Allow negative values for Paragraph "Spacing Before"

[David.P]

Hello Forum and Support Team,

sometimes I have the need for negative spacing before a text paragraph in a comment, for example in order to center some text in a narrow textbox, see below example in the screenshot.

In fact, negative spacing already works, but only as long as the Text Properties dialog has the input focus. As soon as you click outside the Text Properties dialog, any negative spacing value snaps back to zero.

image.png

It would be great if the Devs could take a look at this and maybe set a little flag in the code that allows any negative spacing values to persist in the text paragraph Properties.

Thanks very much for consideration,
Best regards
David

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello David.P,

I will check with the dev team - however it could be that those negative values are not supported for annotations
You might need to flatten the objects and then adjust the text and the frame around it separately.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[David.P]

Thank you Stefan.

Please note that negative values already nicely work as shown in my screenshot. The only issue seems to be that they are not saved internally after the text properties dialog is closed.

For easier verification, I am attaching the corresponding PDF file.

Kind regards,
David

Negative paragraph spacing.pdf

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello David.P,

You are correct!
Once I have the devs confirmation I will be able to comment further. For now I am only speculating as to what might be causing this - and I've been wrong in speculations in the past, so I'd be posting further details once I have the feedback from my colleagues!

Kind regards,
Stefan

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello David P.,

Just got a confirmation from our devs that while in the preview we seem to accept negative values - those are not really supported by the specification - so that is why those are then reset to 0 when you move the focus. Unfortunately there won't be a way for us to develop support for such negative offsets. You might need to look at other ways to achieve the desired result (e.g. a smaller font size might center better in the restricted space available, or you could use two separate objects for the text itself and for the frame.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[David.P]

Understood, Stefan, staying within the PDF specification has of course top priority.

Now that we know that this is the reason it doesn't work as originally expected, it's also easier to decide for a workaround.

Thank you
Best regards
David

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]