Tab Stop Style Dictionary - Repeatable Style?

[JoyceKeller]

A tab stop dictionary style only exists in one PDF at a time.

 

Here are the steps that must be taken to use a style in another PDF:

1. Open a PDF that has the tab stop dictionary style I want to use
   
2. Open the PDF where I want to apply those tab stops
   
3. Load the tab style into the new PDF
   
4. Close the original PDF
   
5. Save the style again for the new PDF (otherwise, the style will not be saved with the new PDF, and I'm alerted on composition there are no saved tab stop styles)
   

 

Is there any other way to use a saved tab stop style with more than one PDF without repeating this process each time?

Edited November 13, 2013 by JoyceKeller

[Dan Korn]

I don't think there's a way to copy a named tab style from one template to another, no. (Well, if you are using the Producer API [FP Server], you could copy the <tabstyledict> section of the DIF file over to another DIF file, but that's probably not helpful for you.)

 

I've never heard of a request for this before. How complicated are these tab styles anyway? They're usually just a couple of clicks to set up. Also, if you copy-and-paste a text frame from one document to another, with unnamed tab settings, those should copy over.

[Dan Korn]

One other thing you might want to consider: Instead of using named tab styles, make a rule which returns a <p> tag with the required tab stops. Then you can insert that rule at the start of any line that needs those tab stops, and you can also copy the rule to another job if you want to.

 

I would use the old trick of creating a Formatted Text Resource, then clicking "View Source" to extract the tagging. So set up the tab stops in the resource, view the source, and pull out the "tabstops" attribute to copy into the markup in your rule. The rule will end up looking something like this:

return "<p br=false tabstops=\"0;21600,Right,,'.';28800,Left,,'.';R3600,Left\" >";

This is actually pretty much what you had to do manually before the Tabs button was added to the Variable Text Editor dialog.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Dan Korn
typo