It jumps from 0.40 to 0.25 (and from 0.25 to 0 the second time). The user manual suggests it would go from 0.40 to 0.15 (“in increments of … 0.25in …, relative to any existing indent settings on the paragraph”).
That’s a bug, then … but it still wouldn’t do what you expected.
Yeah. I’m more confused now than before. 
Do you mean your own post, showing the manual method for setting indents? Yes, you can do it manually, but the feature is a shortcut, and shortcuts don’t have options.
You can build an Action or macro to do it for you in much less time than we’ve spent talking about it.
Alright… so there is a first line indent setting. Your point was the software can’t know what I want, it had to read my mind somehow instead. Uhm, no.
By intuition you’d (I’d) think, given there are no other indents defined, decreasing the first line indent would a) decrease it by said first line indent value (0.40 in), b) by the set standard tab width (also 0.40 in in my case) or c) the 0.25 in mentioned in the manual.
Sure I can. But I’d like to fully understand what’s going on, first. Either I don’t get how it’s supposed to work or it doesn’t work how it’s supposed to (or both) I don’t want to automate that, potentially creating wrong muscle memory.
It has to read your mind (or give a result you may not like), if you don’t want to use the dialog and fill in the blank.
You’re refusing to use the dialog OR settle for the result everyone gets.
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This doesn’t even make sense. See my very first post in this thread.
I’ve read it several times.
You showed us the dialog that can give you what you want, and you showed us the result of using the keyboard shortcut, which isn’t what you want (and never will be). There’s nothing in the command’s name or the wording of the manual to make anyone think you’d get 0.4→0 in one use of the shortcut.
But you can have it in two.
Oh yeah … the ruler doesn’t show us a new tab stop. It shows us the new indent. I missed that the last several times I looked.
I’m not sure, if that’s the most annoying conversation I had this week, but it’s a strong contender.
It’s a clear winner on my end.
The way I am reading this, the specific indentation amounts are intended to correspond to “standard” tab stops depending on which units you’re using – quarter inch, half centimeter, etc. It’s worded a little oddly, but I believe that the intent (which matches the reported behavior) is that it will snap your indentation to the next standard interval, not use that interval.
Basically, imagine that this functionality is tracking a virtual set of tab stops and adjusts your current indentation to the next virtual tab stop. So at 0.4 inches, decreasing the indent would move back to 0.25 inches (as observed) and if you’d started at 0.52 inches, it would go to 0.5 and then 0.25, if you did it twice.
Yep. Haven’t found any workaround so far, either. Basically you can set it to any value, but it better be 0.5 inches (or a multiple of 0.5 inches), otherwise the increase / decrease keyboard shortcuts become less helpful. The default values are all 0.5 inches (tabs and first line indent), so it works intuitively out of the box. But not the way I thought it would. 
As always, the error sits in front of the display.
Edit: rather 0.25 inches.
But that’s my point, I think this is working as designed – there’s no workaround.
Think of this as a rough kind of “snap to grid” functionality (where it’s a line instead of a grid). The default intervals are determined by your units, with any tab stops you set getting added to those default intervals as additional snap points.
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I see that now. My confusion probably originated from the habit of using the increase / decrease first line indent shortcuts like an “on” / “off” toggle.
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