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Scribus => Beginner Talk => Topic started by: Timbow on October 16, 2011, 12:41:20 PM

Title: Justified text (L&R) going wrong on the last, short line of the paragraph
Post by: Timbow on October 16, 2011, 12:41:20 PM
Here are a couple of pages of text justified both sides like a normal book. The last line of each paragraph should be normally spaced and aligned Left only, not stretched across the page width. There must be a way of making this happen automatically but I can't find it.

Now I look I see I have another problem here in that the RH page starts with a blank line because the paragraph ended at the bottom of the previous page. Will the program sort that automatically?

Really making progress here. I took a break to watch the rugby but should have this finished tonight in time for the pub. I will let you see it. I am very pleased with it. In fact I am going to graduate myself out of the Beginners Forum soon.

Thanks.

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Title: Re: Justified text (L&R) going wrong on the last, short line of the paragraph
Post by: Wena on October 16, 2011, 12:48:59 PM
When setting the text you have a choice of for things to do, you have obviously chosen to aline both sides. In the 4 choices you have you should have chosen the 3rd one which allows you to do the same thing but allowing the last line in the paragraph to be left aline.

At least that what I do.

Wena

Title: Re: Justified text (L&R) going wrong on the last, short line of the paragraph
Post by: Timbow on October 16, 2011, 01:45:01 PM
Thanks Wena,  found it. I had missed that extra little button. You saved some hair tearing.
Title: Re: Justified text (L&R) going wrong on the last, short line of the paragraph
Post by: Meho R. on October 16, 2011, 02:50:05 PM
Quote from: Timbow on October 16, 2011, 12:41:20 PM
...
Now I look I see I have another problem here in that the RH page starts with a blank line because the paragraph ended at the bottom of the previous page. Will the program sort that automatically?
...
The program sorts that automatically provided that you used correct procedure to insert spacing between paragraphs, i.e., if you used paragraph styles with instructions to insert space between paragraphs automatically. But, if you simply inserted manually an empty line between paragraphs (which is a really, really bad idea), then don't expect that Scribus corrects such a mistake automatically.

Also, check "First Line Offset" settings in "Properties" palette for fine-tuning vertical space between the top of a text frame and the first line of text.
Title: Re: Justified text (L&R) going wrong on the last, short line of the paragraph
Post by: Wena on October 16, 2011, 07:48:14 PM
Timbow, I love the way you have set it out.

The drop caps is lovely and enhances the page.

Please tell me what fonts are you using?

Wena
Title: Re: Justified text (L&R) going wrong on the last, short line of the paragraph
Post by: Timbow on October 16, 2011, 09:46:40 PM
Why thank you Wena, kind of you to say so.

I am not a graphic designer but had one idea only which was to nod to some lovely old books I have as reference here. I will scan one for you and attach it. This is 1914 and an account of a Springtime bicycle journey across Southern England. It looks like it was done in an antiquated press even then. I searched for the font by using one of those online font identification programs and of course it doesn't exist but Century Schoolbook is a close equivalent so that is what I have used.

I hear that the pros like to pair compatible fonts but I haven't been able to find a compimentary style just yet.

I will post some of the finished document tomorrow - just as a thank you to you guys who have helped me.

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Title: Re: Justified text (L&R) going wrong on the last, short line of the paragraph
Post by: Timbow on October 17, 2011, 10:51:32 AM
Looking at the old typeface again this morning it is better than the digital font in a number of ways. If you take a look for instance at the phrase 'valley of five rivers' the old (letterpress?) fi is elegantlyjoined together so the top of the f forms the dot of the i. If you do this with a WP the letters are just untidily close, and I see that if you use abiword it knocks off some of the f of 'of' when you put a space after it. Scandal. Can digital typesetting do these double letters? Maybe someone knows.

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Title: Re: Justified text (L&R) going wrong on the last, short line of the paragraph
Post by: Nermander on October 17, 2011, 05:10:48 PM
That is called ligatures. As far as I remember Scribus does not yet have any automatic support for ligatures. If you want to use them you most likely need to use search-and-replace.

However ligature support IS (of course) on the roadmap.
Title: Re: Justified text (L&R) going wrong on the last, short line of the paragraph
Post by: John_Jason_Jordan on October 17, 2011, 05:57:34 PM
In addition to Meho's response I can add a couple of tips.

There are only a couple of programs today that can do automatic ligature substitution, InDesign and one that I can't remember, but it's not commonly known or used. Hopefully Scribus will soon join the group. I love ligatures and have used them since before InDesign came out.

In the old days I did my writing in MS Word, where I recorded a macro to do the ligature substitution (tip: search and replace for the ffl and ffi before the others). Today I would do the same in OpenOfice Writer. Now, the problem with this is that once you have run the macro your spell checker will flag all the words with ligatures as misspelled. In other words, you have to do it as the very last thing before importing the text into Scribus. And if you make any changes to a word with ligatures in Scribus you'll have to add the ligature manually. Fortunately Scribus does have a handy ligature option in the Insert menu.

Another point is that you need to check the font to be sure it has a complete ligature set. Today I would use Fontmatrix, a free open source font viewer. Fontmatrix will also tell you the Unicode value for the ligatures, essential when doing the search and replace. Some fonts have no ligatures at all, yet others have not only the f-ligatures (fi, fl, ffi, ffl, fj), but also old style ligatures like ct and st where the c and s are joined to the t with a curve. The latter are useful for setting something designed to have very old effect.
Title: Re: Justified text (L&R) going wrong on the last, short line of the paragraph
Post by: Meho R. on October 17, 2011, 06:12:52 PM
Quote from: John_Jason_Jordan on October 17, 2011, 05:57:34 PM
In addition to Meho's response I can add a couple of tips.

There are only a couple of programs today that can do automatic ligature substitution, InDesign and one that I can't remember, but it's not commonly known or used.
Well, the one which is still widely used (and growing) is the king of all typesetting apps: TeX (and all its "offsprings", LaTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX, etc.).

It is unfortunate that Scribus still didn't get to the point where some of basic elements of fine typography are implemented and applied automatically. Beside ligatures, I'd add automatic replacement of lining figures with text figures (known also as oldstyle numbers, lowercase numbers). Letters overlapping each other because of lack of proper ligatures isn't much worse than usage of lining figures (a.k.a. uppercase numbers, "normal" numbers) in text setting. Manual work around these is really tiresome, not to mention error prone...
Title: Re: Justified text (L&R) going wrong on the last, short line of the paragraph
Post by: Timbow on January 05, 2012, 09:57:53 AM
Quote from: Meho R. on October 16, 2011, 02:50:05 PM

...

The program sorts that automatically provided that you used correct procedure to insert spacing between paragraphs, i.e., if you used paragraph styles with instructions to insert space between paragraphs automatically. But, if you simply inserted manually an empty line between paragraphs (which is a really, really bad idea), then don't expect that Scribus corrects such a mistake automatically.


As far as I know no Word Processor uses a separate paragraph break these days, so not sure how I would put a different </p> type paragraph break in the text. When I had a typewriter we used the Carriage Return. Briefly in the 1980s I used a Word Processor called Locoscript which required a different keystroke to make a new para. I haven't seen a WP since which even had a command for a paragraph break.

Tim W
Title: Re: Justified text (L&R) going wrong on the last, short line of the paragraph
Post by: Nermander on January 05, 2012, 10:17:19 AM
In MS Word hitting Enter will cause a paragraph break (and the style settings in Word have options for Space before and Space after paragraph, in addition to linespacing within the paragraph).

Line breaks are done with Shift-Enter.

If you have control characters showing in Word (and you really should, because it is important to know where there are soft hyphens, non-breaking spaces, paragraph breaks etc) you can see the difference between the two breaks.
Title: Re: Justified text (L&R) going wrong on the last, short line of the paragraph
Post by: utnik on January 05, 2012, 11:45:47 AM
hi timbow

you have to define how a paragraph break looks like. if there is no aditional space, you are stuck in the old typewriter-times - don't ask your typewriter to sort something out...

utnik