Brendan, in TextEdit, you can display and manipulate the margins, indents, and tabs of a paragraph by choosing Format > Text > Show Ruler (or pressing Command+R).
This is very handy for things like indenting entire blocks of text.
Would you consider adding this feature to TapForms?
Actually that was already in the Note field window, however, there was no menu item for it. I’ve just added that. So it’ll be in a forthcoming update.
My current version of TapForms is 5.3 and I cannot find a ruler for the Note field. There is a ruler for the layout. But for the Note field I don’t see a ruler with indents and tabs. There are default tabs that I use now. Am I missing something?
Sorry, I did miss it. It is there. With the keyboard sortcut Ctrl-cmd-R. Thanks for adding this text ruler.
I’m looking for this. It’s not showing up for me. Did something change since 2020?
I can turn on the ruler at the top of the ‘page’ in the new layout. I see nothing that lets me set a tab.
Ah. I can’t turn it on in layout. I have to be Form mode. Then Command Control R works.
I hope tabs set in Form mode will apply to that field on all records. I’ll go find out!
hmm. it doesn’t. Do I have to embed tab position in the text I’m copying into this field?
I’m confused. I was able to show the ruler just once in layout mode. I had created fresh layout and possibly a fresh note field. I went to something else and came back and I could no longer show the ruler on the one that let me briefly.
Is this some Ventura goodness?
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Hi Lane,
The ruler will only show when you’re in data entry mode. That’s because every note value can have different tab settings. It’s not a global thing. So setting the tabs for a note in one record will not affect other records.
So just exit layout edit mode and then click inside the Note field where you’ll be entering contents, then you can turn on the ruler.
Can they not have default settings one would set in layout?
I have unformatted text with tab characters, but no formatting otherwise. This would require a person to set the same tabs for every record when new records are imported with identically tabbed, but different data. A default set of tabs from what I’d apply in layout seems like an obviously useful thing.
I see how I can apply styles to all records in the default layout for that note. It’s an extra step that has to be remembered, but at least it avoids manually setting this for every record.
While I can see a box for a default value for a Note field, I don’t see how I could have default formatting with that default value. So, with javascript, can I “pre-fill” this note field with a blank Text Edit file that has tabs set as I need? I could then copy the data from another form to this one (I’m already doing this for another reason). My hope would be that copying the unformatted tabbed data will take on the tab settings from the first blank line determined by the textedit file.
Or maybe there is a better way I can’t see yet. Any thoughts on how to best proceed to essentially make a default format of a note field?
Well. I found record.getNoteFieldValue and record.setNoteFieldValue in the API. I’m exploring those. I have no idea if I can append text to a variable that is rich text so imma be googlin’.
The Note field on a custom layout lets you setup default settings for font, colour, and alignment, but not the tab stops.
I suppose you could make a record that has the settings you want in your Note field and then duplicate that record whenever you want to make a new record? You would need a bit of text in there, even a space character for the attributed string to remember its settings.
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