[scribus] Hyphenation/justification settings (was Re: Text layout on Scribus Manual)

[Tornóci László]

avox wrote:
> Tornóci László-2 wrote:
...
>> 1.3.5 has 
>> optical margins, it allows you to tweak word tracking and glyph 
>> extension (found in text properties, advanced settings). For word 
>> tracking (=interword spacing) you can set a minimal and a normal width 
>> in percentages, for glyph extension (horizontally shrinking/extending 
>> glyphs) you can set a minimum and a maximum. There is no way to set a 
>> maximum for word tracking, and there is no way to change within-word 
>> spacing (letterspacing) at all (correct me if I'm wrong). 
>>
> You can change letterspacing manually with the "AV" button.

Yes, I know, manual kerning has been available in Scribus for a long 
time. What I meant: there is no way to let the H&J algorithm 
automatically change letterspacing within limits that I can set.

...
>> I don't understand why Scribus allows for glyph extension and not for 
>> changing the within-word spacing. The former is a bigger no-no among 
>> purists then the latter.
>>
> Hm, is it? Letter spacing changes the color of the text whereas glyph 
> extension doesnt. Also glyph extension gives the similar transformation
> to what you get when you look at the text from an angle.

You are right, but glyph extension is still being frowned upon by many 
people. I have no problem with it (as long as its limits are narrow). My 
point is the lack of use of letterspacing in H&J in Scribus.

>> There are some convincing examples in James Felici's book: The Complete 
>> Manual of Typography showing the same text typeset with different 
>> settings of: interword and within-word spacing and glyph extension. 
>> Combining small (not noticeable) amounts of all these gives you a really 
>> pleasing result.
>>
>> It would be very nice to be able to use all these settings in Scribus. 
>> The purists could always disable the features they don't like.

To summarize: the examples in the above mentioned book convinced me, 
that you get the best result by including in the H&J automatic change of 
interword _and_ within-word spacing _and_ glyph extension. All of them 
with tight limits, that are not noticeable, but together give enough 
freedom to the H&J algorithm. I know including yet another variable 
complicates the algorithm even further, but please consider including it 
in the spirit of open source: by setting the limits the user could 
achieve any behaviour that she/he likes most. You, as a developer may 
"voice your opininon" by setting the _default_ limits of within-word 
spacing to 100%-100%, effectively disabling it.

...
> Paragraph-oriented  H&J is already planned.

Absolutely glad to hear that.

>> So yes, I agree with John, better H&J is necessary. Now that we have TeX 
>> frames, is there a way to link them the way we do text frames? Guess 
>> not, but perhaps Scribus could pass linked text frames to TeX after some 
>> filtering?

> That's also planned. A future version will allow linking of imageframes, so
> they
> can be filled with multipage images. I also have some idea for a magical TeX
> interface that passes frame information and more to TeX, but I don't know
> when 
> I'll find time for that.

That's also very nice, but if native paragraph-oriented H&J is coming in 
Scribus, this is less important (at least to me).

By the way: very many thanks to the developers for this excellent tool. 
It is a _joy_ to work with Scribus, even with the development version 
with its bugs. I can put up with them, because to end product really 
looks the way I want. (If only H&J would be a bit better...)

					Yours: Laszlo