Table Cell Alignment

[Lin Surasky]

Hi, Stuart-

You know, I realized this after I sent the message off. But I
substituted Xs for the asterisks and it doesn't change things. The
Xs/asterisks are literally touching the top rule of the table cell.

The anchored frame idea is a good way to work around it, although if
there's a setting I'm missing, I'd prefer to fix it...

Thanks!
Lin 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stuart Rogers [mailto:srogers at phoenix-geophysics.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 3:00 PM
> To: Lin Surasky
> Cc: framers at lists.frameusers.com
> Subject: Re: Table Cell Alignment
> 
> Lin Surasky wrote:
> > Hi all-
> >  
> > Is there a known issue with vertical alignment in table 
> cells (FM 7.2 
> > on Windows XP, unstructured)?
> >  
> > I don't use tables very often, but I have a small one that 
> has a few 
> > narrow columns that contain asterisks to indicate whether a 
> condition 
> > is met, and one column of text that describes the solution based on 
> > where the asterisks fall.
> >  
> > I want the asterisks to be centered in the table cell, so I 
> assigned 
> > them all a paragraph tag that defines both their horizontal and 
> > vertical alignment as centered.
> >  
> > What I'm getting is top alignment for the first row (below 
> the header 
> > row and the only single-line row in the table), center 
> alignment for 
> > the third row, which is the tallest row, and 
> > top-to-center-well-I-guess-it's-close-enough alignment for 
> the rest of 
> > the rows.
> >  
> > The default table cell margins are all even (4.0 pt), and 
> there are no 
> > format overrides, either at the paragraph level or at the 
> table format 
> > level (as far as I can tell...).
> >  
> > What else should I be looking at?
> 
> Lin,
> 
> I think what you're seeing is just the fact the an asterisk 
> is (in most
> fonts) located at the top of the cap height or the ascender 
> height, in other words, not vertically centred within its own 
> character space.
> 
> The asterisk *looks* centred in the tallest row only because 
> your eye can't judge precisely enough to see that it's 
> slightly too high; in the shortest row, the difference is 
> more obvious.
> 
> You could centre an asterisk as a text line in a small 
> anchored frame (maybe tweaking the A-frame's Distance above 
> baseline), then copy/paste into your cells.
> 
> HTH,
> 
> --
> Stuart Rogers
> Technical Communicator
> Phoenix Geophysics Limited
> Toronto, ON, Canada
> +1 (416) 491-7340 x 325
> 
> srogers phoenix-geophysics com
> 
> "It is not enough that I succeed.
>   Others must fail."
> 
> -- Oscar Wilde
>