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If there are any typesetting geek on HN, any idea when this would be incorporated in TeX / LaTeX and other typesetting programs? Oh the memories when I used to

If there are any typesetting geek on HN, any idea when this would be incorporated in TeX / LaTeX and other typesetting programs? Oh the memories when I used to write (and typeset) books using LaTeX and Quark XPress: "rivers" had to be tracked down manually, by eye-ball searching. You'd basically "blur" your vision a bit and quickly scan through all the pages of the book. I didn't take that long and I don't write books anymore but I'd still be curious as to when that technique is going to be implemented (maybe in InDesign which I never used!?).

Samuel_Michon 14y ago
In Adobe InDesign, one chooses to set type using the Single-line Composer or the Paragraph Composer. The latter analyzes the entire paragraph and tweaks spacing and hyphenation to minimize rivers, ragged lines, orphans and widows. So nowadays, I don't manually check each page for rivers anymore. When designing the page layout, I decide on the 'color' (the density of the paragraph) that works best, so that rivers are avoided, but I leave it at that. I understand how river detection can be a fun mathematical puzzle, but it's moot. Adobe built the Multi-line Composer into InDesign since version 1.0 (1999). And in my experience, with every version, it gets better. From MacWorld's review of InDesign 1.0: "InDesign's text features will appeal to designers and production people tired of the drudgery of manual copyfitting and kerning. The Multi-line Composer feature can calculate hyphenation and justification settings by examining an entire paragraph (or as many lines as you specify), instead of just a single line, to create better-looking text. In the process, it notably reduces the amount of manual tweaking necessary and will be especially helpful if you're trying to avoid multiple word breaks in a design with awkward text wraps. Similarly, the program's Optical Kerning feature does its best to find optimal character spacing, even if you've mixed different type sizes and faces. " http://www.macworld.com/article/1014955/k2.html http://www.macworld.com/article/1014955/k2.html http://blog.paragonpress.net/2010/08/04/adobe-indesigns-paragraph-composer/ http://blog.paragonpress.net/2010/08/04/adobe-indesigns-para...
- arrrg 14y ago
  Woah. InDesign’s Paragraph Composer detects rivers? I didn’t know that. Now I wonder how it’s doing that.

Samuel_Michon 14y ago

In Adobe InDesign, one chooses to set type using the Single-line Composer or the Paragraph Composer. The latter analyzes the entire paragraph and tweaks spacing and hyphenation to minimize rivers, ragged lines, orphans and widows. So nowadays, I don't manually check each page for rivers anymore. When designing the page layout, I decide on the 'color' (the density of the paragraph) that works best, so that rivers are avoided, but I leave it at that. I understand how river detection can be a fun mathematical puzzle, but it's moot. Adobe built the Multi-line Composer into InDesign since version 1.0 (1999). And in my experience, with every version, it gets better. From MacWorld's review of InDesign 1.0: "InDesign's text features will appeal to designers and production people tired of the drudgery of manual copyfitting and kerning. The Multi-line Composer feature can calculate hyphenation and justification settings by examining an entire paragraph (or as many lines as you specify), instead of just a single line, to create better-looking text. In the process, it notably reduces the amount of manual tweaking necessary and will be especially helpful if you're trying to avoid multiple word breaks in a design with awkward text wraps. Similarly, the program's Optical Kerning feature does its best to find optimal character spacing, even if you've mixed different type sizes and faces. " http://www.macworld.com/article/1014955/k2.html http://www.macworld.com/article/1014955/k2.html http://blog.paragonpress.net/2010/08/04/adobe-indesigns-paragraph-composer/ http://blog.paragonpress.net/2010/08/04/adobe-indesigns-para...

arrrg 14y ago
Woah. InDesign’s Paragraph Composer detects rivers? I didn’t know that. Now I wonder how it’s doing that.