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RB_138296123-Newcomer
3-Newcomer
July 17, 2025
Question

Help: Text block tabs misaligned, and tab moves entire line over

  • July 17, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 535 views

This is really 2 questions, both relating to text blocks in Mathcad 10:

1) Is there a way to make it so hitting Space or Tab after a math segment in a block of text doesn't move the whole line over? 

In any other program, Tab or Space after text just moves the cursor over, not the entire line.  I haven't figured out how to get it let me move the cursor over in a text block without it first trying to move the entire line and me having to go and backspace after I'm all done with the line (hitting Tab again will move it over even further).  How do I get it to stop moving text/math that's left of the cursor when I hit Space or Tab on a line with text/math already on it?

 

Example:

This is how I want m = ¾a + b³ <Tab>                          to look

 

                 This is what happens if I hit Tab after m = ¾a + b³ <Tab> and text continues here with the whole line tabbed over.

 

2) Is there a way so tabs are aligned in text blocks?

I have a block of text with some equations organized into 2 columns, which normally is accomplished with tabbing over so everything is left aligned into 2 columns.  Mathcad doesn't seem to understand this, and almost every line doesn't line up with the line above, I basically have to add additional spaces to almost every single line to get them to line up.  I feel like this is something that has been standard in just about every program for at least 30 years.

 

Example:                                                                      ↓ These should all line up here

Some text here

            Equation 1 here                                               Equation 2 here

Some more text

            Equation 3 goes here                                           Now Equation 4 is here

            This is Equation 5                                                Now Equation 6 is here

And some more text here

2 replies

A
AlanStevens19-Tanzanite
19-Tanzanite
July 18, 2025

This might not be totally satisfactory, but:

display.png

 

W
Werner_E25-Diamond I
25-Diamond I
July 18, 2025

Unfortunately the answer to both of your questions may be "no". You can't change Prime behaviour concerning text editing.

But I can't see that Prime would indent the whole line if you press <Tab> after an embedded Math region. The cursor moves to the next tab position (which can't be changed to your needs) and all text and math regions AFTER the cursor move along. and are shifted to the right. May not be the standard you may expect and there is no "insert/overwrite" option which you could turn on and off.

Prime is way back behind programs you may call current standard.

What you experience may be called minor nuisance compared to other design catastrophes or missing features.

Generally I very much dislike using math regions inside of text regions or text blocks a lot as it makes editing and working a lot more difficult.

Old Mathcad had a simple feature which allowed to vertically and/or horizontally align regions, but Prime is missing this feature so you are own your own moving the regions so they snap nicely to the grid the way you want them.

 

BTW, its easy to accomplish what you show as an example

Werner_E_0-1752851738347.png

After the math expression a:=3  I had to hit <TAB> a few times to get that far to the right (as I already said, tab stops are not customisable).

The line starting with "Some more text" was automatically indented and so I had to use the Backspace key to get to the left.

Once the text block is already created, <TAB> seems to act differently and jumps from math region to math region and you would have to use <SHIFT>+<TAB> to insert a new tab space.

Was not able to find anything helpful about this in the online help.

 

If you think it may help improving future program versions feel free to add a product idea/improvement suggestion  here: https://community.ptc.com/t5/Mathcad-Ideas/idb-p/PTCMathcadIdeas

But I guess you are only allowed to do so if you have an active paid subscription.

R
RB_138296123-NewcomerAuthor
3-Newcomer
July 28, 2025

Here's a text block example

Both the first and last indented lines are tabbed over 8 times, they should line up with the "L - Live" above it, yet they don't even line up with each other

RB_13829612_0-1753728006307.png

 

And a text box example

Exact same font, size, and number of tabs used as above, this time the first and last indented lines at least line up with each other

Also, on the first line I typed Θ (Alt+233), which worked fine in the text block above, but jumped down to the next line in the text box below.

RB_13829612_1-1753728006303.png

 

I have not been able to reproduce where using tab after math in a text box caused the whole line to tab over, but this is a freshly opened document, so it may be something the propagates after working in the same document a lot, or maybe it was a glitch that cleared when I closed the program. 

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