Auto-hyphenation not working

[ericGa]

I can't figure out how to apply auto-hyphenation on my two columns text...

I have used the check-box Use auto-hyphenation on and off with no results.

(Macos 10.11.6)

 

[fde101]

Make sure the language of the text is set correctly in the Character panel.  If the wrong language is selected it might not recognize the words and thus doesn't know where it can safely break them up.

[ericGa]

Strange... the hyphenation settings are set to french.

[Wosven]

Keep the score to 0 or 1, or there won't be hyphenation.

[garrettm30]

I myself am struggling to understand how the various hyphenation settings work. I too am working in French, and in my case, I do have some hyphenation working, so I do not think it is broken. I just don't understand the terminology, especially minimum score and how it relates to hyphenation zone. This is what the manual says on those two items, but I still do not understand:

Quote

Minimum Score—the amount of extra space at the end of each line that is considered acceptable. If the amount of extra space exceeds this value, then auto-hyphenation will try to split words to reduce the excess. Try incrementing values upwards from 1 to experiment.

…

Hyphenation zone—defines an area from the right edge of frame text where hyphenation rules are ignored. This always applies.

Wosven's suggestion (and others have said it elsewhere) is that the minimum score should be between zero and one, but the manual says to "try incrementing values upwards from 1 to experiment," which seems to indicates that values above 1 should work, albeit with fewer hyphens as the number increases. Further, as minimum score is defined as "the amount of extra space at the end of each line," I wonder what units we are measuring in, and how that is different from the hyphenation zone?

To put this another way, is the minimum score something of an equivalent to InDesign's slider from better spacing to fewer hyphens?

I will be glad if anyone can enlighten us one what is happening with these things.

[thomaso]

good point. But since it says...

         ... "the amount of extra space at the end of each line that is considered acceptable."

– whereas i do see lots of ignored "extra space" in AfPub:

... which do NOT generate hyphenation , or a line break at least, –

make me hope they do not know by themselves what "minimum score" means.
and kill it soon.

 

[Seneca]

49 minutes ago, thomaso said:

make me hope they do not know by themselves what "minimum score" means.

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

Before concluding that they themselves don't know what it means maybe it would be more appropriate to ask the Affinity team to shed more light on this feature.

I'm not sure why you'd want to hyphenate spaces. Only words are hyphenated. inDesign doesn't break long succession of spaces either.

Maybe a better way to convey the meaning of  the extra space at the end of each line would be to say the distance at the end of each line that is considered acceptable.

[Wosven]

I didn't test a lot, but I don't have good result with French hyphenation.

And some parameters are in millimeters, this means that hyphenation is dependant of column width, it would be easier to use percentages for all purpose hyphenation and specific ones (for example, for books I'd rather have at least 1 third of text on the last line, no less, on magazine, no hyphention on the last word and if possible more than 1 word on the last line unless I've got narrow columns, etc.).

I hope people who know better will help with some examples as we had for QXP or ID, to better understand and fine tune hyphenation.

I'm fond of straightforward options as "(no) hyphenation for capitalized word", "(no) hyphenation for last word"...

[ericGa]

Quote

 

Indesign as a very good composition engine.

I try to compare how Indesign and Affinity Publisher work with small column size using Caslon 540, 9 pt on 25 mm column width.

Indesign as an extra setting (Glyph scaling) who makes a big difference.

 

Affinty Publisher

 

 

 

[thomaso]

Stretched glyphs sound like a strange solution from a typographical point of view.

Have you tried for your AfPub screenshot its justification setting in paragraph panel?

 

[ericGa]

On 6/22/2019 at 5:54 PM, thomaso said:

Stretched glyphs sound like a strange solution from a typographical point of view.

Have you tried for your AfPub screenshot its justification setting in paragraph panel?

 

Hello thomaso,

In a typographer point of view, stretching a glyph is heresy.

But in a text set in 9 pt, no one will tell you that the glyphs are distorted? On the other hand they may tell you about the big white gaps between words...

the setting you suggest doesn't affect the comp.

Edited June 23, 2019 by ericGa

[thomaso]

The stretching in your screenshot looks bit obvious to me, even with reduced browser window size.

Yes, the justification setting does not seem to react as expected. Possibly a matter of dictionary quality?, because in my German text I do see some definitely wrong hyphenations, so possibly the dictionary is not very good and therefore lacks in some hyphenations? As far I know you can download and use in AfPub additional dictionary files, at least in macOS.

[garrettm30]

@ericGa Thank you for posting that screenshot. I do use a very slight amount of glyph scaling (my settings are 99% 100% 101%) just to round out the spacing with what I hope is an imperceptible compromise. I would welcome such a feature in Affinity Publisher, and it would be turned used in basically all of my publications (they all use justification in our material).

However, I do not believe the big difference between the two layout engines is the due to the fact that Publisher lacks glyph scaling as a justification setting. To test this, you could set all glyph scaling back to 100%, and you would see that the InDesign layout is still much better than the same in Publisher. Instead, I think the biggest difference is that InDesign is using a multiline composer (which it calls "Adobe Paragraph Composer"), whereas Publisher calculates justification on a simple line-by-line basis.

I think some people have not realized what a difference a multiline composer makes, especially in more narrow columns, but your screenshot makes it very apparent. I have begun trying Publisher for some our publications, and I am generally enjoying it, but dealing with spacing such as in your screenshot (in French in my case as well) is to me the biggest shortcoming of Publisher (not a criticism, as I recognize it is a new release).

If you agree, you might like to hop on to one of the feature request threads such as this where the issue is brought up. But whether it is glyph scaling or some other aspect of the layout engine, I think we can agree right now that the justification quality is just not there yet.

[Wosven]

On 6/22/2019 at 4:32 PM, ericGa said:

ce.

 

Hum... The examples in the columns are too extrem ("envahi, isolé, sans la" is too small and visible, "situdes de la vie" too large...).

There's a rule somewhere about having at least 32 characters at x pt in a column for text to be manageable. I can't remember the exact formula, but your text is too large for such column, or it should only be small text, justify left or right as for epigraph (exergue).

 

But it's certain that APub is not easy with French hyphenation and justification.

[Old Bruce]

Are the two examples set with the same font size? Methinks not.

[garrettm30]

His examples are more extreme, that is sure, but it is just to make the issue more apparent. InDesign has the same extreme, but it can handle it more gracefully. In the cases I have seen, there is bad spacing where there would be none in the exact same publication as InDesign, but it is usually not as often or as bad, although there are times where the spaces are literally as bad as you see there with columns twice the width for the same text size.

[garrettm30]

38 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Are the two examples set with the same font size? Methinks not.

I think so, as Eric was rather specific:

On 6/22/2019 at 9:32 AM, ericGa said:

I try to compare how Indesign and Affinity Publisher work with small column size using Caslon 540, 9 pt on 25 mm column width.

It appears to me that they are the same, except that the glyph scaling in InDesign's case makes it look a little different.

[Old Bruce]

Different algorithms will give different results, and one may be superior to another but 9pt type on a one inch line length as a test? If one must one must, but I would argue with the client that it would be better in ragged right at that size and width.

[ericGa]

33 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Different algorithms will give different results, and one may be superior to another but 9pt type on a one inch line length as a test? If one must one must, but I would argue with the client that it would be better in ragged right at that size and width.

As I am new to Publisher, I'm testing the quality and weaknesses of Publisher compared to Indesign. 

I am interested to find the limits. See this as a crash test.

Her is another test with a column length of 35 mm set in cochin 9pt/11pt.

first row Publisher, second row Indesign (same settings as Publisher) and third row, Indesign (with Glyph scaling (98%, 0%, 102%))

 

and a column at 43 mm (very common in newspaper). Publisher and Indesign (with glyph scaling)

Y a pas photo...

[Old Bruce]

Funny how things leap out of a block of text "Petites Madeleines". 

Your point is taken and yes I think things should be compared by going to extremes, I have often relegated a font to the trash-heap because it fails some extreme test of mine. 

I have to say that as nice as Cochin is as a font I don't care for the glyph scaling examples. The test without scaling from Indesign looks best to my eye. I doubt that I would fail any of the five examples here though. But if I were to read Proust (en Anglaise) the scaling version would give me a headache, partly due to much poorer eyesight and partly due to the shear volume of words.