Text Styles > Paragraph > Initial Words

[GaryLearnTech]

I've been playing with this for my current project (a template for step-by-step user guides) where my columns are on the narrow side.  Ideally, I'd like to have the Initial Words have an option to automatically terminate at the end of the first row, where the line wraps naturally onto the next row, rather than on one of the available fixed markers such as a comma or hyphen for example.  The screenshot below shows the sort of effect I'm after.

There doesn't seem to be any suitable meta-character available to do this under the Text > Insert menu.  I can fudge it using a Zero Width Space (insert one into a text frame, copy it from there and paste it into the field in the text style editor), but that's not probably ideal if/when I come back later on and edit the text.

Is there something I'm missing that would actually allow this?

Or could this be added to the other related feature requests people have discussed on here previously?  I can't see this being difficult for the developers to add, so maybe this will catch somebody's eye?  

[MikeW]

Likely cannot be done. I would just use two different paragraph styles for this. 

[mac_heibu]

By the way @GaryLearnTech, here a simple sample, why your request is not THAT easy –if not completely impossible –  to implement, if you see, what I mean. Something like this is called „deadlock":

 

[Wosven]

For implementing this, text should be divided like in ID :

• Story
• paragraphs
• lines
• words
• characters

But they don't need to follow the whole hierarchy: there are lines or words or characters in stories or paragraphs, etc., the same way we could say looking at a page: column 2, word 10 =/or paragraph 8, word 2 (the two possibilities pointing to the same word).

 

With this we could attribute Initial words style to x first line(s).

[mac_heibu]

No, this won‘t work either!

Think of this example:

• 3 words in the first line.
•  Making them bold, causes the third word to be placed into the next line (because 3 bold words won‘t fit into the line)
• But now, the former third word isn‘t bold any more, and therefore should fit into the first line again.
• And so on, and so on …

[Seneca]

1 hour ago, GaryLearnTech said:

There doesn't seem to be any suitable meta-character available to do this under the Text > Insert menu.

Ideally, Publisher should have a Nested Line Style feature available in inDesign. Then the software itself would calculate the first line length and would then apply a given style to it.

Anything else is bound to be inefficient and error-prone.

This area of nesting styles is terribly underpowered in Publisher at the moment compared to what inDesign and QuarkXPress can offer.

[Wosven]

29 minutes ago, mac_heibu said:

No, this won‘t work either!

The way ID organise and split text is effective, it's used in different ways to attribute character styles to parts of a story (article), with nested styles or using GREPs in paragraph styles.

Once added, those elements can be choosen from a dropdown list, and you can use them for Initial words, for example.

It wasn't possible in QXD when I used it… perhaps I'll try a demo someday if possible

[Wosven]

I hope some of those fields will accept special characters as soft return, but for now it's not a possibility.

Strangely, you can set a hight number in the word cound field, and use a non-breaking space in the other field (APub will reconize it).
If you put a soft return at the end of the line, it'll stop the character style at this point (but it's a bug, I wouldn't rely on this).

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, Wosven said:

Strangely, you can set a hight number in the word cound field, and use a non-breaking space in the other field (APub will reconize it).
If you put a soft return at the end of the line, it'll stop the character style at this point (but it's a bug, I wouldn't rely on this).

There is an awful lot of searching for the end of the line otherwise and every edit made which reflows the text means checking these lines and that reflows the text again. In a large document that feature will slow things down. It is nice though, and I would use it.

[mac_heibu]

And I insist: This can‘t work! Its a deadlock.

If someone thinks, it can be done, please provide a screenshot of InDesign‘s nested styles panel.

If I understand the initial post correctly, there should be a way to always „bolden“ all words in the first line without having a paragraph or a line feed. This can‘t work, because „boldening“ these words may cause a word to be pushed into the next line (bold text runs wider than normal one), where it shouldn‘t be bold any more, and because it isn‘t bold any more, it fits in the first line, where it has to be bold and goes to the second line, where it isn‘t bold any more and fits into the first line again, where …

[walt.farrell]

14 minutes ago, mac_heibu said:

If I understand the initial post correctly, there should be a way to always „bolden“ all words in the first line without having a paragraph or a line feed. This can‘t work, because „boldening“ these words may cause a word to be pushed into the next line (bold text runs wider than normal one), where it shouldn‘t be bold any more, and because it isn‘t bold any more, it fits in the first line, where it has to be bold and goes to the second line, where it isn‘t bold any more and fits into the first line again, where

When the words don't fit when bolded, can't the program just drop one of them to the next line, and then possibly re-justify the first line to make it wider?

[Old Bruce]

53 minutes ago, mac_heibu said:

And I insist: This can‘t work! Its a deadlock.

If someone thinks, it can be done, please provide a screenshot of InDesign‘s nested styles panel.

If I understand the initial post correctly, there should be a way to always „bolden“ all words in the first line without having a paragraph or a line feed. This can‘t work, because „boldening“ these words may cause a word to be pushed into the next line (bold text runs wider than normal one), where it shouldn‘t be bold any more, and because it isn‘t bold any more, it fits in the first line, where it has to be bold and goes to the second line, where it isn‘t bold any more and fits into the first line again, where …

 

34 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

When the words don't fit when bolded, can't the program just drop one of them to the next line, and then possibly re-justify the first line to make it wider?

As Affinity Publisher stands right now we can not do this with Paragraph Styles. There needs to be a function which will work with both the justification, hyphenation and kerning functions. Just "reading" the first line is a difficult thing to achieve because all the text is in a dynamic setting. Add in the changes to the character widths and then the final word being dropped and/or hyphenated by this increase in line length means a hell of a lot of math plus NOT carrying the bold style over to the next line. It has to be implemented on a per character basis with a varying set of characters.

It is doable and it will be done but not right now. That is my prediction which is my own and which I have made.

[Seneca]

4 hours ago, mac_heibu said:

If someone thinks, it can be done, please provide a screenshot of InDesign‘s nested styles panel.

Here it is a short video featuring the competing product in action. I really don't understand why people think that this must be so complicated.

Publisher already needs to calculate the length of the line when you apply bold to the majority of the line. The result of the calculation is the last word going to the next line.
It's not rocket science.

[mac_heibu]

Yes, you convinced me! It  evidently is possible. I made an error in reasoning.

[MikeW]

As far as I remember, line styles have been a possibility in ID (Assuming the movie is ID) since CS4, maybe CS3. 

But it is not possible in APub. So if this is a desire now, use two paragraphs as there is no means of automatically doing so in APub.