TOPLEAF: Alignment of substeps

[jlm05]

In the PDF output for our current draft TopLeaf stylesheet, step content is all aligned/idented correctly, but substep content is not.

Within each substep, the subsequent lines of the , as well as any paragraphs in the , , etc. , are not lined up correctly. Those lines should all line up with the first line of the substep text, instead of being further to the left.

See the attached image.

The current margin and line indent settings for substep are all 0. The label offset is .75 pc.

I'm having trouble following the help on this – does anyone know what the proper settings would be to correct the alignment?

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[gjn2066]

Looks to me as if the label offset is insufficient (ie. the width of “[u](a) [/u]” is greater than .75pc).

You can test this by increasing to (say) 1.5pc. If the text lines now align properly then that was the problem.

The other possibility is that a first line indent is being applied. But your note seems to rule this out.

Background info

The three important values here are Left Margin, First Line Indent and Label Offset which are all specified in the Paragraph tab.

• LM controls the basic text position (ie. all lines other than the first).
• FLI is applied only to the first line. A positive value gives a classical indent on the first line of a paragraph. A negative value gives a “hanging” indent with the first line extending to the left.
• LO specifies how far to the left of the start of the first line (including any indent) to commence the label. If the label is wider than the offset, then the first line text is pushed rightwards to make room. I believe this is what's happening in your case.

The most common usage is for LM and LO to be equal. This results in a label offset to the left, with all the main text lines aligning. But you can change any or all of these values to achieve different effects. For example, while it is uncommon to set both FLI and LO, you can use this to label paragraphs with classical or hanging indenting.

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