Publisher: Text Frame Justify

[mnh]

Hi All,

I am new to Affinity range. In PagePlus I had a text frame and I click on "Justify Paragraph". That kind of makes the text even within the text frame. In Affinity Publisher I see I have more choices, but experimenting I could find similar result. Did I miss something? Or how do I set this up and save as a favourite? Thanks in advance

[walt.farrell]

Justification can be set for a selected paragraph using the Justify control on the Toolbar:

Or you can set it using the corresponding controls in the Paragraph studio panel:

The difference between them (Justify Left/Center/Right/All) is only in the treatment of the last line of the paragraph. All fully justifies it, too. Left/Center/Right don't justify the last line, but align it left/center/right as shown on the icons.

[mnh]

Hi Walt,

Thanks for your quick reply. I experimented a bit with the settings you mention. I think if I select Justify All it also stretches a line that just has a few words, e.g. half length on last line, which then looks bad. I am used to the Publisher (old suite) having a nice Justify All what did a better job lining things up in a text frame squarely, but not stretching overly. I guess just have to keep experimenting.

[jmwellborn]

2 hours ago, mnh said:

Hi Walt,

Thanks for your quick reply. I experimented a bit with the settings you mention. I think if I select Justify All it also stretches a line that just has a few words, e.g. half length on last line, which then looks bad. I am used to the Publisher (old suite) having a nice Justify All what did a better job lining things up in a text frame squarely, but not stretching overly. I guess just have to keep experimenting.

Why not choose Justify Left.  That solves the last line problem.

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, mnh said:

Thanks for your quick reply. I experimented a bit with the settings you mention. I think if I select Justify All it also stretches a line that just has a few words, e.g. half length on last line, which then looks bad. I am used to the Publisher (old suite) having a nice Justify All what did a better job lining things up in a text frame squarely, but not stretching overly. I guess just have to keep experimenting.

Justify Left is what you would normally want to use, with Publisher. The last line will simply be short, then.

[acajohn29]

I am trying to switch from InDesign to Affinity. One of my main issues is justifying text on a page. I understand what everyone has written here, but it seems InDesign has Affinity beat for book publishing. Here's what I am referring to. Pretty much every book has the main text justified so that there is a straight line on either side of each paragraph, aka "justify all". However, they do not justify the last line that way, they justify it to the paragraph's left edge. InDesign has the option, "justify all with last line aligned left", as virtually every published book is done. "Justify all" in Affinity distorts the last line, so that's not a good option. Justify left leaves the right margin staggered in a very unprofessional way that is completely atypical of the vast majority of published books. Can someone please tell me how to "justify all with last line justified left" in Affinity. This is a key to making a professional looking work. Thanks for any help.

Edited July 17, 2020 by acajohn29

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, @acajohn29.

The setting you want in Publisher is Justify Left. That is Justify All, except last line is left-aligned. The position of the last line in the Justify icons shows you the effect:

[acajohn29]

Thanks for your reply, Walt. Unfortunately, that option leaves the right hand side randomly justified for each line. I need "justify ALL with last line justified left". Sure hope it's possible. I've attached examples. The InDesign looks like a professionally done book, the staggered justification on the right side of the Affinity justification looks very unprofessional. 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, acajohn29 said:

Thanks for your reply, Walt. Unfortunately, that option leaves the right hand side randomly justified for each line. I need "justify ALL with last line justified left". Sure hope it's possible. I've attached examples. The InDesign looks like a professionally done book, the staggered justification on the right side of the Affinity justification looks very unprofessional. 

I suspect you used the wrong setting.

It looks like you used the leftmost icon, which is Align Left, rather than the Justify icon and pulldown which is on the right:

The tooltips when you hover an icon will identify it.

[acajohn29]

I was hopeful that you were right, Walt. Unfortunately, it makes no difference which I use, align left or justify left, the right hand side of the page is staggered improperly. It must be done with a "justify all with last line aligned left". I hope that Affinity can emulate InDesign on this one. It's crucial to making a professional looking book.

[walt.farrell]

52 minutes ago, acajohn29 said:

I was hopeful that you were right, Walt. Unfortunately, it makes no difference which I use, align left or justify left, the right hand side of the page is staggered improperly. It must be done with a "justify all with last line aligned left". I hope that Affinity can emulate InDesign on this one. It's crucial to making a professional looking book.

Please provide a sample .afpub file, because Justify Left definitely works as you want. Something else must be happening.

[acajohn29]

Here it is, Walt. Thank you.

test.align.justify2.afpub

[R C-R]

@acajohn29, it isn't working as expected because every line on your page 1 ends in a paragraph break, which you can see if you enable "Show Special Characters" on the Text menu. That means that instead of just a few paragraphs of text on that page you have a large number of them, one for every line.

Also, instead of just a First Line indent, you have both that & a Left Indent for each of those many paragraphs.

I am not sure I got everything right because I rarely do much work in Affinity Publisher, but compare your file to this test align justify 3.afpub one, where I tried to duplicate the settings used on your page 2 after removing all the extra paragraph breaks.

[acajohn29]

Thanks for your input R C-R. I had imported my book into Affinity from InDesign and when asked to share an afpub sample, I cut out 98% of the text and pages. Clearly this did some strange things to my document. I took the test doc and tried part of it with new text. Although the left hand margin was wrong, the left justification seemed to do what I wanted. I am going to keep working with this and hope I can get Affinity to behave as you say it does/should. I may need to alter my approach of importing an InDesign document and working from that. I will comment here again as soon as I feel I know what's what. Thanks again for your help. 

[acajohn29]

Yes! Thanks once more to R C-R and Walt for your kind assistance. I exported the file from Indesign as an IDML file and when I justified left in Affinity it did exactly what I needed it to. I'm canceling my InDesign account and buying Affinity!

Peace

[walt.farrell]

Congratulations!

I'm curious: how did you import it the first time, if not via IDML? Did you copy/paste the text that first time? Or create a PDF from InDesign and import that?

[jmwellborn]

Hello, @acajohn29.  If you are importing several documents from InDesign, may I offer a tip?  Check your InDesign Font Files to be sure that the names of the fonts are exactly the same as they will be  when you open Affinity Publisher.  Some fonts may import (from IDML) with a Question mark in front of their names.   If you know the names of their replacements beforehand, you will have a much easier time in Publisher’s Font Manager.  I predict that you will really like Publisher!

[acajohn29]

Walt, I used pdf files.

jmwellborn, thanks for the tip, I'll watch for that. 🙂 

 

[AdriaanS]

I have been using Corel Ventura for the past 25 years to do all my set work. But recently switched to Affinity Publisher. In Corel Ventura it was easy to left align the first line of thr first paragraph under a chapter heading and the subsequent paragraphs with a 5 mm indend. How can I do this in Affinity Publisher?
Adriaan Snyman

[walt.farrell]

10 hours ago, AdriaanS said:

I have been using Corel Ventura for the past 25 years to do all my set work. But recently switched to Affinity Publisher. In Corel Ventura it was easy to left align the first line of thr first paragraph under a chapter heading and the subsequent paragraphs with a 5 mm indend. How can I do this in Affinity Publisher? Adriaan Snyman

 

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, Adrian.

You would do that with Text Styles. For example:

1. Create a Text Style for your indented paragraphs, and call it something like Indented Paragraph.
2. Create another for the non-indented paragraphs, called Initial Paragraph. Set its "next paragraph style" to Indented Paragraph.
3. Create another for the heading, called Chapter. Set its "next paragraph style" to Initial Paragraph.

Then, when you make a Chapter heading, the next paragraph will have the Initial style. And the one after that will be indented.