4 ms·

Fully-justified text can actually be more readable than ragged-right (although ragged-right is definitely better for some contexts like narrow lines, and can ap

Fully-justified text can actually be more readable than ragged-right (although ragged-right is definitely better for some contexts like narrow lines, and can apparently help readers with dyslexia). I believe this is because justified text makes it easier for the eye find the end of the next line and then track back to its start. Here's a reference to one study in which justified performed better than ragged-right (there are others too): http://eserver.org/courses/w01/tc510/hades/kaltenbach1.htm http://eserver.org/courses/w01/tc510/hades/kaltenbach1.htm The advice to use ragged-right is almost always correct on the web, where it's not generally possible to reliably hyphenate or manually typeset your pages. But in print I would use justified text more often than ragged-right. There are reasons that almost all books and newspapers are set justified.

ggruschow 17y ago
You can do a lot better hyphenation than most people realize.. e.g. http://code.google.com/p/hyphenator/ http://code.google.com/p/hyphenator/
- pmiller2 17y ago
  The main problem with something like hyphenator.js is that to do a proper job, you first have to detect the language. I can't read Polish, but I imagine trying to hyphenate Polish text with an algorithm designed to work on English wouldn't work well at all, and ditto the reverse.
  - ggruschow 17y ago
    If that's the main problem, then I've got to use it more often! I'm guessing most websites know what language they're serving up.. and for those that don't, you can detect it reasonably well in javascript too (e.g. http://whatlanguageisthis.com/ http://whatlanguageisthis.com/). I'm guessing the cost of misidentification is a minor one, and if it's not, it seems easy to add a confidence output to a language identifier.. just don't hyphenate when you're not sure. I would've said the main problem is you add a big JS file to your requests, but my web ideas are probably stuck in 1994.
bramstein 17y ago
Regardless of hyphenation browsers could also do a much better job at implementing line breaking (affecting ragged left, right, centered, and justified text.) I've done some experiments with implementing the Knuth & Plass line breaking algorithm (as used in TeX) in JavaScript, and it seems to outperform the browser line breaking algorithm on quality. I guess browsers use a simple line breaking algorithm for performance, but I hope that choice is revisited some day because a good line breaking algorithm makes text much easier to read. If you're interested you can find my experiments at: http://www.bramstein.com/projects/typeset/myfit.html http://www.bramstein.com/projects/typeset/myfit.html

ggruschow 17y ago

You can do a lot better hyphenation than most people realize.. e.g. http://code.google.com/p/hyphenator/ http://code.google.com/p/hyphenator/

pmiller2 17y ago
The main problem with something like hyphenator.js is that to do a proper job, you first have to detect the language. I can't read Polish, but I imagine trying to hyphenate Polish text with an algorithm designed to work on English wouldn't work well at all, and ditto the reverse.
- ggruschow 17y ago
  If that's the main problem, then I've got to use it more often! I'm guessing most websites know what language they're serving up.. and for those that don't, you can detect it reasonably well in javascript too (e.g. http://whatlanguageisthis.com/ http://whatlanguageisthis.com/). I'm guessing the cost of misidentification is a minor one, and if it's not, it seems easy to add a confidence output to a language identifier.. just don't hyphenate when you're not sure. I would've said the main problem is you add a big JS file to your requests, but my web ideas are probably stuck in 1994.

bramstein 17y ago

Regardless of hyphenation browsers could also do a much better job at implementing line breaking (affecting ragged left, right, centered, and justified text.) I've done some experiments with implementing the Knuth & Plass line breaking algorithm (as used in TeX) in JavaScript, and it seems to outperform the browser line breaking algorithm on quality. I guess browsers use a simple line breaking algorithm for performance, but I hope that choice is revisited some day because a good line breaking algorithm makes text much easier to read. If you're interested you can find my experiments at: http://www.bramstein.com/projects/typeset/myfit.html http://www.bramstein.com/projects/typeset/myfit.html