<forgetLastTabAlignment> (Ignore Width of Last Tab Stop When Aligning Paragraph If It Is Not Left Aligned)

This element specifies how applications should handle the final tab stop on a line when aligning the contents of a paragraph as specified by the <jc> element (§2.3.1.13) in the paragraph's properties.

Typically, aligning the contents of a paragraph involves the following:

  • Determining the layout of that line before the alignment (including all tab stops)

  • Aligning the resulting contents of the line

This is done to ensure that tab stops on a line do not change when the contents of the paragraph are aligned (i.e. the tab stops should not have to take into account the paragraph alignment).

This element, when present with a @val attribute value of true (or equivalent), specifies that applications shall ignore the additional line width generated by the last tab stop (and only the last tab stop) when the alignment of the tab stop as defined by the @val attribute on the <tab> element (§2.3.1.37) is not left (or bar, which as defined by this Office Open XML Standard, is not a tab stop per se) when determining the width of the line. The resulting full line shall then be aligned at the position where the line would have been aligned without that tab stop.

example: 
<w:p>
  <w:pPr>
    <w:tabs>
      <w:tab w:val="center" w:pos="2880" />
    </w:tabs>
    <w:jc w:val="center" />
  </w:pPr>
  <w:r>
    <w:t>Text Before</w:t>
    <w:tab/>
    <w:t>Text After</w:t>
  </w:r>
</w:p>
<w:p>
  <w:pPr>
    <w:jc w:val="center" />
  </w:pPr>
  <w:r>
    <w:t>Text BeforeText After</w:t>
  </w:r>
</w:p>

The default presentation would determine the full width of each line including the tab stops, finally aligning the resulting text to the center position as requested by the <jc> element:

However, if this compatibility setting is turned on:

<w:compat>
  <w:forgetLastTabAlignment />
</w:compat>

Then the width added to the line by the last tab is ignored when centering the paragraph because that tab is a center aligned tab stop, resulting in the following output:

In the resulting output, the starting location of both lines is at the same place on the page, as the resulting width of both lines is identical when the tab stop is removed from the line width calculation. ]

Parent Elements

<compat> (§2.15.3.9)

Attributes

Description

<val> (On/Off Value)

Specifies a binary value for the property defined by the parent XML element.

A value of on, 1, or true specifies that the property shall be explicitly applied. This is the default value for this attribute, and is implied when the parent element is present, but this attribute is omitted.

A value of off, 0, or false specifies that the property shall be explicitly turned off.

<w:… w:val="off"/>

The @val attribute explicitly declares that the property is turned off. ]

The possible values for this attribute are defined by the ST_OnOff simple type (§2.18.67).

The following XML Schema fragment defines the contents of this element:

<complexType name="CT_OnOff">
	<attribute name="val" type="ST_OnOff"/>
</complexType>