SAP Form Paragraph Formats and Attributes

In SAPscript, paragraphs are formatted using formats and their corresponding attributes. Text processing is simplified by the use of different paragraph attribute groups:

·         Standard

·         Font

·         Tabs

·         Outline

There are naming conventions for paragraph tags:

·         The paragraph tag can have one or two characters.

·         The first character in the paragraph tag must be a letter, the second a letter, number, or blank; special characters are not valid.  

·         The paragraph format must be identified in the Description field.


 

1.1.1       Standard Paragraph Attributes

In the Standard attribute group, you find the general attributes that can be defined in paragraph formats:

·         Description

Precise explanation of your paragraph tag, so that the user can immediately identify it.

·         Left or right margin

Amount of space between the paragraph and the left or right border of the form window.

·         Indent first line

Indent of the first line of a paragraph. If the value is positive, it is indented to the right, if it is negative, it is indented to the left.

If you specify a negative value, then you must place the minus sign after the number: 1- .

·         Space before and space after

Space before and space after control the amount of space between paragraphs. The actual space between paragraphs results from the space after the preceding paragraph and the space before the following paragraph.

·         Alignment

Alignment of a paragraph.

·         Line spacing

Spacing between the lines. The default value is 1 line; the LPI value (lines per inch) in the header data is used to calculate the line spacing.

·         No blank lines

Suppression of blank lines. You can control whether the blank lines of a paragraph should be suppressed in the printout or not:

·         Page protection

Cohesion of a paragraph. It is possible to determine whether or not a paragraph can be divided by a page break.

·         Next paragraph same page

Cohesion of two adjacent paragraphs. Here you can define whether the subsequent paragraph should begin on the same page (that is, at least the first line of the subsequent paragraph must be on the same page).

1.1.2       Font Attributes for Paragraphs

You can specify font attributes for paragraph formats. They control the font used in the text. You can specify these attributes both for the default font in the header and for particular paragraph formats:

·         Font family

Enter a font supported in the SAPscript font maintenance.

·         Font size

Enter the size of a character font. It is measured in 1/10 point.

·         Bold/Italic

Specify whether to use bold-face printing or italics.

·         Underlined

Mark this attribute to underline entire blocks of text.

When defining a paragraph format, use More to specify these underline attributes:

·         Spacing between the base line and the underline

·         Thickness

·         Intensity

Intensity is expressed in percent: 0 % is a black underline; 100 % is no underline.

If you defined default underlining in the header, then the fields for underline attributes are already displayed on the screen.

The following selection criteria apply to the font attributes bold, italics, and underlined:

The combination of font family, font size, bold type attribute and italics attribute is referred to as a system font or SAP font. To use the SAPscript font maintenance, choose Tools ® Word processing ® Font.

1.1.3       Tabs in Paragraph Formats

You can define as many tab positions as you require for each paragraph format. The text can be aligned in different ways:

·         Left-aligned with LEFT

·         Right-aligned with RIGHT

·         Centered with CENTER

·         At the sign with SIGN

·         At the comma or decimal point with DECIMAL

You can control the tab feed in a paragraph with tab positions. The tab stops you define in the paragraph format replace the tab spacing you defined in the header data of the form. However, this depends on the extent to which you have defined tab stops in the paragraph format. If there are fewer tabs in the paragraph formats than in the header data, the tab stops of the header data are used for the rest of the line. The tab stops are represented as, , in the text editor.

You can use different units of measurement to define a tab position:

·         CH Characters

·         CM Centimeters

·         MM Millimeters

·         PT Points

·         TW Twips (1/20 point)

The unit of measurement CH is converted to an absolute unit of measurement using the CPI value (characters per inch) from the header data of the form.

1.1.4       Paragraph and Heading Numbering

The paragraph numbering and marking attributes are used to structure texts into chapters, subchapters, and sections. Numbering is carried out automatically by SAPscript.

You can create an outline with the entry options available:

·         Outline

Enter the name of the highest-level paragraph in an outline hierarchy here. The outline hierarchy is created by assigning this paragraph to all outline paragraphs.

·         Outline level

Enter the level in the outline hierarchy. The outline levels of the paragraphs are numbered upwards from 1; the highest outline level therefore has the outline number 1.

·         Number margin

Specify the space between numbering and window border. Note that your numbering may extend into the text area of the paragraph if the difference between the left margin and the number margin is not great enough to hold the numbering characters.

·         Left/right delimiter

Specify the character that precedes or follows the numbering.

·         Number chaining

Specify whether you want the paragraph numbering of the paragraph to be preceded by the numbering of all higher paragraphs in the hierarchy.

·         Character string

Specify the numbering format. The numbering can be assigned a different font or character format to the rest of the paragraph.

·         Numbering type

Depending upon the numbering type that you select, the following attributes may also apply:

·         Fixed character

Define the fixed character to be used for numbering. You should only make an entry in the field Fixed character if you have specified CHAR as the numbering type. Fixed characters include + - and o .

·         Output length

Enter the number of characters for Arabic numerals.

·         Upper case

Specify for letters or Roman numerals.