InDesign for QuarkXPress Users [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Single-line vs. Paragraph Composers

Single-line composerslike the ones in QuarkXPress and Adobe PageMakeronly sets one line of type at a time, ignoring the lines above and below it. The result of this process is that, while many lines may look fine, some lines in a parargraph will be looser or tighter, giving an overall unevenness to the "color" of justified type.

InDesign includes a single-line composer, too, but it also has a "paragraph composer" which almost always sets better-looking type.

Paragraph Composition

A paragraph composer has a more complex job: While it uses the same rules for hyphenation and justification as the single-line composer (based on the Hyphenation and Justification dialog boxes; see Chapter 48), it looks through all the words of the paragraph in deciding how lines should end. It evaluates a complex network of choicessometimes looking backwardand moves words up and down between lines until the best overall appearance is reached (see Figure 46-1). You can see this process when typing in InDesign. As you type, words you already have typed are shifted up and down, or hyphenated.

Most of the time, you'll probably want to compose your type using the Adobe Paragraph Composer, which is InDesign's default choice. Occasionally, you may want to try the single-line composer. For example, type set with the single-line composer usually takes up slightly more space, so you might want to choose this to match the copyfitting of a legacy document. You can choose among the two composers in the Paragraph palette's flyout menu, or when creating a paragraph style.