spacing in sentences

[Oreny]

While writing in mellel i often came back to past parts and add or subtract text, instead of pushing and puling the whole paragraph, it squeezes or pushes the same lines text apart as shown in the picture below, can this auto option be turned off, i want the text to push the whole paragraph

[rpcameron]

I don't think I'm fully understanding your question. It looks like you want to adjust the inter-word spacing on justified paragraphs to be manually adjustable. Is this correct? In the screenshot posted, it looked like you had a justified RTL paragraph. Would changing the paragraph from a justified format be a solution, or are you looking for something else?

[Oreny]

Bingo, just found out myself what was going on and came to tell the tale, and you were spot on.
never knew what that justify meant.
Thanks

[rpcameron]

I do find it quite annoying that the default justification setting for new paragraph styles is full justification, rather than left justified for LTR paragraphs, and right justified for RTL paragraphs. Perhaps this default behavior could be modified before the 2.6 final is released.

[nicka]

This is a personal preference in a way, so we run into the usual stricture about there being no disagreement about matters of taste -- but still, and with no disrespect intended, I hope that the default is left as it is, for fully justified text, and not changed to flush left, ragged right (or 'left justified' as people sometimes say). A look at the body text in almost any professionally printed matter -- book, magazine, leaflet, newspaper -- will turn up fully justified text. This is the default for most text blocks in most types of publication, and it is sensible that Mellel respects this by having it in its default paragraph style. If you want a different look it's easy to change it. Many users never will, and they are best served by having their text look as close as Mellel can get it to how a professional typesetter would.

[Hans-Reinhard Koch]

While writing in mellel i often came back to past parts and add or subtract text, instead of pushing and puling the whole paragraph, it squeezes or pushes the same lines text apart as shown in the picture below, can this auto option be turned off, i want the text to push the whole paragraph

This looks like right justified left-to-right text with the next line starting with an extra-long word. The long spaces will disappear automatically, when you have auto-hyphenation on and I hope there is a hyphenation dictionary availble for the language you need.

I do find it quite annoying that the default justification setting for new paragraph styles is full justification, rather than left justified for LTR paragraphs, and right justified for RTL paragraphs. Perhaps this default behavior could be modified before the 2.6 final is released.

Regarding rpcamerons comment, did I miss something? You can define any odd paragraph style you fancy, define it as your default template in the Prefs. Then every automatically opened new document will have that style.
Regards, Hans-Reinhard

[rpcameron]

I do find it quite annoying that the default justification setting for new paragraph styles is full justification, rather than left justified for LTR paragraphs, and right justified for RTL paragraphs. Perhaps this default behavior could be modified before the 2.6 final is released.

Regarding rpcamerons comment, did I miss something? You can define any odd paragraph style you fancy, define it as your default template in the Prefs. Then every automatically opened new document will have that style.
Regards, Hans-Reinhard

I hadn't even thought of defining a default template, and you are correct that all subsequent new documents will be based upon that template if I so choose. However, the definition of a default template does not modify the behavior of creating new styles in the "Edit Style Sets …" dialog. If you create a new paragraph style while defining a style set, the default alignment for every newly created paragraph style is justified. This is a setting that is defined in Mellel's code, and the default alignment for a newly created paragraph style is not user-modifiable.

(As an experiment, I …:

1. … created a default template
2. … instructed Mellel to use it as the basis for all new documents in the preferences
3. … quit Mellel, to ensure that a new instance with these preferences was running
4. … opened the "Edit Style Sets …" dialog
5. … created a new paragraph style
6. … opened the dialog to modify the newly created paragraph style

What I discovered was that the default alignment for the paragraph in this situation was fully justified. From this experiment, I have concluded that the default alignment for a newly created paragraph is not user-editable, but can be modified at any subsequent time. Not that this is a deal-breaker by any means, just a small annoyance.)

[Ori Redler]

However, the definition of a default template does not modify the behavior of creating new styles in the "Edit Style Sets …" dialog. If you create a new paragraph style while defining a style set, the default alignment for every newly created paragraph style is justified. This is a setting that is defined in Mellel's code, and the default alignment for a newly created paragraph style is not user-modifiable.

Mellel uses the justification setting from the paragraph you use as the base point (e.g., if you choose Create new paragraph style from the Paragraph menu, the style will be based on the style you're currently at in the document). Also, even if you do not have a template as a default, you can set the default paragraph style in the preferences (under Styles).

[rpcameron]

However, the definition of a default template does not modify the behavior of creating new styles in the "Edit Style Sets …" dialog. If you create a new paragraph style while defining a style set, the default alignment for every newly created paragraph style is justified. This is a setting that is defined in Mellel's code, and the default alignment for a newly created paragraph style is not user-modifiable.

Mellel uses the justification setting from the paragraph you use as the base point (e.g., if you choose Create new paragraph style from the Paragraph menu, the style will be based on the style you're currently at in the document). Also, even if you do not have a template as a default, you can set the default paragraph style in the preferences (under Styles).

Thank you for the added information, Ori. Just to make it clear, though, I'm only complaining over a very minor annoyance. This particular annoyance is only present when creating new paragraph styles from the "Edit Style Sets …" dialog. I am aware there are numerous ways to create styles, but with my particular workflow it is easiest to create all my styles for a project at once and from one place. As such, the default for all new paragraph styles when using the "Edit Style Sets …" dialog is fully justified, and this default cannot be changed.

Again, this is only a minor annoyance, but now it has been blown out of proportion because of all of its attention. It's only a minor niggle that is only seen in one situation, and therefore affects very few people.

Also, let me apologize to Oreny for hijacking his thread with this tangent. Sorry!

[Ori Redler]

Again, this is only a minor annoyance, but now it has been blown out of proportion because of all of its attention. It's only a minor niggle that is only seen in one situation, and therefore affects very few people.

Also, let me apologize to Oreny for hijacking his thread with this tangent. Sorry!

My apologies to Oreny as well. This sounds very much like something we ought to address, but the question is: how? It is obvious that when you create a "plain vanilla" style there has to be some attributes set. E.g., if you create a character style in the Style Set dialogue it gets Lucida Grande 12 just because there needs to be something there. In our case (paragraphs) the options are to have the text centred (and this is obviously not what most would want) or aligned to the right (also, not the typical case), to the left (typical case) or fully justified (typical case). Our thought was that as there are some who would like the text to run from left to right, and there are others who would like this to be the other way around, a default with full justification would satisfy both, as the text would run in either direction based on their preference for directionality.

[rpcameron]

Again, this is only a minor annoyance, but now it has been blown out of proportion because of all of its attention. It's only a minor niggle that is only seen in one situation, and therefore affects very few people.

Also, let me apologize to Oreny for hijacking his thread with this tangent. Sorry!

My apologies to Oreny as well. This sounds very much like something we ought to address, but the question is: how? It is obvious that when you create a "plain vanilla" style there has to be some attributes set. E.g., if you create a character style in the Style Set dialogue it gets Lucida Grande 12 just because there needs to be something there. In our case (paragraphs) the options are to have the text centred (and this is obviously not what most would want) or aligned to the right (also, not the typical case), to the left (typical case) or fully justified (typical case). Our thought was that as there are some who would like the text to run from left to right, and there are others who would like this to be the other way around, a default with full justification would satisfy both, as the text would run in either direction based on their preference for directionality.

Hopefully this will be the last post on this topic. Ori, I think your reasoning for defining the defaults is sound, and does indeed cover most users. I will be the first to say that I am not in the majority with this, and as such should just accept it. The only way to alleviate this would be to create a pane in in the preferences for style defaults. However, since that is essentially the same thing as creating Style Sets, it would be redundant and add complexity and unnecessary code. I feel that it ought to be left as is, for the good of Mellel.