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Paragraph indent?

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Rolf

22 May, 2018 02:16 AM

Hi I'm new to MMD Pro and I write fiction. How do I configure MMD to indent paragraphs? It is very hard to write without this, especially following dialog. I looked through the settings, but can't find it.

1. 1 Posted by Rolf on 22 May, 2018 02:20 AM

   

   Found it myself: turn off "Use elastic tabstops" ;^)

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2. Support Staff 2 Posted by Fletcher on 22 May, 2018 02:23 AM

   

   What exactly are you trying to do? I suspect that might not actually be the solution you're looking for.

   Fletcher

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3. 3 Posted by Rolf on 22 May, 2018 03:15 AM

   

   I’m writing fiction, a novel, and the formatting I had in the app did not paragraph indent the way fiction normally is. For non-fiction writing it doesn’t really bother me. But for fiction, it makes it very difficult to follow dialog without those paragraph indents. I had elastic tabstops checked, when I uncheck it, it looks good. I’ve been writing in Sublime Text with a multimarkdown add-on, so there is actually a tab at the start of each paragraph. Is that bad?

   One of the reasons I bought MMD Pro was to make sure my text is standard compliant to both multimarkdown and criticmarkup. But, man, I can’t write without that little tab… ;^|

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4. Support Staff 4 Posted by Fletcher on 22 May, 2018 03:35 AM

   

   First rule of MMD is that if it's working for you, then it's working for you. I'm not trying to break something that's doing its job. But I worry that you're going to run into trouble.

   Does the preview look the way you expect it to?

   Maybe you can send me a short sample?

   If you put a leading tab on a line, that line will be treated as a code block, rather than a text paragraph. This will cause a lot of difficulty when you convert the MMD text to something else.

   It sounds like what you want is for the editing pane to automatically indent the left margin of the first line of each paragraph in the raw text (as distinct from the visual appearance of the output which is controlled differently (e.g. CSS/LaTeX/etc.)). There is not currently a way to change the left indent of only the first line, but I can look at adding that to the Theme syntax (http://support.multimarkdown.com/kb/composer-v4/multimarkdown-composer-v4-themes)

   Fletcher

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5. 5 Posted by Rolf on 22 May, 2018 03:48 AM

   

   Thank you. That's exactly what I’m looking to accomplish. I was afraid my tabs might be a “fix” that would bite me later… If you would be willing to add that setting, that would be fantastic!

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6. Support Staff 6 Posted by Fletcher on 22 May, 2018 06:32 PM

   

   I added this functionality as the leftFirstIndent key for Themes. The link above takes you to the page to customize themes.

   It won't be in 4.4.2 (already submitted as it has critical bug fixes), but will be in the next release.

   Thanks!

   Fletcher

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7. Fletcher closed this discussion on 22 May, 2018 06:32 PM.

8. Rolf re-opened this discussion on 22 May, 2018 07:51 PM

9. 7 Posted by Rolf on 22 May, 2018 07:51 PM

   

   Thank you! I really appreciate that. Will keep my eye out for 4.4.3.

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10. Fletcher closed this discussion on 24 May, 2018 01:26 AM.

11. Rolf re-opened this discussion on 28 May, 2018 06:05 AM

12. 8 Posted by Rolf on 28 May, 2018 06:05 AM

    

    Hi Fletcher,

    Thank you for adding “leftFirstIndent” for me. I just gave it a try and it does do the trick! I did notice a small difficulty though… I was unable to change that element’s behavior for things like codeblocks, headings, etc. Maybe I’m just setting it incorrectly. I couldn’t find a element name for "plain old text," so I applied the indent globally, and then tried to set it to zero for the other elements. The result is everything is indented by the global value, in this case 25—ignoring the overrides.

    Kind regards,

    Rolf

    Here’s my theme based on your default theme:

    {
    "comment" : "Rolf's Default theme",
    "backgroundColor" : "eee",
    "foregroundColor" : "000",
    "sidebarBackgroundColor" : "eee",
    "sidebarTextColor" : "000",
    "sidebarTextColorHighlighted" : "eee",
    "sidebarTextColorHighlightedInactive" : "000",
    "sidebarHighlightColor" : "555",
    "sidebarHighlightColorInactive" : "D7DBDF",
    "caretColor" : "000",
    "selectionColor" : "999",
    "leftFirstIndent" : 25,
    "strong" : {
    "bold" : 1
    },
    "emphasis" : {
    "italic" : 1
    },
    "superscript" : {
    "superscript" : 1
    },
    "subscript" : {
    "superscript" : -1
    },
    "criticAddition" : {
    "foregroundColor" : "00bb00"
    },
    "criticDeletion" : {
    "foregroundColor" : "dd0000"
    },
    "criticSubstitution" : {
    "foregroundColor" : "ff8600"
    },
    "criticHighlight" : {
    "foregroundColor" : "aa53a9"
    },
    "criticComment" : {
    "foregroundColor" : "0000bb"
    },
    "codeBlock" : {
    "leftFirstIndent" : 0,
    "fontName" : "Courier",
    "fontScale" : 0.92,
    "foregroundColor" : "40607f",
    "backgroundColor" : "2240607f"
    },
    "codeSpan" : {
    "leftFirstIndent" : 0,
    "fontName" : "Courier",
    "fontScale" : 0.92,
    "foregroundColor" : "40607f",
    "backgroundColor" : "2240607f",
    "mono" : 1
    },
    "heading" : {
    "bold" : 1,
    "leftFirstIndent" : 0,
    "backgroundColor" : "2240607f"
    },
    "math" : {
    "foregroundColor" : "40607f"
    },
    "table" : {
    "leftFirstIndent" : 0,
    "backgroundColor" : "2240607f"
    },
    "pairs" : {
    "foregroundColor" : "40607F"
    },
    "markup" : {
    "leftFirstIndent" : 0,
    "foregroundColor" : "40607F"
    },
    "metadata" : {
    "leftFirstIndent" : 0,
    "foregroundColor" : "777"
    },
    "definitionAbbreviation" : {
    "foregroundColor" : "40607F"
    },
    "definitionCitation" : {
    "foregroundColor" : "40607F"
    },
    "definitionFootnote" : {
    "foregroundColor" : "40607F"
    },
    "definitionGlossary" : {
    "foregroundColor" : "40607F"
    },
    "definitionLink" : {
    "foregroundColor" : "40607F"
    }
    }

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13. Support Staff 9 Posted by Fletcher on 28 May, 2018 03:21 PM

    

    I'll have to play with this. The theme handling engine is apparently treating the 0 as a non-existent value rather than overriding the default value with a new value of 0.

    But you can use a really small value (e.g. 1) to override and most people probably can't tell the 1 pixel offset.

    I'll work on a more general fix, but do that in the meantime.

    Fletcher

    PS> And yes, your general approach is right -- there isn't a separate setting for regular paragraphs, so you apply a default and then override where you don't want the default to apply.

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14. Support Staff 10 Posted by Fletcher on 28 May, 2018 04:18 PM

    

    It's a bit more complicated than I thought at first, but I think this will be the plan:

    1. leftFirstIndent defaults to 0 for all elements, unless specifically changed in the theme for a particular element type.

    2. leftFirstIndent applied globally will therefore only affect plain text paragraphs, as other elements will be reset with their default value of 0.

    This is a side effect of the idea that leftIndent and rightIndent are only intended to be applied to specific portions of the document, not the entire document (that should be handled by changing the margins on your textView, not indenting everything....)

    This will take effect in next release. But for now you can use the 1 trick above.

    F-

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15. 11 Posted by Rolf on 05 Jun, 2018 05:21 AM

    

    Works like a charm now in 4.4.4! Thank you.

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16. Rolf closed this discussion on 05 Jun, 2018 05:21 AM.