🚀 go-pugleaf

A little more info:
When I select only a single tab character, the constructor name reports as "Character."
However, when I select more than one character, the constructor name is "Text." When selecting all text (Cmd-A) the constructor name reports as "TextColumn." Could this be the reason for the bum referencing?
Thanks,
Len Swierski

Hi Len,

The selection is the text, not the tab stop. That is, even if you have selected a tab character, you have not selected a tab stop. To find out which tab stop corresponds to the tab character you have selected, you'll have to work out the location of the tab character in the text. You might want to take a look at the TabUtilities.jsx example script to see how to do this.

Thanks,

Ole

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, Ole.

I looked over the TabUtilities.jsx script. Seems like what I need to do is to run a "for" statement to find the index numbers of all the tab characters and then create a new array for the SELECTED ones in that collection. Their index numbers should correspond to the tabStop index numbers, right? How to do this all, though. Whew! Putting my thinking cap on now.

Regards,

Len Swierski

Hi Len,

That's not a bad approach, but remember that there may be more tab characters than there are tab stops. I was thinking of getting the location of the selected tab stop relative to the left edge of the text frame (or column, if you're working with multi-column frames) and then comparing it to the location of the tab stop. But I think your approach will work just as well and be quicker.

Also, remember that when you start moving tab stops around, the index of the tab stop within the tab stops collection can change. If you have tab stop A at 12pt and tab stop B at 16pt, then tab stop A will be item(0) and B will be item (1). But if you move A to 24pt, A will become item(1) and B will be item(0). The index of the tab stop is relative to its location on the tab ruler.

Thanks,

Ole

Ole, thanks for that info.

It's becoming clearer for me now. I think I can avoid overlapping the tabStop positions by allowing for that somewhere in the script, but first things first. The task at hand will only require nudging the tabStops by one point plus or minus (I'll have 2 scripts with keyboard shortcuts set to CTRL-NUM+ and CTRL-NUM-) so I will keep them from getting close by just watching the tab panel for now. Thanks again for your help.

Regards,

Len Swierski