Paragraph Format

The Paragraph Format button is an InstaButton, so it follows the principles of operation of all InstaButtons. It gives you direct access to all aspects of paragraph formatting in a single dialog.

The Border radio button group in the top/left corner of the dialog allows you to select the type of paragraph border you would like. A few controls in this dialog only make sense if there is some border, so let's start by selecting a double-line border style to make sure we can play with everything this dialog has to offer.

•	Width specifies the width of the narrow lines that make up the border. The thicker lines used in the last two border styles are based on the thinner lines, so their widths are calculated automatically. Width is measured in pixels.

•	Gap is the distance between lines of multi-line borders (in pixels). It obviously only applies to border styles that use more than a single line, so you will find this SpinEdit disabled for the single-line border style.

•	Space Before specifies any additional amount of space (in pixels) that you may want to leave above the paragraph. This makes the paragraph distance itself from the preceding paragraph by the specified amount of space.

•	Space After does the same thing, but adds space below the paragraph.

We now get to the "Indents" group of SpinEdit boxes. They specify what indents the paragraph is to have as depicted below.

While we are on this subject, it is worth noting that you can set indents using the Ruler by simply dragging around the corresponding indicator.

Finally, you can also increase or decrease indents to the next or previous Tab Stop using the Indent and Outdent toolbar buttons.

All indents are measured in the units of the active Memo, which could be either inches or centimeters. You can change the units from the Tabs dialog. You can also set your preferred default units globally from the Settings dialog.

The next SpinEdit specifies Line Spacing. A value of 1 means single line spacing, 2 means double spacing, and so on. You can specify fractional spacing values, e.g., 1.5 or 0.85.

The "Alignment" group of radio buttons specifies, well, the alignment of the text in the paragraph: Left / Center / Right / Justified. Time to move on to the fun stuff!

The first one has to do with the appearance of paragraph borders. The button in the middle is candid enough to tell us what it does: it specifies the border color. Easy.

What may look like a rectangle made of sticks is precisely that: it's a representation of the paragraph border made up of the 4 line segments represented by toggle buttons. Each button allows you to turn its respective border edge On or Off. Just try clicking any of them to see how it works.

The SpinEdits in the middle of each border edge are border Bias values. Sounds fancy but it's quite simple: each of them specifies by how many pixels their respective border edge should be moved inward or outward. For example, let say we wanted to make the left and right edges of the border a bit further from the paragraph text than they are with a bias value of 0. Just set the Left Bias value to some small positive number (e.g., 2 or 3) and see how the border moved away from the text on both left and right sides. Normally, you'd want borders to be symmetrical, which is why modifying the Left Bias automatically keeps the Right Bias in sync. But if you want to control bias values individually, just check the checkbox next to the Right Bias SpinEdit: you can now change Left and Right biases independently from one another. Same goes of course for the Top/Bottom biases. You can use negative bias values too: they move the border edges inwards, into the paragraph.

Moving on, we get to a similar-looking arrangement of controls, except that this group is responsible for the appearance of the paragraph Background. The button in the middle sets the color, but we won't tell you of what. The SpinEdits that surround it work in precisely the same way as their Border Bias counterparts described earlier. The Background Bias values move the background rectangle around.

Finally, in the bottom/right corner of the dialog we find a couple of checkboxes in a Printing group.

Keep lines together, if checked, will attempt to prevent the paragraph from being cut in half by a page break. Such a paragraph will simply move to the next page, which should keep it in one piece.

Keep paragraph with next is similar. It will try to make sure this paragraph and the one that follows it end up on the same page.

Needless to say, these two settings only apply to the printing stage of the game, so you will not see any immediate effect of applying these setting to a Memo paragraph.