Tab-Aligned Text

[noisneil]

Thanks for the reply!

@mrpasini

You'll need different approaches for aligning columns of text that use a monospaced font like Courier and a proportional font like Helvetica (TextEdit).

I'm aware of this, which is why I've been using Menlo in both TextEdit and KM.

@mrpasini

• TextEdit apparently won't let you set Tabs on the ruler via AppleScript

You can set the tab width for plain text, but not rich text, annoyingly.

@mrpasini

While the monospaced version can (and probably should) use multiple spaces to pad out the columns so each line is the same number of characters (which will always work), the proportional approach should separate columns by a single tab.

My first port of call was a spaced version. Maybe it's good enough.

For the one-tab approach, you'd still have to manually set the tab length, which rules out writing to files in the background.

@mrpasini

Having just one to get to the next column makes the inevitable layout refinements more efficient.

Agreed, but it's kind of moot unless you can set the tab width for .rtf files.

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The thing I still don't understand is why copying the text from the Display Text window and pasting it into TextEdit does adjust the tab-stop width automatically. What's going on there?