Issue with aligning key tags with Mtext notes

[beardking]

I am attaching a drawing showing the difficulties I'm having with Mtext. I have a bunch of key notes on my plan and I have corresponding key tags located next to each note. The problem I'm having is that the line spacing in the Mtext seems to change so that I can't readily align the key tag with the key note. Specifically, if I have 8 lines of single line text, I'd want the tag to be roughly centered on each line of text. If I place the first tag roughly centered on the first line of text, and then copy the tag down to the next single line of text, you'd think that I could then copy the next 6 tags down the same distance and at least be ROUGHLY aligned with the text. But, as you can see in the example, the distance gets way off really quickly.

I know this is a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but it's something I do on a regular basis, so it bugs me quite often.

Thanks in advance.

[irneb]

A quick fix for your scenario: Select the MText, open properties palette (Ctrl+1), change the "line space style" property (5th from last in the Text group) to "Exactly" instead of the default "At least". The thing happening is that mtext has a "standard" line spacing. But when there's "special" characters this increases automatically - one of these characters causing growth in the line spacing is / (which is used quite often in your text) since it extends a bit below the bottom of other characters.

BTW, for this application I'd advise you rather go with tables. It'll make for aligning related elements much simpler - no need for this hit-n-mis scenario. See attached.

Also, if you're going to stick with MText. To get "exactly" the line-spacing, you could either stipulate what you want in the properties palette, or explode an MText to distance between consecutive lines' insertion points.

[beardking]

Thanks for the help, that is exactly what I needed. Never messed with the "line space style" property before. Do you know if there is a system variable that I can set so that property always comes up as "exactly"?

[irneb]

I'm not sure what the sysvar (or more probably environment variable - registry) is for this. But if you start a MText, pick the 1st point and before you pick the 2nd - see the command line options: Line spacing ... the 1st option you're asked is [At least / Exactly] <*Current*>. If you change it here it seems to remember your chioce.