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tracking, kerning, jusifying


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I have to complain about the way Affinity Publisher aligns and justifies text in a paragraph.

To put it simply - the text is not "grey" enough. Even when I use small font size and hyphenation (with correct language), when you squint your eyes you will notice that the block of text  IS NOT GREY.

There are poorly-looking gaps, orphaned letters, chaotic hyphenation - and it just looks wrong!

 

Please do an experiment and render the same block of text in InDesign and Affinity Publisher.

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Could you share an example?

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2 hours ago, Colorado said:

two examples of a continuous text from a novel.

So, that's obviously Times.
Which font type: TrueType? PostScript Type 1? OpenType?
Old Type 1 fonts will definitely cause problems on modern OS.

2 hours ago, Colorado said:

there are always un-esthetic gaps that a professional designer must avoid

The appropiate tools to fix such issues are in:

  • Text > Insert > Spaces And Tabes
  • Text > Spacing, alternatively in Character panel > Positioning And Transform
  • Paragraph panel > Justification

It depends on context and personal preference which of these tools – or combination thereof – is the best for a particular task.
But as a "professional designer", you surely know that, right? ;)

4 hours ago, Colorado said:

orphaned letters, chaotic hyphenation

Polish dictionary installed?

 

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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Well, that was a mouthful. Are you sure the problem is not in the kerning tables built in font file? Many gaps seem to affect letter "w".

That said, it would be nice to have optical kerning as competition has. Not to mention paragraph wide H/J engine.

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The problem is, AP should automatically apply optimal kerning, tracking and letter-stretching (yeah, I know it sounds weird - but we all do it...)

There IS a problem with the algorithm... Here's an example with Encode Sans 11 (I know it's a larg font size, but I wanted to illustrate the problem - it is less obvious when using smaller font size and wider text frame)

1) the first image shows automatic justification with hyphenation and the right dictionary installed

2) the second, with applied tracking changes (alt + left arrow)

text1.jpg

text2.jpg

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What I'm trying to say is - of course, you can manually keep "sculpting" the block of text, manually changing the distance between each letters, words, etc. - but it would be like in an old print-shop, when a typesetter would use metal slabs to compose a paragraph.

So... If you ask users to do it that way - then you cannot brand this software as a "professional software".... I'm not talking about some advanced, "magical" text functions - but these are the basics of type setting.

 

ps. by the way, not providing the dictionaries - forcing the users to install it manually is just a laziness of the developers :D

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2 hours ago, Fixx said:

it would be nice to have optical kerning as competition has

Definitely!

3 hours ago, Colorado said:

letter-stretching (yeah, I know it sounds weird - but we all do it...)

I, for one, am not "we". :P
But yeah, letter stretching was still a novelty in the early 1990s DTP. So been there done that, too.

4 hours ago, Colorado said:

1) the first image shows automatic justification with hyphenation and the right dictionary installed
2) the second, with applied tracking changes (alt + left arrow)

Why not simply manually hyphenate "wów-czas" with a soft hyphen?

You also can fine adjust minimum and maximum letter spacing to, say, +/- 1 or 2 % to compensate for too wide word spacing.
That said, it's broken in the Paragraph panel on Mac, v1.8.x, but it still works via Text Styles. No idea if it's been fixed in v1.9. (It better has!)

4 hours ago, Colorado said:

not providing the dictionaries - forcing the users to install it manually is just a laziness of the developers

I, for one, am grateful to the developers for not spilling dozens of unneeded 3rd party dictionaries into my ~/Library/Spelling folder.

That said, the installation guide etc. could be less buried and less obscure for sure. But that appears to be often the case elsewhere as well, probably due to some licensing restrictions for 3rd party modules.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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