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Hyphenation and columns in frame text tool


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This has probably been requested before but I'll ask again if so. Designer has some excellent type capabilities; Glyphs, OpenType support, ligatures, space before and after paragraphs, etc. Working with text seems to fall apart for me though, without hyphenation and multiple columns (I won't bother to ask for linking text frames). Hyphenation is pretty basic and nearly impossible to set a proper paragraph without it. Multiple text columns are pretty basic and are frequently used in posters, flyers and other single page layouts. Why include Paragraph Styles when paragraph formatting is too limited to consider using it?

I understand that those features are available in Publisher which I may purchase one day, but having to add that to my workflow seems like a lot of unnecessary overhead for a couple of basic options. 

Please consider adding these two features in a future update.

Edited by dcrosby
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/4/2019 at 10:15 AM, dcrosby said:

I understand that those features are available in Publisher which I may purchase one day, but having to add that to my workflow seems like a lot of unnecessary overhead for a couple of basic options. 

If you're doing enough text that you need to worry about columns and hyphenation you may find that getting Publisher would save time in your workflow, especially if you also own Photo, and don't often need the Export Persona in your text-heavy projects.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

If you're doing enough text that you need to worry about columns and hyphenation you may find that getting Publisher would save time in your workflow, especially if you also own Photo, and don't often need the Export Persona in your text-heavy projects.

Hi Walt. I've tried Publisher but not extensively. I'm finding out that the combo and interaction between Photo and Designer fits my needs very well and working with the two is natural and a lot of fun. I'd gladly use Publisher for multipage documents, let's say 8 to 800 pages, or documents that are text heavy requiring linked text boxes and such, or docs where I'm integrating photos, articles and logos from outside sources. That makes perfect sense.

At this point I'll only advocate for hyphenation in Designer because a single paragraph of text does not make a document "text heavy" and setting a decent paragraph of text is crippled unto uselessness without it. Once again hyphenation is basic, it's already in the program but made inaccessible unless you send the doc to Publisher first. Serif seems hesitant to potentially cannibalize Publisher sales by adding more text capabilities. I get it, but disallowing hyphenation is just plain trifling and I think they should reconsider.

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2 hours ago, dcrosby said:

At this point I'll only advocate for hyphenation in Designer because a single paragraph of text does not make a document "text heavy" and setting a decent paragraph of text is crippled unto uselessness without it.

As a workaround: Designer does not support automatic hyphenation, but it will honor soft hyphens that you manually insert into words. So if you need smoother setting of the text for your text frame size, just use Text > Insert Character > Soft Hyphen (default shortcut Ctrl+Shift+- on Windows) to insert soft hyphens at appropriate spots in troublesome words.

Also, if you're moving between Photo and Designer now you'll find it beomes even easier when you have Publisher. :)

Even for projects as small as a single artboard I think that Publisher can be advantageous.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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8 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Designer does not support automatic hyphenation, but it will honor soft hyphens that you manually insert into words.

That is some valuable and welcome information regarding hyphenation. I just now created the same key-command I'd used in InDesign to ease the process. Thanks a bunch. There is still so much to learn.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hey, I just do not understand why is hyphenation option available in the character settings, but it does not work. Any reasonable explanation, ideas?

 

 

 

Screenshot 2020-02-16 at 14.31.22.png

Screenshot 2020-02-16 at 14.32.31.png

marekmati.com

[MAC OS 12.2, MacBook Pro  2017, 15-inch, 2.9 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, AMD Radeon Pro 560, Intel HD Graphics 630, 500GB SSD + Philips Monitor 4K/60fps 10bit color via DisplayPort to USB-C cable]

Affinity Publisher 1.10.5, Affinity Designer 1.10.5, Affinity Photo 1.10.5

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OK, so I did some digging and found this article regarding the hyphenation Designers issue...

On 11/10/2019 at 4:52 PM, walt.farrell said:

Automatic hyphenation is a Publisher function, not a Designer function.

However, because the file formats are compatible among the Affinity applications, you could make a document in Publisher, with a Text Frame that has hyphenation enabled via the Paragraph panel, or you could make a Paragraph Text Style that has hyphenation enabled, and then transfer that document or Text Style to Designer, and hyphenation would work.

Note that it would not be controllable. You would not be able to turn it on or off (except by assigning the Text Style to something or not), and you would not be able to control the hyphenation parameters, because the UI functions for hyphenation are only in Publisher.

 

The moderators statement:

On 11/11/2019 at 1:06 PM, Sean P said:

Hi Soather,

Walt has pretty much hit the nail on the head! Those options should not be visibile, so I've passed it onto development to take a look into.

As I understand it, the hyphenation option should not be available in the first place, it does not work at all. 
I love all of the Serif apps and daily drive them for months now, but these are the little details that make me mad from time to time. Trying to achieve some results for a few hours (also installed dictionaries, spelling), just to find out that it is not possible. It is just frustrating.

marekmati.com

[MAC OS 12.2, MacBook Pro  2017, 15-inch, 2.9 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, AMD Radeon Pro 560, Intel HD Graphics 630, 500GB SSD + Philips Monitor 4K/60fps 10bit color via DisplayPort to USB-C cable]

Affinity Publisher 1.10.5, Affinity Designer 1.10.5, Affinity Photo 1.10.5

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Coming back to this topic months later. Rather than removing the option they should just make it functional. it already exists in the program. Publisher should build out its capabilities as a multipage design program with INDD import, grep, footnotes, etc while Designer does the same with image trace, vector distort, blend shapes, etc. Can't see where more robust text handling in Designer would cause confusion in the market or hinder Publisher sales.

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21 hours ago, dcrosby said:

Coming back to this topic months later. Rather than removing the option they should just make it functional.

Even in Publisher the Hyphenation option in the Character panel does not enable hyphenation.

It allows the user to override the language whose hyphenation characteristics are used when hyphenation is enabled using the options in the Paragraph panel:

image.png.17c0819d5eb5818d4116ab40d10c3ba9.png

 

The options to enable hyphenation are completely missing in Photo and Designer, but if you open a document in one of those programs which had hyphenation set up in Publisher, you can change the language whose hyphenation rules are applied for a specific region of that text - for example, if you edit the text itself and add a phrase from a different language in the middle of an existing hyphenated paragraph.

 

 

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Yes, that is a good workaround and woks well (screen). Anyway, the fact that I must open the Publisher, create paragraph style and import it to the Designer – just for a simple hyphenation really sucks...

 

 

Screenshot 2020-02-17 at 13.52.35.png

marekmati.com

[MAC OS 12.2, MacBook Pro  2017, 15-inch, 2.9 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, AMD Radeon Pro 560, Intel HD Graphics 630, 500GB SSD + Philips Monitor 4K/60fps 10bit color via DisplayPort to USB-C cable]

Affinity Publisher 1.10.5, Affinity Designer 1.10.5, Affinity Photo 1.10.5

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2 minutes ago, MarekGFX said:

Anyway, the fact that I must open the Publisher, create paragraph style and import it to the Designer – just for a simple hyphenation

Maybe, if you're using enough text that you need to have automatic hyphenation, you could reconsider your workflow? Start in Publisher, and stay there, working in the Designer Persona?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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