[Suggestion] Word Spacing To Achieve Straight Column Edges On Each Side

[nesherman]

It would be helpful to set a body of text to be in full justification/alignment so that there are straight edges on both left and right.

Example here on the far right:

[Yincognito]

Great suggestion, I support it 100%.
Hopefully it can be implemented.

[Cariboudjan]

Personal preference, but Justified alignment always made me

[Yincognito]

Personal preference, but Justified alignment always made me

Same for me regarding Left (or better said, unsymmetrical) alignment.
Justified, Center or Left+Right combined are best for me. Professional typography seems to agree.
Too many blanks can look bad for Justified alignment though.

[nesherman]

Same for me regarding Left (or better said, unsymmetrical) alignment.
Justified, Center or Left+Right combined are best for me. Professional typography seems to agree.
Too many blanks can look bad for Justified alignment though.

Definitely agree. Typographers know this works.

[Active Colors]

Too many blanks can look bad for Justified alignment though.

That's why there is a (auto-)hyphenation.

[Yincognito]

That's why there is a (auto-)hyphenation.

Indeed, however I believe that one of the main goals of justified text was to avoid hyphenation in the first place, since it increases readability. There is also the situation in which you edit a word that falls on the margin and if you don't automate the process, hyphenation will be different, something one doesn't need to bother with when it comes to justified text. Not to mention that there are as many hyphenations as there are languages (not sure if there are languages that don't have hyphenation, as a side note) and both the auto and the manual hyphenation requires accurate knowledge of that language and its hyphenation rules. Basically, it's more inconvenient for the developer, for the reader, and for the editor, than the alternative. But yeah, it's a perfectly valid way to achieve visual symmetry, so in that regard it's as good as the text justification.

Definitely agree. Typographers know this works.

That's why there is a (auto-)hyphenation.

A bit off topic, but just so you know, sorry for not pursuing the task of simulating justified text by the described methods in the related thread at the moment, even though I enjoy this type of challenges, I've been busy with exploring and coding to use the WebView plugin in another thread. I even fell behind with helping folks in other threads on the forum because of that, but the project is a very enjoyable one for me.

[nesherman]

I would be happy with whatever sort of full-justification that was possible tbh

[Brian]

I think something can be done in this area. Maybe.

Here is a simple test:

Justified.png

There are 2 potential "issues", if you want to call them that.

FIrst, D2D seems to increase the spacing between characters within the same word in some cases instead of just the spacing between words. It isn't too bad, but there doesn't seem to be a way to just use the "normal" space between characters in the same word like you would think.

Second, it's difficult to calculate the correct width of the meter when no W is defined - so a width needs to be defined to make this work.

I'll look into these issues and hopefully come up with a solution.

-Brian

[Yincognito]

I think something can be done in this area. Maybe.

Here is a simple test:
Justified.png


There are 2 potential "issues", if you want to call them that.

FIrst, D2D seems to increase the spacing between characters within the same word in some cases instead of just the spacing between words. It isn't too bad, but there doesn't seem to be a way to just use the "normal" space between characters in the same word like you would think.

Second, it's difficult to calculate the correct width of the meter when no W is defined - so a width needs to be defined to make this work.

I'll look into these issues and hopefully come up with a solution.

-Brian

Wow, this looks very promising, from my part - I think increasing spacing a bit between characters of the same word where it's needed isn't that bad, considering that it might have the additional benefit of not requiring an exaggerate amount of space / gaps between words (and potentially creating "rivers" of blank space), something most folks seem to agree that it's a disadvantage of justified text. Plus, this is generally an "issue" only when the width of the text is smaller, since for wider widths the effect is reduced as there are more words to display on one line, and the effect is further reduced if choosing the W carefully.

Regarding having to define the width of the meter, I suppose this is somewhat implicit for this type of alignment - one would need to set the boundaries of the justified text anyway, since the width of the text is not based on the text itself (as this and the spacing in it is what is adjusted to fit and variable / volatile in the first place, and can arbitrarily have a width up to a supposed maximum width), but on the user's choice. So basically, ClipString=2 and ClipStringW (and probably ClipStringH as well?) would be unavailable in this case, is that it? Not such a big deal, IMHO, I mean even text processor software still need the user to set some width in this case. If a variable width (or up to a set maximum) still needs to be tackled though, maybe the way shapes behave (where they extend and detect stuff only up to their last opaque pixel) is the way to go, if the text color is not transparent that is...

Personally, I think it's worth implementing this. If there are no other drawbacks, those you mentioned seem minor (and to some level even beneficial and logical), to be honest. I can't wait to start setting stuff like help, feed or any other longer texts to be justified ... it would look SOO MUCH better!

To Justify.jpg