Affinity Publisher Kerning MAX??

[LSDJE]

I'm also not sure what TAGGED text is or how to do it

[Old Bruce]

Tagged text is just having some text with "tags" that get removed by a Find Replace operation. I search for the _bk_ and replace it with no text but I do replace the Paragraph Style with the one I call Book Name then I do the same with _chp1_ replacing it with First Chapter.

 

Some Applications do this substitution automatically, some will not remove the tags but they won't display them. Some will generate tags for exporting text.

Publisher does not have any tagged text capabilities other than my manual searching and replacing.

[MikeW]

49 minutes ago, LSDJE said:

I'm also not sure what TAGGED text is or how to do it

Tagged text is a plain text file with code and/or instructions that, when imported into an application that supports tagged text, can format the text as it is being imported (like my previous screen shots).

However, tagged text in such an application can be far more than only formatting text. For instance, tagged text in QuarkXPress or InDesign can also create cross references, indexing, create running headers, "simple" math, choose and apply master pages during import based upon conditions, create and position text and graphic objects and more.

It's a powerful capability that several of us have requested Serif to provide in Affinity Publisher.

[lacerto]

6 hours ago, LSDJE said:

OKAY - I did it directly in Publisher - but can you explain what the tab does? I'd like to understand - because it won't work for me w/o a tab placed (unless again, I am missing something)

The tab character works as an alignment trigger, similarly as the left and right margin. If you have a specified character in the left edge of the text frame, the left optical alignment is applied on it by the percentage specified; if you have it in the right edge of the text frame, the right optical alignment is applied on it. If you have the character aligned by a left-aligning tab character, it is positioned to the left of the position determined by the tab by the percentage defined (or if no tab position exists, to the left of the last character preceding the tab character, as in the "Price" example).

In the following example "A" is aligned 100% off the left margin and "Z" 100% off the right margin because these definitions have been added for "A" and "Z" in the character range, and "A" and "Z" are at aligning positions (in the left and right margins). Below that, the big uppercase "G" is aligned by 100% (the width of the "G") to the left from the "d" in the word "aligned" that precedes the tab that aligns the "G". This happens because the paragraph does not have tab positions defined. Additionally "No G aligned" has been shifted downwards below the baseline where the big  "G" resides. The smaller "G" in the sentence is not affected because it is not in alignment position. The last example has the big "G" aligned 300% to the left of the tab position defined at 70 mm position, which has the effect of positioning the "G" before "PRECEDES G" which in text flow comes before the big "G". 

optical_alignments.afpub

These cases are probably the most practical applications of optical alignment, different combinations get easily so complex that the logic is difficult to see. Because optical alignment is a character-wide setting, it can easily get buried within text so that it may be difficult to see why text gets aligned in a specific way.