Writer Guide

Tip
If you need to use tabs, and you will be sending a document to
other people, do not use the default tab stops. If the recipients
of the document have defined default tab stops that are
different from the ones you are using, the paragraph may look
very different on their machines. Instead, define the tab stops
explicitly in the paragraph or the paragraph style; then you
can be sure that everyone will see the same layout.
To define tab stops in your paragraph style, use the page shown in
Figure 231. Here you can choose the type of tab: left, right, centered,
or decimal; the character to be used as a decimal point; and the fill
character —the characters that appear between the end of the text
before the tab and the beginning of the text after the tab. You can also
create a custom fill character by entering it in the corresponding box.
Common use of a fill character is adding dots between a heading and a
page number in a table of contents or underscore character when
creating a form to fill in.
Creating a new tab stop, therefore, is just a matter of deciding its
position relative to the left margin, the type, the fill character and
clicking the New button. The tab stop will be entered in the Position
list on the left hand side. Unfortunately, the only way to modify the
position of a tab stop is to create a new one in the desired position and
delete the old one using the buttons on the right-hand side of the page.
Figure 231: Specifying tab stops for a paragraph style
Note that it is not possible to define tabulations that exceed the page
margin. In the rare cases where it may be needed, use a borderless
table instead.
Chapter 7 Working with Styles 235