Tech help

Tim

For me, the best way is to write it in MS Word, and very important, use Courier New font.

Once your tab or song is typed out, highlight and copy. Then when you come here, click on Code above. You will see the tag for code here. I like to go a space below this, then paste your tab in. Now, hit preview. This will automatically place the end code tag at the end of your tab. You can type anything you wish after that.

Hope I explained this well. If you do this your spacing should come out well.

Note: Always be mindful of how long your lines are. You must allow space for your Avatar on the final page. So, try to keep each line in Word about half a page or less.

Thanks Wes, I write my tab in word but not using the courier new font. I had to do a little adjusting but it worked, thanks again.

also you can use the code button

Tim

For me, the best way is to write it in MS Word, and very important, use Courier New font.

Once your tab or song is typed out, highlight and copy. Then when you come here, click on Code above. You will see the tag for code here. I like to go a space below this, then paste your tab in. Now, hit preview. This will automatically place the end code tag at the end of your tab. You can type anything you wish after that.

Hope I explained this well. If you do this your spacing should come out well.

Note: Always be mindful of how long your lines are. You must allow space for your Avatar on the final page. So, try to keep each line in Word about half a page or less.

And NEVER use your "tab" key to move to the right, just keep hitting the "space" bar over and over!

And like Nick said, copy, code, paste, code - and it will look identical to your tab.

My margins when I tab in Word is 0.25 inches top, bottom and sides and I've successfully posted a lot of tab in this forum. I do that to fit most songs on one or no more then two pages, even when using 14 point font. I also place all my printed tabs into plastic sleeves and then place them in one of my two tab notebooks... keeps the pages intact for a long time and helps protect them from spilt beer.

Why does anyone prefer to use Word for a task like this? Is it just because it's so well known? It would seem that any plain text editor would be preferable for tabbing on your local machine, then as nick and others mentioned, use the code tags when posting. Notepad, vi, emacs, etc... would all give you the fixed-width font you need by default, you don't have to change any settings, just tab it out, copy-paste-post-tag. Word is terrific when you need documents with fancy formatting options, but when you need something without formatting, just use a plain text editor.

Or am I completely missing something? :?

Why does anyone prefer to use Word for a task like this? Is it just because it's so well known? It would seem that any plain text editor would be preferable for tabbing on your local machine, then as nick and others mentioned, use the code tags when posting. Notepad, vi, emacs, etc... would all give you the fixed-width font you need by default, you don't have to change any settings, just tab it out, copy-paste-post-tag. Word is terrific when you need documents with fancy formatting options, but when you need something without formatting, just use a plain text editor.

Or am I completely missing something? :?

You're right. Pretty much any word processing will work... though the Courier New font certainly works the best because the space from one letter to the next is always the same so everything lines up real nice. I use Word because I have that whole suite of products with Excel, Powerpoint, Access. And I've been using those in a business environment for 7 years.

"fixed-width font"

"the Courier New font certainly works the best because the space from one letter to the next is always the same so everything lines up real nice"

courier new is a fixed-width font. :)

I do agree that something simpler would be better for tabbing things out. But MS Word (or OpenOffice) with a fixed width font would work just the same. And since almost everyone who hasn't heard of emacs/vi has Word installed I would say it's good advice to use that. :P

oktay

notepad notepad notepad

If you're on any version of Windows, you have it. It came with the machine.

I know everyone's going to keep using word, and change the fonts, and tweak the settings, and all that. I don't know why I bring it up. It's just that when there are simpler ways of doing it,...

nevermind

I love Notepad. It's the only way to save the tabs from this forum while keeping them properly formatted. Many people thought it disappeared a couple of Windows versions ago. Not true. Start -> Run then type "notepad" and up it pops. Beautiful example of simplicity at work. :D