🚀 go-pugleaf

I am not certain how InDesign applies the Paragraph Composer to unjustified text, but it appears that while Desired word spacing in the Justification settings is respected, the Maximum and Minimum values are ignored, since the composer does not alter word spacing. Turning on Balance Ragged Lines will shuffle line breaks (often making wild adjustments to the ragged margin) but will again maintain constant word spacing.

Now I realise that regular word spacing and consistent text colour are one of the advantages of unjustified setting, but a degree of word spacing adjustment to bring out over-short lines and suppress over-long ones produces a much cleaner page, and at the moment I have to do this manually (using the helpful word-spacing shortcuts).

Am I alone in finding ID�s handling of unjustified text crude? I would like it if the Paragraph Composer could take Max and Min settings into account (typically one would set these very much tighter for uj text) and aim to balance lines. I can see that with line length a moving target, this might call for a sophisticated algorithm, but even if ID only did what I do manually to iron out the extremes, that would be a major improvement. I am not asking it to justify unjustified text, just civilize it a little.