inkscape - replace empty TAB with doted lines.

[livebrain]

I trying to do a restaurante menu with the itens on the left and the price on the right, i want to connect the "food" with the price by a doted line.

something like this "Example_food..............................................999,99€"
I want something fast and automated, everyt ime i press TAB it gives me a "fixed" space between the food item and the price and it fills that space with dots.

Thats how i do it in coreldraw.

Is it possible to do something like this in inkspace ?

[Moini]

You could copy 3 or 4 (or more) dots, then paste them repeatedly until you reach the end. Or you could add a dotted line.

[brynn]

Welcome to the forum!

Doesn't your keyboard repeatedly type a character when you hold down the key?

[livebrain]

Well if i press a key it will repeat it but... The "tab" (corel way) is much better because it autoaligns everything and if i have to make some corrections the doted line automatically resizes itself.


its like this:
Rice(tab)price
gives me:
Rice.........................0.10€

If i have to change someting: (no need to edit the line)
Rice with carrots........0.10€

I dont need to redo the doted line every time i write something because it updates automatically.

Now im getting:
Rice with carrots
........................0,10€

And then i have to manually edit the line.

Thats fine if i have 5 entries or so... but if i have to make na ENTIRE 20 pages menu with translations to 3 or 4 languages thats not that very prattical and it will take alot of time just to mess around with the "doted line".

Another thing is that if i manually type "."sometimes it will not align as i want and sometimes the numbers dont really align well.
In corel everyt ime i press "tab" it will give me the exact same location every time.
item(tab)price
item_time(tab)price

it will give me:
item...........0,10
time_time...0,10
i just need t specify where the tab "ends" within the line and every time i TAB thats it... auto line auto align.

[brynn]

Oh I see.  So it's more of an advanced text feature.  I guess Inkscape is more focussed on being a full featured SVG editor, than being a full featured text or word processor or desktop publishing

I have no idea if this feature exists there, but there's an open source desktop publishing program called Scribus, which supports SVG.  So you might try that.

[Moini]

I'd just use dotted lines in this case. Snap them to the text anchor, hold control when moving it to the right. Adapt length. It's not as fast as the text feature in Corel, but well... Inkscape is for drawing.
Or search and replace could work, somehow...

Anyway, there are better softwares than Inkscape for DTP. E.g. Scribus. It has an option for setting tab fill characters for a text, and it can also export to pdf or SVG. Also, it has multipage support.

So what I'd suggest as a useful workflow:
- Create texts in Scribus
- Create graphics in Inkscape
- Import those into Scribus
- Export document to (CMYK, if desired) pdf if you want to send it to an online printing service

[livebrain]

I'll try Scribus.
thanks for the help guys

[Moini]

You're welcome. Let us know if you need help finding that tab fill option... Depending on your Scribus version, it can be found in different places (and the general setting for the whole file didn't have any effect for me, so needs to be set per text object).

[flamingolady]

Moini - I haven't tried this - and it probably won't work, but... is there anyway to use the Dashes option (choosing dots) from the Fill n stroke box (choosing stroke/dashes/dots)? probably not, but seems like I saw a tut yrs ago, someone else had this issue, but too long ago for me to remember what they did to resolve it, wanted to bring it up in case you might know.

[brynn]

Yes, I think that's what Moini was suggesting.  The problem is that where he was creating the text before, he could edit, for example the description, and the dots would automatically adjust themselves.  With Inkscape, he'd have to draw new dotted lines every time he edits the text.  Inkscape doesn't have such an advanced feature for text.