AD V1 Justified text

[jackamus]

In a text box that contains left justified text, how do a paragraph return followed by a short line of text followed by a soft return to type some new text without the short line expanding to be justified?

[Old Bruce]

I would do away with the line break and use a new paragraph.

Or I would do a tab, line break.

[jackamus]

Hi Bruce, The problem is I don't want a paragraph space. Is there a way to remove that particular para space?

 

[Old Bruce]

Read my second sentence. Instead of your "Soft Return" try using a Tab then the "Soft Return". 

<Cranky Old Man On>

Aside: I wish people would stop using the term Soft Return for New Line or Line Break. And also stop using Soft Hyphen for Discretionary Hyphen.

<Cranky Old Man (is never really) Off>

[h_d]

Depends what you mean by 'paragraph space'. Indentation of the first line, or a vertical gap after each paragraph?

But all the Paragraph settings are controlled via Window - Text - Paragraph (View menu in V1)

 

These paragraphs have a First Line Indent of 0mm and and a Space After of 12pt. 

[jackamus]

15 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Read my second sentence. Instead of your "Soft Return" try using a Tab then the "Soft Return". 

<Cranky Old Man On>

Aside: I wish people would stop using the term Soft Return for New Line or Line Break. And also stop using Soft Hyphen for Discretionary Hyphen.

<Cranky Old Man (is never really) Off>

From one cranky old man to another - 'TAB' did the job fine without doing a soft return as well!

[Marco0042]

Same problem here and I also solved it with "tab+line break", however it is clearly a bug and I haven't found any other elegant solution to avoid those tabs (that sooner or later will give me some formatting problem) ☹️

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Marco0042 said:

however it is clearly a bug

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

No, it's not a bug. The definition of what is commonly called "justify left" is: justify all lines of the paragraph except the last line, and align that one left. 

If you add a line break in the middle of the paragraph, you have a short line which then must be justified, because it's not the last line of the paragraph. 

Just make a new paragraph, and then it is the last line, and won't be justified. 

If your paragraphs are, by default, indented, or have a space-before or space-after set, adjust your Paragraph Text Styles, or add an additional one to handle the situation when it arises.

[Marco0042]

14 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

No, it's not a bug. The definition of what is commonly called "justify left" is: justify all lines of the paragraph except the last line, and align that one left. 

If you add a line break in the middle of the paragraph, you have a short line which then must be justified, because it's not the last line of the paragraph. 

Just make a new paragraph, and then it is the last line, and won't be justified. 

If your paragraphs are, by default, indented, or have a space-before or space-after set, adjust your Paragraph Text Styles, or add an additional one to handle the situation when it arises.

 

This works with normal text, but if I am inside a numbered or bulleted list I want to be able to justify left without creating a new paragraph, otherwise I would create a new numbered or bulleted item.

What currently happens should be the correct behavior for "justify ALL" not for "justify left".

Otherwise, I don't understand what the "justify ALL" is for (which by the way I have never seen anyone using it).

 

[Komatös]

8 hours ago, Marco0042 said:

What currently happens should be the correct behavior for "justify ALL" not for "justify left".

A manual line break is not a paragraph end! Consequently, justify left in conjunction with a line break does not end the paragraph.

Maybe I lack the understanding or I am too stupid to look over the bus. But if I want to avoid gaps between paragraphs, I define that in a paragraph style sheet.

[Marco0042]

25 minutes ago, Komatös said:

A manual line break is not a paragraph end! Consequently, justify left in conjunction with a line break does not end the paragraph.

Maybe I lack the understanding or I am too stupid to look over the bus. But if I want to avoid gaps between paragraphs, I define that in a paragraph style sheet.

Often, when compiling a bullet list it is necessary to introduce a FAKE paragraph break to make the text more readable. This is usually accomplished by inserting a "line break" (or soft-return), since inserting a "paragraph break" would create a NEW item in the bullet list.

Unfortunately, in Affinity Publisher seems possible to achieve the result shown below only with workarounds like inserting a TAB before the soft-return:

 

 

Whit the soft-return only, the result is this:

 

This might be the desired result if paragraph formatting is "justify all", but if everything is formatted in "justify left" this should not happen.

If it is not a bug and someone knows a key combination to get a sort of "not-so-soft-return" so as to get the same result without introducing these TABs I would be grateful.

— Marco

[Komatös]

22 minutes ago, Marco0042 said:

This might be the desired result if paragraph formatting is "justify all", but if everything is formatted in "justify left" this should not happen.

If it is not a bug and someone knows a key combination to get a sort of "not-so-soft-return" so as to get the same result without introducing these TABs I would be grateful.

— Marco

OK, now that I have created a similar scenario, I can understand the problem. Thanks, now I have one more insight.

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, Marco0042 said:

Otherwise, I don't understand what the "justify ALL" is for (which by the way I have never seen anyone using it).

Justify All justifies all lines, even the last line of the paragraph.

You have an interesting point about numbered/bulleted lists (which I will need to think about), but Justify Left is not the intended solution for it, as far as I know.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Marco0042 said:

This might be the desired result if paragraph formatting is "justify all", but if everything is formatted in "justify left" this should not happen.

If it is not a bug and someone knows a key combination to get a sort of "not-so-soft-return" so as to get the same result without introducing these TABs I would be grateful.

This behaviour is a common part of the difference between "lines of text" and "paragraphs", respectively between character vs. paragraph style. Even the manual line break alone isn't a guaranty for the wanted look and thus requires the additional tab-trick.

Whereas a workflow without "fake" break or "trick" would simply use a separate paragraph style for such paragraphs and make use of the option "Next Style" to get the style after this paragraph switched automatically and set the start options for the numbering style accordingly different than "Any Non List".

12 hours ago, Marco0042 said:

Otherwise, I don't understand what the "justify ALL" is for (which by the way I have never seen anyone using it).

Though it is used rather seldom and often in short lines and paragraphs it is not less useful than the other align options. Like for instance different space characters are helpful or required, too. However, in type setting and formatting there are always several solutions available – while the choice depends on a.) the specific text situation, b.) the designer's habits & skills, c.) the general layout complexity and d.) the wanted workflow efficiency.

[GarryP]

I would say that something is wrong, at least from a user point of view, with the way the software justifies the paragraphs when a Line Break has been used and bullets/numbering is in effect.

Edit: It’s not just when bullets/numbering are used; the same thing happens without them.

When Justify Left is applied to the paragraph and a Line Break is introduced, the paragraph area of text in the paragraph before the line break seems to be set to Justify All.

See attached video where I change from Align Left to Justify Left and back again.

The Help says “Justified All—as with Justified Left, however, the last line of a paragraph is justified regardless of length…” (my emphasis) and I don’t think that using a Line Break means that the paragraph has ‘ended’.

Even if this isn’t a bug I’d say it needs changing, but I don’t know if changing it would have knock-on effects with other stuff.

P.S. I think having to add an extra style – the “Next Style” thing – to do such a simple thing is a bit too much to expect most users to do (or even know about). It might be the more 'correct' thing to do but I don't think it should be the only way to do what's needed here.

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

I don’t know if changing it would have knock-on effects with other stuff.

A change would influence the current / common use of these and other style properties. As mentioned, its influence depends a lot on the specific text and always reacts with some other properties, e.g. the justification options or the character tracking, kerning, horizontal scaling etc. – Below for example it is desired that the line remains fully aligned if a line break gets inserted manually:

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

P.S. I think having to add an extra style – the “Next Style” thing – to do such a simple thing is a bit too much to expect most users to do (or even know about). It might be the more 'correct' thing to do but I don't think it should be the only way to do what's needed here.

But that is not the only way, … Already in the first response to this thread, two options were offered:

On 2/20/2023 at 7:11 PM, Old Bruce said:

I would do away with the line break and use a new paragraph.

Or I would do a tab, line break.

Whereas the "Next style" option is always just optional and does not affect the style definitions and their look but rather the efficiency of the workflow. Yes, it is not useful for only a few text passages, but increases its sense with the number of such changes. For instance if every numbered paragraph would contain an unnumbered across many text frames or pages. If you then set "Next Style" for both styles you can get the toggling automatically across the entire document without the need to assign the two styles manually to the paragraphs.