# Text Spacing
Spacing Word Basic=100
Spacing Word Squash=95
Spacing Word Stretch=120
Spacing Letter Basic=0
Spacing Letter Squash=-5
Spacing Letter Stretch=5
Kern=Optical

These are some setting to feed to InDesign. Is there any control available within Prince for the justification algorithm?

I realize we can add our own tracking within Prince. Just want to know if the variables for justification are exposed to the user.

Jim Albright
Wycliffe Bible Translators

Not yet, no.

After some more research it looks like what I want is proposed in CSS3 as <spacing-limit>

so it could be
word-spacing 100 95 120
letter-spacing 100 95 105


I don't know if I am applying the percentage value correctly.

Jim Albright
Wycliffe Bible Translators

Right, something like that would make sense; we may add this in a future release.

This one would be quite valuable to us. We typeset high-end trade books using Prince, and oftentimes proofreaders ask us to break a word in a different place. I have a little text file where the word "waiflike" breaks as wai-flike. Editing the hyphenation dictionary or adding a discretionary hyphen to the word causes the whole word to move to the next line, as we've hit some limit on how much Prince is willing to word- or letter-space in order to justify text.

The CSS Text Module Level 3 allows minimum, optimum, and maximum values for word and letter spacing, much as InDesign and Quark do now. This would help us have a little more control over line-breaking and justification.

—Dave Cramer, Hachette Book Group

Dave,

I've learned patience with Prince. The possible takes a few days to do. The impossible takes a few months or years.

Jim Albright
Wycliffe Bible Translators

Jim, you're too kind!

But yes, we do hope to get there in the end, and we'll keep working on it till we do.

Hello,

that would really be awesome if implemented. With increasing quality, the demands of our customers are increasing as well. Two years ago I wouldn't have cared about settings like these, but now they would come in handy.

Is this on the roadmap?

Greetings,
John

I'm making good progress typesetting Psalms-Proverbs for the Kuna people of Panama. I sent the PDF to the printer last week. It will be printed on waterproof paper. I have added an interactive way of adding a half line space. That was really needed in order to do Psalms. I also adjust the tracking interactively to help page fit. Psalms are especially hard to typeset but everyone is pleased with the final result. Thank you for your great tool. I didn't use justification at all on this text as that was not requested but I know future texts will require it.

I should have thought to add a colophon giving Prince credit. I will see about that on my next project.

Jim Albright
Wycliffe Bible Translators

Hi, Is there any feature updates regarding the justification limits. Thank you.