert a ␉ character

ty,

Vicki

[Bob_Niland]

Vicki: what is: As ␉ is used for Table navigation, to insert a ␉ character

␉ is Unicode U+2409 SYMBOL FOR HORIZONTAL TABULATION
used to denote the [Tab⭾] key on the keyboard.
If it's not visible in your view of the forum, it is usually rendered as HT or ^H_T.
␛ is Unicode U+241B SYMBOL FOR ESCAPE
used to denote the [Esc] key on the keyboard.
If it's not visible in your view of the forum, it is usually rendered as ESC or ^ES_C

In a Table, if you just hit ␉, the cursor moves to the next cell. If you hit ␛ followed by ␉, you insert a tab in the current cell.

These ␉ & ␛ codepoints are one of the intended use cases for these Unicode characters, visually representing, for discussion and document purposes, the actual characters generated by those keys:
U+0009 HORIZONTAL TABULATION
U+001B ESCAPE
which are not normally displayed, but executed instead.

In some future that may or may not be near you, any single character can be represented, at final document or web page render, as a keycap, via a trailing:
U+20E3 COMBINING ENCLOSING KEYCAP

Browser support for this can't yet be relied on. I've actually never seen it work {…properly; Firefox tries}, but here they are as a test:
Enclosed tab: ␉⃣
Enclosed escape: ␛⃣

The letter strings Tab⭾ and Esc followed by a U+20E3 can't be relied on at all, because 20E3h is only documented to enclose a single character.

[Vicki38950098ejye]

Bob,
Thank you for the explanation - I understand better, but still not able to get what I want.
in the table cell I have:
Name Date
I want:
Name           Date
In FM, I did Insert>Character>Hex code, and put in the values, and got:
Name ␛ ␉ Date
What am I doing wrong?
Vicki

[Bob_Niland]

With cursor | in the table cell of interest
in between the text strings to be tab-separated, let's assume:
Leading|Following
hit (and release, don't hold) the  [Esc] key
and then the [Tab⭾] key.

If you have View🞃Text Symbols on

This should then at least appear as

Leading〉Following
The Paragraph Format for the cell, often ¶CellBody, does need to have tabs defined in /Basic\ for the tab to do anything.

[Vicki38950098ejye]

Bob,  Thank you for the explanation - that is the first thing I tried, didn't work - but will try again in the morning.
Nice hint about turning on View Text Symbols.
Thank you for your patience.
Regards,
Vicki

[frameexpert]

Keep in mind that FrameMaker doesn't have default tab stops like Word. So when you press Esc + tab, you are inserting a tab character, but the text won't move if there are no tab stops defined for that paragraph. You define tab stops in the Basic tab of the Paragraph Designer.

[Vicki38950098ejye]

ah, that might be the missing piece.  Ty, Vicki

[FrameMaker-dk · Accepted solution]

Esc+Tab works for me.

[Vicki38950098ejye]

Thank you for your reply!
Will try 🙂
Regards,

Vicki