RE: Justified versus ragged right

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Dan Goldstein wrote: 
 
> Is FrameMaker (as used in Sean's experiment, which seems to
empirically
> (!) contradict Geoff's theory), a "smart" justification tool or a
"dumb"
> one?

Sean Brierley replied: 

> Entirely dumb, of course. I wasn't approaching the question of
interword
> spacing, though, just page count.

I can't speak to how FrameMaker compares with the "really smart" tools
used by book publishers, but I don't think it qualifies as entirely
dumb. 

If you check Allow Automatic Letter Spacing (on the Advanced tab of the
Paragraph Designer), FM will adjust not just word spacing, but also
letter spacing (both pair kerning and tracking). In addition, you can
set the maximum, minimum, and optimum word spacing to adjust how tightly
or loosely FM sets lines. 

You can also manually adjust spread (tracking). I suppose you'd have to
fiddle with individual pgfs to get really great results, but if you make
wise choices in your pgf format definitions, the automatic settings will
give far better results than you get from pure word spacing.

All that said, I prefer and exclusively use ragged right with no
hyphenation. :-) 

Richard


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------





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