Simple text format query

Q & A - getting started with Tinderbox
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Long time but trivial user here: I have problem I’ve not noticed before with very simple text formatting. I’m writing a bunch of new notes and just want each note to wrap and have a user-specified margin on left and right so that I have a decent readable editor width for my poor old eyes. This is all to do with now using a larger screen than I was before (iMac rather than MBPro).

I have a new document with a dozen notes already. I set the system/text format/left (right) margin (4 - for a half-inch margin either side) and exit the Document Inspector. I expected all notes to then have the same format. But some have the new margins, others simply do not wrap at all. Changing the view (CMD-4,5,6) seems to upset things as well.

Ventura 13.6.4. Tinderbox b.661

How to fix this please?

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If you are setting $LeftMargin and $RightMargin these are documented—including in the Inspector as legacy. IOW, now that’s plain we would expect setting those not to have any useful affect. Also the controls to set those attributes in Doc Settings are also gone in v6+.

Margins, so far as I understand them are controlled by the default style as seen by showing the $Text area’s ruler (menu Format ▸ Text ▸ Show Rule ⌃⌘R). Now from the ‘Styles’ pop-up in the ruler select ‘Other…’ and you will see the document default style, although it doesn’t list margins.

Quite how margins are set in Tinderbox v6 and later is not clear. They look from the ruler to c. 0.5 inch / 1.2 cm. The right margin is auto-set based on the width of the text pane and should soft-wrapping the $text—but clearly it isn’t. So, I think the concept is margins are

However if you have, howsoever, inserted a rich-text style with a fixed page width, the $Text won’t soft-wrap inside a narrower $Text pane. From the app’s perspective, it’s been told (part of) the text is a certain width so it has to respect that. One possible source of unexpected rule widths is rich text content pasted from other apps as it will past with it’s source ruler. This effect can be seen if a not has different margin/styles in different $Text paragraphs.

Stlye/margins can be reset via the Format ▸ Style submenu.

Sadly there is no shortcut to reset margins (or one to rest both style and margins altogether), but select all (Cmd+A) and menu Format ▸ Style ▸ Reset Margins may help. I’m unclear if it can/should reset (a section of) $Text with manually-set right margin (i.e. fixed ‘page’ width).

Sorry that’s a partial answer, but I think that’s the extent of documented behaviour here.

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Many Thanks Mark,

I went to the Styles and chose Default - which seems to have worked across the document and will be perfectly fine for getting on with my work today. Now I know where to look for making changes I can experiment another time.

I take some comfort in my ignorance from the fact that if even the creator of A Tinderbox Reference is not sure how margins are set in Tinderbox then it’s not a moral failing in me …

Thanks again.

1 Like
4

:slight_smile: I think it’s the nature of a complex toolbox, there are always corners that get less light. The fact this issue I unclear doesn’t invalidate your query but suggests it mostly 'just works. Yet clearly, tight up to the point … where it doesn’t! I.e, your question.

I think there are possibly two interlinked factors at play: general margin width and embedded text styles. I’m not sure of the presumed norm for Cmd+4. Text-only more. Here, on one of my pair of 24" monitors, my main working space, the text re-flows across the whole window, though clearly this is different from, say, the experience on a 13" or 14" laptop scree. Indeed, a user might assume the text width might expend to a certain (‘comfortable’) width and no more. The uncertainty of that indicates this is perhaps an element of design yet to be fully settled.

For users who go back to the ‘old’, i.e. pre-v6 app design, some base assumptions have changed. The old model allowed the text size (i.e. ‘print’ size’) to be altered separately from the in-app viewed size (a magnification factor). Whatever the backstory of that design, it didn’t carry through to the v6 design where the design intent (I think!) is you just set the size of the text you want—as rich text—and go with that.

So whilst margins are internal magic it seems, you do have these controls over text:

$LineSpacing](LineSpacing). This is the ‘leading’ between lines of (soft-wrapped) text. The doc level default (set at the System Inspector) can be set per selected note(s) using the Text Inspector

That setting is discrete from - if needs be… $ParagraphSpacing’. this controls the spacing between paragraphs. If you prefer, where a hard line break occurs in $Text. It too can be set via the Text Inspector.

Text font ($TextFont), size ($TextFontSize), colour ($TextColor) have system attributes. They can also be customised at the System Inspector, Format menu’s sub-menus. The $Text colour can be altered sing the Text Inspector.

If any note looks wrong, as noted above, select all and use either/both the Format ▸ Style menu’s ‘Standard Font’ or Reset Margin’ options. The former also has a shortcut: ⌃⌥⌘T.

So controls for just about everything except what you want—margins. :hushed:

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  1. I’ll check on the details later, when I have the code in front of me.

  2. As a principle, Tinderbox respects styles you apply (or paste), assuming that you know better. So, if you paste text into Tinderbox that has a right margin set, Tinderbox may respect that until you remove it.

  3. I write “may” above, because Tinderbox does remove margins at times, especially when those margins might trigger bugs in the macOS typesetter. This practice has changed several times and I forget what the current policy is: see item 1.

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Thanks Mark,

For this document I didn’t paste from anywhere else and as far as I recall I opened the new doc, made some changes (font etc) in Document Settings wrote a dozen or so notes over the past week and then this happened this morning when I started working again. Maybe I’ve simply forgotten a mis-step I tried (it happens) but anyway Mark A has explained how to make the changes I need, and all’s well now.