sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

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rpoulin
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sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by rpoulin »

Hi Everyone,
The last sentence in a paragraph, if it has fewer words than needed to fill the width of the page, will spread the two or three words out so that they fill the width of that line in the page. What can I do to correct this? It looks awful.
Raymond
DylanMuir
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by DylanMuir »

Hi,

This happens for a justified paragraph, only if you use a line break (option+enter?) at the end of the paragraph. If you use a paragraph break (just enter) then the last line will not be spread out.

DRM
macula
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by macula »

I agree that this is an absolutely necessary feature and long overdue. Why on earth should a justified paragraph be expected to have a sparse last line? What sort of aesthetics dictate this absurd behavior (which is not unique to Mellel, unfortunately)?
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by nicka »

Macula, I think you may not have understood what DylanMuir was saying. The point is that this only happens if there is the wrong kind of break at the end of the paragraph. Use a normal paragraph break (which you get by pressing return) and the 'problem' goes away.
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by DylanMuir »

...it would be nice to specify what happens to the last line of a justified paragraph, though. Something like InDesign: justify and align left, justify and align right, justify and centre.

DRM
macula
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by macula »

nicka wrote:Macula, I think you may not have understood what DylanMuir was saying. The point is that this only happens if there is the wrong kind of break at the end of the paragraph. Use a normal paragraph break (which you get by pressing return) and the 'problem' goes away.
I understand this, Nicka. However, since Mellel does not allow special paragraph style settings for the first and last paragraphs in a given style, the only way of emulating such functionality is to separate such paragraphs with line breaks (thus the entire set of paragraphs being, conceptually/technically, a single paragraph). I don't want to digress here on the reasons why settings of this type would be extremely useful (there are other threads on the topic). Suffice it to say that it would make our style definitions less cluttered and ad hoc.

Unfortunately, the problem brought up earlier by the original poster makes even this temporary solution of line breaks unusable.
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by nicka »

I see. Sorry I misunderstood.

My solution to the problem of paragraph spacing above and below the last instance of a paragraph type is to make separate paragraph styles. For example I have 'numbered example' (for standalone numbered examples), plus 'numbered example 1st line', 'numbered example 2nd line' and 'numbered example last line'. I have designed my heading and body text styles so that the issue doesn't arise there, except that I have two body text styles so that I can have non-indented first lines after headings and indented first lines elsewhere.
It's all a bit laborious to set up, but it works beautifully once you have a complete style set.

I'm not sure that the correct way to work around this would be for the Redlers to change the behaviour of line breaks. Better to have a bit of the LaTeX sort of intelligence for grouped paragraphs.
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by macula »

nicka wrote:I'm not sure that the correct way to work around this would be for the Redlers to change the behaviour of line breaks. Better to have a bit of the LaTeX sort of intelligence for grouped paragraphs.
Hmm… This sounds interesting. Could you elaborate on how LaTeX handles such cases? Thank you.
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by nicka »

I don't know much about it, but LaTeX is certainly capable of recognising a series of numbered examples and putting more space above and below the series than between the individual paragraphs in it. It can also format the first body text paragraph after a heading differently from body text paragraphs that follow other body text paragraphs.
The way it works is that there is text input: essentially tagged text, a bit like HTML and a typesetting engine built on a programming language dedicated to typesetting called TeX. The actual formatting is determined by the choice of a style sheet which specifies how the tagged text is to be rendered.
It would be nice to see a bit of this intelligence without all of the complexitiy in a WYSIWYG word processor. Others have mentioned in discussions here the placement of tables and figures as something it might be worth copying from LaTeX; I think that some conditional rules about paragraph spacing and first-line indent might be another.
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by rpcameron »

nicka wrote:[…] I think that some conditional rules about paragraph spacing and first-line indent might be another.
I'm not sure it's necessary to have conditional rules (although those would be welcome), but maybe cascading or nested styles, some akin to InDesigns nested styles in paragraph styles.
— Robert Cameron
macula
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by macula »

I have been drooling over the thought of an "object-oriented" approach to style definition. High-level styles would be abstract, with minimal settings (properties), and lower-level styles would inherit those settings, adding more or perhaps even overriding some settings of their ancestors.

In such terms, "last paragraph" could be a descendant style of "body text", inheriting all its settings but adding extra space at the end.

This would obviously result in less cluttered style sets and would be more sanitary, conceptually.

UPDATE: This is similar (identical?) to rpcameron's suggestion right above.
donb
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by donb »

Surely there has to be a limit to the number of bells and whistles added to a program. The writer has some responsibility for formatting his/her own work. I don't see why Mellel should burden itself with strange ideas of what some writer imagines looks good. If some such thing as this is really wanted, it is simple enough to make a macro that will do it, and there are a lot of macro programs -- some for free, some at a very low cost, some expensive -- that can be used for that purpose.

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rpcameron
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by rpcameron »

I'm in agreement with Don. While I prefer Mellel for writing my texts—regardless of the situation, it is usually my first stop—there must be a limit as to what a "word processor" is expected to do, and when one ought to employ a "page layout" tool. I write papers in Mellel; I do layouts in InDesign.

Asking Mellel to deliver more features than 80% of the user-base would use is unnecessary, and frankly I feel falls out of the range of the program. Mellel is a word processor, meant to put words to paper for texts. It is not a layout tool for generating photo-ready documents for publishing.

Are there features that I wish Mellel had? Of course! But I also know when a word processor is no longer the proper tool and I ought to use something heftier, such as a true layout program.
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macula
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by macula »

rpcameron wrote:I'm in agreement with Don. While I prefer Mellel for writing my texts—regardless of the situation, it is usually my first stop—there must be a limit as to what a "word processor" is expected to do, and when one ought to employ a "page layout" tool.
I disagree. While a word processor cannot be everything to everyone, the idea that "there must be a limit as to what a 'word processor' is expected to do" is just bad as a design principle. Innovation is precisely about thinking across fixed categorical boundaries. That you felt compelled to use quotation marks above reveals indeed that such categories are tentative.

Let us (users) submit our needs and wishes, and let them (developers) decide which ones to incorporate in a product that will be as powerful and usable, without feeling obliged to comply with preexisting categories. The discussion is much more productive if focused on specific features rather than abstract distinctions that are always subject to change anyway. Five years ago, who would have considered today's iPhoto, with all its editing, tagging and face recognition features, to be an entry-level tool for managing a personal photo library?

Besides, I do not see why the "last sentence in a paragraph" feature requested in this thread transgresses the "word processor" category.
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Re: sentence last sentence in a paragraph.

Post by rpcameron »

macula wrote:[…] I do not see why the "last sentence in a paragraph" feature requested in this thread transgresses the "word processor" category.
No, this particular feature (contextual styles based upon how they fit within a larger flow) would be most useful (proper first paragraphs or drop caps come to mind immediately, not to mention better styling for lists). However, the idea as a whole that every "word processor"—which is used to put words to paper—does not need to do proper page layouts. (The quotation marks were used to mark the term word processor for what it is: a tool to process words, not a tool to arrange floating frames of possibly interconnected text and images on a page.)

Cascading or nested styles do definitely fit within the realm of what a word processor could handle. Marginalia, glosses (including more than 2 streams), meta styles that fit between character and paragraph for marking up text in regards to language or other semantic issues, more than only secondary scripts for a style, proper table styles and support for tables spanning multiple pages, &c; those are all the types of things that would fall within the realm of a "word processor" (and incidentally are all features that I would find incredibly useful, too).

However, floating text frames that might be linked to two other frames and have a cross-referenced entry in the table of contents, full PDF export including a full listing of Pantone colors, page setups including bleeds, slugs and crops marks … those are features that belong within a page layout tool.

(*Edit: While I would find marginalia very useful, and is a oft-requested feature, after reading my post I feel that marginalia fits better within the construct of a layout tool. Would I love to see it as a note stream option, yes! Should that have higher priority over proper better handling of multiple scripts, or even proper Devanagari support, no!)
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