Problem with tab stops/fill character.

[BlankUsername]

I'm trying to make a document with fixed-width text with sixty characters per line. All unused spaces at the end of a line should be filled with hyphens.
I thought the ideal tool for this would be tabs with fill characters, but Writer seems intent on making things complicated by modifying the space between hyphens instead of just adding them until the tab stop is reached.

I think the picture is pretty self-explanatory. Is there any way I can achieve what I labeled as "manually filled" instead of what "fill characters" does?
I have looked up and down and can't find any reason Tabs would function as variable-width.

[floris v]

I think that the tab position is responsible for that: you need to set that to an exact multiple of the width of your letters or Writer will start adding space to force the hyphens to fill the space to the tab position.

[BlankUsername]

No dice. No matter at which point the tab is added, it never spaces all hyphens equally.
I see no reason it should space anything, in fact, instead of being a simple stop. But I'm a very casual user, maybe it makes all the sense in the world for more experienced people.

Is there any other solution for "adding hyphens until end of line" (besides manually formatting and reformatting every time a line is modified, which is clearly not a time-efficient method)?

[jrkrideau]

Can you upload a copy of the file? The screenshot is not giving enough detail and when I tried it, it seemed okay but I may not be seeing the actual problem.

[BlankUsername]

Thanks for taking the time.

jrkrideau, it isn't a particular document. I can replicate the problem by just making a new document, going to paragraph, tabs, setting the tab with "-" as fill character, and creating this pattern to demonstrate what happens when the line has varying amounts of characters.

http://i.imgur.com/2rFcCzb.jpg

The first set has a tab with "-" as fill character, and the second set, being my desired result, is filled manually. I think the difference is pretty clear.
The space between hyphens varies of course according to the position of the tab, but I am unable to achieve anything close to the manual hyphenation.
I'll attach this sample document.

Any alternative to achieve what I want to do (it's not anything too complicated, is it?) would be much appreciated, as I have to start producing texts in this format ASAP. I have tried other software to no avail.

[floris v]

Confirmed. The simplest solution that I can see for now is a macro to add those hyphens.

[jrkrideau]

Ah, I see the problem now.

What is happening with the fill? When I turn on Non-Printing Characters I am getting a shadowed area for the first set of lines which leads me to assume that we are not getting pure text whatever that is.

In the second set, I'm getting what one would expect.

I did a cut and paste into a text editor and there are no hyphens in the first set. If I do a character count on the texts lines it seems to confirm that this.

It appears we are not seeing text spacing problem but an underlying programming issue where we see hyphens but they are just a representation of some other code. It looks like Floris is right. It is probably a macro or nothing.

Character count per paragraph.
[1] 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 65 64 63 62 61 {empty} 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 66

[Bill]

The tab key inserts a single tab character. The fill characters aren't real text and don't replace the tab character.

The document could be created with a text editor which replaces tabs with spaces. The completed document could then be opened with Writer to replace the spaces with hyphens.

[jrkrideau]

The tab key inserts a single tab character. The fill characters aren't real text and don't replace the tab character.

The document could be created with a text editor which replaces tabs with spaces. The completed document could then be opened with Writer to replace the spaces with hyphens.

As I thought. Do you know of any text editor that would easily automate the insertion of the padding tabs? The OP mentions that he has not found software that seems to do this. Any suggestions?

[jrkrideau]

Edit:

In an off-forum message, RoryOf suggests a simple work-around.

Make a template line with 60 hyphens and just type over the line in Overtype mode.

Seems like a good approach to me. See the attached example. I have created an autotext entry called hh (shortcut H) that can insert each line.

Edit: *@##Q@%$@#$% here hopefully is the file

[Bill]

Do you know of any text editor that would easily automate the insertion of the padding tabs?

Any text editor designed to be used for code-editing should work. Those designed as Notepad replacements may not. Notepad++ is one that I know has this feature.

How does one configure Notepad++ to use spaces instead of tabs?

[jrkrideau]

Do you know of any text editor that would easily automate the insertion of the padding tabs?

Any text editor designed to be used for code-editing should work. Those designed as Notepad replacements may not. Notepad++ is one that I know has this feature.

How does one configure Notepad++ to use spaces instead of tabs?

I have never used Notepad or Notepad++ so I am not sure but it looks like this is the opposite of what the OP needs. They need a variable number of hyphens by line to fill from the end of the text to the right margin. A fill-from-x-to-end-of-line function which is what it looks like Writer is doing but obviously is not.

[RoryOF]

The template I suggested to jrkrideau needs each 60 char line of hyphens to be terminated with a paragraph mark. Best also to use a monospaced font such as courier. The type entry then needs to be in overwrite mode, not insert mode.

It may not be elegant, but it will work.

[Bill]

I have never used Notepad or Notepad++ so I am not sure but it looks like this is the opposite of what the OP needs. They need a variable number of hyphens by line to fill from the end of the text to the right margin. A fill-from-x-to-end-of-line function which is what it looks like Writer is doing but obviously is not.

The tab settings in Notepad++ are like the default tab settings in Writer. It may not be possible to set the default at "60", but if probably can be set at "20" which would place default stops at 20, 40, 60, etc. When typing in text, when the end of the text in a line is reached, hit the tab key until the insertion point hits "60". This fills the space from the end of the text to column 60 with spaces which are real characters.

[jrkrideau]

I had not realised that. It sounds like a very feasible approach.

Thanks

[jrkrideau]

See earlier reply for attached file. #$%$@