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Period Leader Filled Tabs look like someone's losing at Tetris


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2 hours ago, A_B_C said:

The app should certainly adjust the spacings between the last periods and the words

Well, it never did it before. Here we have text (a leader period* is selected). If it should change spacings (wherever), it also should have a correct working optical alignment (what it still does not have). And it better would change the spacing between all periods, not (before the first and) between the last period and the word.

 

*that means the periods belong to …

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1 minute ago, Oval said:

And it better would change the spacing between all periods, not (before the first and) between the last period and the word.

You can't change the spacing between the periods, and still have the periods in different entries line up. The first period needs to be in a fixed position, and all the following ones. And then you need to adjust the spacing betwen the last period and the word.

-- 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

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20 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

The first period needs to be in a fixed position, and all the following ones. And then you need to adjust the spacing betwen the last period and the word.

No, the öeader characters belong to the right, not left text. That space is fixed. If you would have the option to select the amount of (characters) periods, …

 

20 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

and still have the periods in different entries line up.

Right. This is not the function of leader characters. Therefore you need new tabs.

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24 minutes ago, Oval said:

No, the öeader characters belong to the right, not left text. That space is fixed. If you would have the option to select the amount of (characters) periods

We read from left to right. In RTL language settings the leader would start at the right. In either case it always starts aligned with the logical outside. Otherwise it would look quite rubbish. That's why nobody does it from the inside out. You'd get this ragged edge on the logical outside instead of a clean line. Currently I typeset it in LaTeX where it is done correctly, render to outlines (since Affinity still can't import PDFs correctly) and place it where I need it.

As for the extra spacing: In LaTex my function adds either an x-width, a half-space or an en-space depending on whether the first glyph has an apex going into a vertex, a straight vertical line, an overhang arm or a vertex going down into a serif. That's in addition to the regular micro-typography settings. Something like that would be great to have in Affinity. It'd be rather simple (from a UI POV) to handle that in the Optical Alignment panel with a control character like [leader]. That way users could easily control the spacing in a familiar UI that can be stored in a Text Style.  

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17 hours ago, Sean P said:

The same is also true of InDesign!

Yeeeah… somewhat ;) 

 

Here's some inspiration from a working document I'm on at the moment. Note that I've adjusted the placements to skip the periods that would otherwise end up too close to the terminal characters (see 12.1 and 12.2 line). There's a tolerance of course, otherwise things like 12.1.2  would look stray. Leaders here are calculated from the logical outside in. That way it doesn't matter on which side I have them, they're always correct. In edge-cases you have to evaluate it more than once, but in this example it was a single pass.

Screen Shot 2019-08-10 at 02.48.11.png

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12 minutes ago, Frank Jonen said:

Another example how it could be done in Affinity.

Thanks for the example. I hope Affinity doesn't do something like that, because those leader dots are not aligned from line to line, and I find that very annoying visually:

image.png.5968bd9680371ce595b3c3e89222912e.png

Check, for example, the 3rd and 4th dots in lines 5 and 6.

-- 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

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10 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Thanks for the example. I hope Affinity doesn't do something like that, because those leader dots are not aligned from line to line, and I find that very annoying visually:

image.png.5968bd9680371ce595b3c3e89222912e.png

Check, for example, the 3rd and 4th dots in lines 5 and 6.

 

Ha yep! Good catch. I ran it with a single-pass only last night. This is what a 2-pass looks like. Should have done that in the first place. I can see a couple of other issues now with optical alignments that could be better.

 

peanut_butter-recipe-2p.png

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17 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I find that very annoying visually

Really annoying: 60sec, Down, … the numbers that are more important than the content, the big sticky dots, … the rough and right-aligned text, … and totally annoying is that there is still no optical alignment that works correctly and therefore the tab stop leader character function does not and will not work correctly.

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On 8/14/2019 at 6:43 PM, Frank Jonen said:

peanut_butter-recipe-2p.png

 

I don't think the right alignment for the set of instructions is doing this any favors for readability.  It might look pretty from a distance but from a practical standpoint, if I received something in that form I would most likely either discard it completely or rewrite it myself to make sure it wasn't slowing me down every time I went to check something while trying to use it.

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  • 2 months later...
  • Staff

We believe the issue has been fixed in 1.8.0 [Publisher beta is currently available if you care to check, Designer beta will follow soon].

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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