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Affinity Publisher Kerning MAX??


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I would like to set this up on one line (did previously in Quark and In-Design) - so that the SALE kerns under the cents of price - is there a max for kerning? I also tried to put the word SALE in a text box and pasted it in text, thinking I could move it over that way automatically and it did not work. Any suggestions?

 

I am all about having it in one line. In other programs, IF I had to change text SALE I could shift and arrow over to change words etc

Screen Shot 2022-06-22 at 8.50.46 AM.png

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That wouldn't be kerning, @LSDJE. Kerning is simply the space between two adjacent letters (e.g., between the characters in "00" or "SA".

I think your best solution is to have it on two lines, with a line break after the "00" and several spaces for alignment before "SALE". Then you can adjust the Baseline of SALE to raise it.

Here's something similar, to show the idea:

image.png.ea444e7d855d2466eee0ad02d1c363a7.png

-- Walt
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46 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

That wouldn't be kerning

Hi Walt, from the following sentence, it seems to me like an extreme negative kerning.

1 hour ago, LSDJE said:

I am all about having it in one line.

The text in one line is "000sale", "00" is superscript, sale is red, and kerning between "00" a red "sale" is negative value.
image.png.bc9d5fcc9870389e0b96b4b68bd125c7.png

-800% is maximum 😞 
Edit: The size of the negative kerning probably depends on the size (width) of the letter, so it can only be aligned below the previous letter.

Edited by Pšenda

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
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2 hours ago, LSDJE said:

IF I had to change text SALE I could shift and arrow

Kerning settings in Affinity is Alt + Arrows.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
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2 hours ago, LSDJE said:

I would like to set this up on one line (did previously in Quark and In-Design) - so that the SALE kerns under the cents of price - is there a max for kerning? I also tried to put the word SALE in a text box and pasted it in text, thinking I could move it over that way automatically and it did not work. Any suggestions?

I would just use 2 Art Text text frames. One for the price and one for the word.  "Sale" "Regular" 

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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7 minutes ago, Jens Krebs said:

Why don't you simply use a Drop Cap over two lines?

That won't shift the word "Sale" to the left. The idea is for there to be only one line.

$1.99 Sale

(Dollar sign, decimal separator and whitespace are optional).

I don't know why it has to be one line, I wouldn't do this this way.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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On line is because there are possibly 30 items to a page - possibly 30 pages of catalog - done weekly. SO, the more automatic the better - besides that there are multuple people working on files. I don't want to have to specify any alignment in case it goes from a single dollar amt to double to triple (9.99, 10.99, 140.99)

Personally I like it somewhat automatic - so if number of dollars changes from 1 to 3 digit - i also like single text box (not grouped) - and want to be able to, with a single command, to align text left, center or right as need be.

I came up with something that will work - and still allow us the pleasure of somewhat automatically adjusting for changes...the large dollar digit and paragraph copy below it is the main text box. The cents and SALE (that sometimes changes to something else besides SALE) are in its own text box. Then the sale text box is embedded in to the main text box - so it will stay with the dollar digits, if it changes from single dollar digit to 3, if it changes from left to right align. Embedding the small text box after large dollar digits works as I want it to work. But the smaller text box must be embedded in to larger main text box, otherwise you have 2 text boxes that don't work in harmony.

This works for me, unless someone else has a better solution...

 

Screen Shot 2022-06-22 at 12.56.42 PM.png

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2 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

That won't shift the word "Sale" to the left. The idea is for there to be only one line.

Maybe I'm just to stupid or missing something, but it works fine for me -- it's one single line of text (099 sale). When the text box is to small to hold the two 00s and the word sale (see screenshot) the line breaks because of the space between "00" and "sale". When the price has two digits in front, the marked section in the screenshot needs to be set to "2" instead of "1".

Another way would be to use "inital words" which could theoretically also steer the colour of the word "sale".

I would set everything up with styles (e.g. for setting the word SALE one point higher, just haven't done it in my sample) and also ,pin' the text box with the price to the description. Setting the price text frame to "centered" (Pinning settings) results in the box automatically centering in the text frame when it's pulled larger to fit the longer price.

image.jpeg.42a3b1b1bd4bdbda66964702ead2c950.jpeg

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2 minutes ago, Jens Krebs said:

it works fine for me

I was just about to correct myself. You beat me to it.

 

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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Here's an improvement to version that uses optical alignment, which is not dependent on inline secondary text frame. Any "alignable" element, like (in this example) a tab character can be "negatively" indented (also in the middle of text) and backed beyond (the kerning limit of) the previous glyph.

The attached clip shows how the formatting can basically be encoded in styles (even Word-defined). The paragraph style "Price" would have left optical alignment of 300% defined for the character "S" (for "SALE"), while the character styles "Dollars", "Cents" and  "SALE" would define the font styles and sizes. I am not sure if Affinity apps can map Word-imported styles to existing styles, as things like Optical Character Alignment and OpenType Tabular Figure Width cannot be specified in Word styles. but I suppose the character styles should automatically be applied on import (but in the video the correct font style is manually re applied; perhaps because the used font is a complex super family).

This might nevertheless be a practical method of defining and applying these kinds of complex special formats, though it might at first seem like a kind of a trick or workaround. But basically it is only a paragraph separated list of character style formatted dollar and cent figures with an optional word "SALE" separated with a tab character. The appearance of the price list is fully determined by standard Affinity paragraph and character formats and styles.

 

Prices.docx

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thanks - i'll check in to this - it's not always the word SALE - so I'll play with it.

However, in the previous thing I posted, the word SALE and 99 are in an embedded text box that is embedded in main text box - it WOULD go left with large 2 digits - but I prefer not using boxes - so I will look in to this last post - as long as it's not too cumbersome - especially if SALE changes to something else.

EVERYTHING is in text styles - that's the only way to go for sure for me. I have alway been a text style user.

 

Thank you to everyone - MUCH appreciated!  I'll have to replay video on the optical alignment - does anyone know if In-Design also uses the Optical alignment?

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, LSDJE said:

EVERYTHING is in text styles - that's the only way to go for sure for me. I have alway been a text style user.

Unfortunately I do not think that 100% predefined formatting is possible without tagging and scripting capabilities (when formatting feature is missing in the source document), but I am not sure if you could encode InDesign kind of negative kerning in a style, either.

Optical alignment does exist in InDesign as a story attribute but only in context of margins, and as an automatic feature that can be used to replace missing metric based kerning to adjust spacing of adjacent characters. But in other contexts manual kerning needs to be used (but then it does not have similar restrictions as in Publisher, so you can use the feature to manually align glyphs to desired positions).

In both apps I think that this kind of formatting requires some manual attention after the text has been placed (unless separate styles are used for different kinds of scenarios, e.g. having one, two or three dollar figures). But as shown in the video, manual formatting could in certain situations be applied in one go for the whole story so it could be an effective way to achieve this kind of formatting (as it avoids the need to perform manual kerning). 

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The negative kerning has used perfectly in Quark and InDesign for the most part.

I am sorry, but I can not duplicate what was done in the video. I must be missing a step - but it just does not work for what I tried to duplicate?!?!?!?!.

 

 

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On 6/24/2022 at 12:29 AM, LSDJE said:

I am sorry, but I can not duplicate what was done in the video. I must be missing a step - but it just does not work for what I tried to duplicate?!?!?!?!.

I made a bit simpler version of the Word file, and this time using the macOS version of Word to define the styles. What happens if you place the attached Word document in an empty Publisher document? You should experience something like this, and be able to reproduce the formatting:

The Optical Alignment specifies a percentage value in the Left and Right boxes which determines how much text gets aligned to the left or right of an aligning entity (like margins and tab characters), and the Characters box specifies the characters that are affected. This is a character setting so it can be restricted to just part of the text. Depending on the font, you may need to change the value from 380% (used here in context of Avenir Next Condensed Heavy) to something else.

Note that I used a font that has a fixed figure width so that all the numbers have the same width. This guarantees that the alignment position stays the same relative to the rightmost cent figure that is followed by the tab character, which is the aligning entity in this case. Whenever character "S" is aligned by a tab character, it will be backed by 380% to the left of the tab character. The cent figures are in superscript, and the "SALE" text following the tab character is simply just backed to the left similarly as you would do in InDesign and Quark by using a negative kerning value (which in Affinity apps is limited to the width of the bounding box of the previous glyph).  

I am not sure why Publisher does not automatically apply the correct character formatting for the price elements immediately when the document is placed, but as they all use the same font (Avenir Next Condensed Heavy, in this case), it is easy to fix this.

Prices_updated.docx

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First, kudos to @lacerto for the wonderful perseverance in digging into how this formatting can be achieved in APub. My hat's off to you!

I did want to circle back around to the following:

On 6/22/2022 at 8:41 PM, lacerto said:

Unfortunately I do not think that 100% predefined formatting is possible without tagging and scripting capabilities (when formatting feature is missing in the source document), but I am not sure if you could encode InDesign kind of negative kerning in a style, either...

Yep, tagged text can the issue in two ways, either by explicitly encoding a tracking value in the tagged text file (here, the <k-375> tag prior to the space character):

Capture_000960.png.9cbee57a987c01cec4fe245def3b1d8e.png

Or via a c.style, which has a negative tracking value for the space character:

Capture_000959.png.20b6f8a8571945d7b7d4f0ce5420340c.png

However, that c.style can also be manually applied or be applied via conditional style in Q, etc. In all cases, the result is the same:

Capture_000958.png.eb81b52761d2191ee71b3bf49b2f2fba.png

It doesn't matter what the text string is.

I'm pretty sure ID can have negative kerning/tracking in a c.style as can QXP, and certainly can be done via tagged text.

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Thanks, it is good to know that this can be done. My regular workflow is just using local Word character formatting in the source and have paragraph styles tagged as a kind of old PageMaker style tagging (so that consecutive paragraphs using the same style do not need to be tagged), and then having a script that replaces the tags with corresponding already defined InDesign styles, and I suppose this kind of a workflow would not allow negative kerning defined (unless using custom kerning tags and interpreting them in the script). Do you mean that <k-375> kinds of tags are internally supported in Quark tags? Or do you handle them in script with custom code?

I had also the tracking value based workaround in mind, good to know that this can be an effective solution, as well.

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17 hours ago, MikeW said:

I'm pretty sure ID can have negative kerning/tracking in a c.style as can QXP, and certainly can be done via tagged text.

I did not check the tagged text specs but noticed that negative tracking for a white space works in InDesign though it has a limit (-1000). As the limit is relative to the character point size, it would be possible to achieve what is needed by using e.g. hairline space at appropriate point size and negative tracking, and these can be encoded in character style and also specified in Word (even if the formatting itself would not work there). Negative tracking values do not seem to have any effect in Affinity apps if applied to e.g. a space character.

EDIT: Now checked the Adobe Tagged Text, both character tracking (<ctk>) and kerning (<ck>) can be tagged, as expected.

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SO, I tried per the video and when I typed the numbers and "Sale" directly in affinity publisher, it dod not work. But if I placed a .docx file, it works.

 

Can you explain why it has to be a .docx file placed to work? Sorry to sound stupid, I am probably missing something simple????

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