🚀 go-pugleaf

Yes, I understand your point Dominic, and I expect you are right about Adobe�s assumption that people using left-aligned text want even word-spacing.

Even word spacing is indeed one of the reasons that I generally prefer to set unjustified text. I also like the effect of a ragged edge, but whether I choose the line-breaks myself or let the ID Paragraph Composer do it, I find that there will be a few lines that draw attention to themselves by being too long or too short in relation to their neighbours. These lines can be eased by a moderate adjustment of word spacing. This is just good (or fanatical, according to taste) attention to typographical detail. Am I alone here?

Whether or how to achieve it automatically is another matter. How I�d like it to work is that the user chooses Desired, Max and Min word spaces as with justified text, the Max and Min typically being pretty conservative (say =/- 10%), hyphenation works as at present, the Paragraph Composer then sets the line breaks, again as at present, then identifies conspicuously short or long lines and adds or subtracts enough word spacing (up to your limits) to rein them in. If you don�t want this to happen, just set Max and Min to the same as Desired.

I realise of course that many questions are begged here: how do you define conspicuous? (Two long lines together are less conspicuous than one long between two shorts.) What length of line does the PC aim for? (It would be undesirable for it to align neighbouring lines exactly). Etcetera.

I don�t have answers to all the questions, but I�d love to discuss them with someone who understands the mechanics of the current composer, with the aim of developing a more sophisticated algorithm for left-aligned text. Just because ID is already ahead of QXP in these matters, that doesn�t mean it shouldn�t be looking to increase it�s lead.