nUse a hanging indent to place short pieces of text in the beginning column(s) and longer text pieces in the final column.Because Windows Help version 3.0 does not support tables, you must use alternative methods to create tables. There are three ways to create tables without using the table feature in Word for Windows:
nUse a hanging indent to place short pieces of text in the beginning column(s) and longer text pieces in the final column.
As the user resizes the window, the text in the “outside” column wraps to accommodate the new window size.
nUse Word for MS-DOS or Word for the Macintosh to create side-by-side paragraphs.
Using this method, you can create tables with only two columns.
nFormat the table manually using tab stops, and then format the entire table as “nonwrapping” to keep the table intact when the user resizes the Help window.
The easiest way to create a simple table without the table feature is to use a hanging indent. The hanging indent creates the first column and forces the text in the second column to wrap to the indent.
First column The hanging indent creates the first column. Text in the second
column starts at the tab stop and wraps to fit the current window
size, regardless of how wide it is in the topic file.You can also create hanging indent tables with more than two columns as long as the information in the first columns is short.
First column Second column The hanging indent and tabs create the first and
second columns. Text in the third column starts
at the second tab stop and wraps to fit the
current window size, regardless of how wide it
is in the topic file.Hanging indent tables have limited uses, but they work best when there are only two or three columns and the text in the first columns is short enough to fit on one line without wrapping. To have a hanging indent table appear correctly in Help, you must use a tab stop at the beginning of the table’s left margin (where the wrapping column begins). You can use hanging indent tables in Help versions 3.0 and 3.1.
To create a table using a hanging indent
1.1.Type the text for the first column, press TAB, type the text for the second column, and then press ENTER.
2.2.Repeat step 1 until you have created all the rows in the table, including the table heading.
3.3.Select all the paragraphs in the table.
4.4.Hold down the SHIFT key while dragging the left (bottom) indent marker to the position you want for the left indent.
5.5.Insert a tab stop at the same location where you placed the left indent marker.
Note If you want more precision, you can choose the Format Paragraph command and type in the measurements for the left indent, first line indent, and tab stop.
Note The style sheet in the WHAT30.DOT and WHAT31.DOT Help Authoring Templates includes two styles, “Th” and “Tp,” that you can use to create hanging indent paragraphs automatically.
Figure 7.5 shows a two-column table created with a hanging indent.
To create tables with similar amounts of text in each column, you can use Word for MS-DOS or Word for the Macintosh version 3.x. Refer to the documentation accompanying these products to learn how to create side-by-side paragraphs.
Note:
Windows Help version 3.1 no longer supports side-by-side paragraph formatting. You can display a Help file that contains side-by-side paragraphs only if the file was built with the Help 3.0 compiler. To build the file using the Help 3.1 compiler, you must convert any information that uses that format into a Word table or paragraphs with a hanging indent. If you open the old topic files in Word for Windows, Word converts the side-by-side paragraphs into table format automatically.
To create more complicated tables than hanging indents allows, or if you cannot create side-by-side paragraphs because you don’t have Word for MS-DOS or Word for the Macintosh, you can format the tables manually using tab stops. The tab stops align the text into columns as shown below:
First column text Second column Text in the third column cannot wrap
is built up line by text is kept to because each line in the table is a
line with a strict a strict column separate paragraph.
column width. width also.Each column in a manually formatted table is a separate paragraph, so the entire table should be formatted as Keep together to keep the table rows from wrapping when users resize the Help window. If portions of the table are hidden, Help displays a horizontal scroll bar so that users can view the hidden information.
To create a table manually using tab stops
1.1.Type the text for the first column, press TAB, type the text for the second column, press TAB, type the text for the third column, and then press ENTER.
2.2.Repeat step 1 until you have created all the rows in the table, including the table heading.
3.3.Select all the paragraphs in the table.
4.4.From the Format menu, choose Paragraph.
5.5.In the Keep Paragraph box (Word 1.1), select Together.
Or, in the Pagination box (Word 2.0), select Keep Lines Together.
6.6.Choose OK.
Figure 7.6 shows a two-column table created with tabs.