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LynxKx
Inspiring
February 24, 2025
Question

Help with asian characters to avoid incorrect line breaking (mojikumi)

  • February 24, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 245 views

does anyone have a script/grep code/or asian dictionary I could import use in InDesign to ensure Asian characters dont break incorrectly within indesign? without using the CJK InDesign version?

2 replies

Joel Cherney
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 25, 2025

Well, mojikumi refers to character spacing for East Asian scripts. Kinsoku is what you're looking for, I think - it prevents certain characters from appearing at the beginning of a line. It's possible to set the composer to the J composer, and to select e.g. the hard kinsoku set with a script, but I can't guess what kind of script you'd need. One to edit all paragraph styles, perhaps? One that only applies the J composer and kinsoku settings to whatever paragraph you've selected? I can't guess. It makes me wonder what you're trying to do, and also why you're trying to do it when it's quite easy to use the East Asian toolset with an English interface

 

 

Community Expert
February 25, 2025

You'd have to test this one as I'm not 100% sure - @Peter Kahrel corrected me on unicode usage recently maybe has more insights here

Grep style and apply a no break character style

[\x{4E00}-\x{9FFF}\x{3040}-\x{309F}\x{30A0}-\x{30FF}]

This is a basic approach. It might not cover all complex line-break rules (especially punctuation and spacing) found in Asian typography, but it could help avoid breaking individual characters.