NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery Posted September 16, 2022 Share Posted September 16, 2022 I've not been able to figure out a weird spacing issue that appears when I post text into Affinity Publisher's text frames. Fiddling with alignment or justification doesn't resolve it. These gaps just appear when I put stuff from Word into the software. Below is a screencap where I've highlighted most of the gaps. I suspect the solution is simple but can't figure it. Does anybody know what this is and how to fix it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted September 16, 2022 Share Posted September 16, 2022 Welcome to the forums @NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery I would expect spaces like that with the Justify Paragraph settings where the software makes the spaces bigger because it can only fit so many words onto a line. One quick way to lessen the effect would be to switch Auto-Hyphenation on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery Posted September 16, 2022 Author Share Posted September 16, 2022 Ah, my magazine layout guy did already turn that on, and it absolutely helped a lot. There are still some big spaces hanging out, though. He does think you're correct about the cause—justification of text, strange number of words to fit on the line. He's just not sure what can be done about it. In other words, it’s not a bug or technical problem, but perhaps a naturally occurring layout issue? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted September 16, 2022 Share Posted September 16, 2022 2 minutes ago, NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery said: He's just not sure what can be done about it. In other words, it’s not a bug or technical problem, but perhaps a naturally occurring layout issue? Can we see what it looks like with auto-hyphenation enabled? And yes, it might just be the way things will be with that column width and text size. Note that Publisher's justification is line-by-line, not for an entire paragraph as other applications may implement. For "what to do", changing the column width, revising the text, or adding some manual hyphenation might help. You can also try adjusting the word-spacing or letter-spacing options under Justification in the Paragraph panel, or the tracking options for the text in Positioning and Transform in the Character panel. Quote -- 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted September 16, 2022 Share Posted September 16, 2022 6 minutes ago, NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery said: In other words, it’s not a bug or technical problem, but perhaps a naturally occurring layout issue? Asked and answered. Yes it is natural. Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 Affinity Designer 2.4.1 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery Posted September 16, 2022 Author Share Posted September 16, 2022 (edited) . Edited September 16, 2022 by NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery Want to delete but cant'? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery Posted September 16, 2022 Author Share Posted September 16, 2022 1 hour ago, walt.farrell said: Can we see what it looks like with auto-hyphenation enabled? And yes, it might just be the way things will be with that column width and text size. Note that Publisher's justification is line-by-line, not for an entire paragraph as other applications may implement. For "what to do", changing the column width, revising the text, or adding some manual hyphenation might help. You can also try adjusting the word-spacing or letter-spacing options under Justification in the Paragraph panel, or the tracking options for the text in Positioning and Transform in the Character panel. Ah, thank you Walt! You've given him some new options he'll explore. In the meanwhile, I gather what you see in the screenshot I've shared is indeed what it looks like with auto-hyphenation.Our guiding light for this is the Summer 1968 issue of Horizon magazine, which uses three narrow columns too, and they don't have the issue...but something tells me they weren't using Affinity Publisher! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted September 16, 2022 Share Posted September 16, 2022 40 minutes ago, NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery said: . You can't delete, but you can probably click on the "..." icon at the top of the post and choose Hide from the options. Quote -- 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted September 16, 2022 Share Posted September 16, 2022 20 minutes ago, NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery said: In the meanwhile, I gather what you see in the screenshot I've shared is indeed what it looks like with auto-hyphenation. If it were enabled I would have expected the word "passion" at the beginning of the second line to appear hyphenated at the end of the first line, "pas-", with the "sion" on the second line. So I suspect some setting is not correct. Can you share part of the document with us, so we can examine it in detail? Quote -- 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery Posted September 16, 2022 Author Share Posted September 16, 2022 10 minutes ago, walt.farrell said: If it were enabled I would have expected the word "passion" at the beginning of the second line to appear hyphenated at the end of the first line, "pas-", with the "sion" on the second line. So I suspect some setting is not correct. Can you share part of the document with us, so we can examine it in detail? Sure! My editor has since tried some of what's been suggested and vastly improved it. But it's still kinda there... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted September 17, 2022 Share Posted September 17, 2022 16 hours ago, NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery said: But it's still kinda there... I’ve attached an example showing the same text formatted in four different ways, from left to right: 1. Simple Left Align; 2. Simple Left Justification; 3. Left Justification and Auto-hyphenation; 4. As 3 but with Optical Alignment from the font and some basic manual work done with Tracking. Version 4 isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination but hopefully it shows the difference between just letting the software do its thing and giving it a manual ‘nudge’ here and there. As with most things, the more work you put into it the better it can be. Note: ‘Proper’ digital typesetting is something that will probably take more than one large book to explain properly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iconoclast Posted September 17, 2022 Share Posted September 17, 2022 To compensate the spacing, I would first select the whole text and then adjust a global Tracking, that almost fits good (Studio Panel "Positioning and Transform"). Then I would do individual Tracking line by line. But take care that the single characters don't overlap or are aparted too much. Also take care that the Trackings aren't too different, especially consecutive lines. In combination with a good Hyphenation Setting, this should work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palatino Posted September 17, 2022 Share Posted September 17, 2022 18 hours ago, NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery said: Sure! My editor has since tried some of what's been suggested and vastly improved it. The letter spacing is very large, which also increases the word spacing - and at some point the word spacing is just too large. Quote Thanks to DeepL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted September 17, 2022 Share Posted September 17, 2022 On 9/16/2022 at 9:21 AM, NewEdgeSwordAndSorcery said: I suspect the solution is simple but can't figure it. The bottom line is that if you insist on justifying the text, there is no simple "one size fits all" solution. You can revise the text, adjust tracking, or whatever, but there is no automatic way to always make word spacing uniform in justified text. See for example https://practicaltypography.com/justified-text.html for more about this. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted September 17, 2022 Share Posted September 17, 2022 18 minutes ago, R C-R said: but there is no automatic way to always make word spacing uniform in justified text. Even Monospaced fonts will have problems unless the width of the text frame is (somehow) an integer multiple of the glyphs' width and we manually hyphenate words disregarding all rules for hyphenating. Even then I bet I could come up with examples of text that would not work. But I am not going to. Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 Affinity Designer 2.4.1 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted September 17, 2022 Share Posted September 17, 2022 8 minutes ago, Old Bruce said: Even Monospaced fonts will have problems unless the width of the text frame is (somehow) an integer multiple of the glyphs' width and we manually hyphenate words disregarding all rules for hyphenating. Yes, & by disregarding hyphenation rules you you could end up with something horrible looking & very hard to read! Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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