AI line breaking optimization for InDesign

[ezoli]

There are many exciting AI tools from Adobe, but sometimes it would be nice if AI would simply simplify the less exciting work steps a little. e.g. the options to have the line breaking optimization implemented directly with AI via the paragraph formats and to control how strongly this is implemented. Or integrate an option for the GREP styles where we could control the microtypographical adjustments as required by simply entering text instead of defining these settings with code.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I'm sure one day ID will be reduced to one button that says "Complete this project for me." 🙂

Until then, what you're talking about is mostly esthetic choices that are adjusted if the generic settings and fairly "intelligent" algorithms for adjusting type aren't quite to your liking. AI would just use a different set of guesses about how the text should appear. But, I suppose, it would do so without all those tedious numbers and judgment.

[ezoli]

Yes, but we also have design programs for precisely these “aesthetic decisions”. Or have I misunderstood you? I would simply prefer practical AI solutions in the existing programs rather than bloated new AI products or image optimizations that work more poorly than well. Rag refinement doesn't seem to me to be simply an aesthetic choice, you don't do the optical equalization of a shape in the font design because you personaly think you like it better this way.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Nearly all text/layout apps of the last two decades (including Word) have had highly optimized typographic adjustment based on many factors, including font kerning and spacing information. It is AI of a limited sort, applying a variety of factors to get character and word spacing, line break, hyphenation etc. to some optimum overall result. Most have layers of menus to adjust these parameters when the generic model isn't good enough.

Other than fairly specialized projects (such as ones with scientific and technical language where the much greater average word length and possible lack of coded hyphenation skew the results) or for relatively small amounts of text in "arty" uses, I don't think I've tweaked any typography settings on a project in many years. I don't find making a few tweaks to a line's spacing or breaks to be some onerous task outside of what I should be doing as a designer.

So, what is it you want, and why does the magical new ingredient of AI need to be any part of it?

[ezoli]

Thank you for your detailed response!

I don’t want AI as a magical new ingredient. The new AI taskbar feels like pure gimmickry to me, and I’ve never been able to use it successfully for a professional product.

However, I could see AI being very useful for tasks that some people shy away from or dismiss as “arty,” even though they can have a significant impact on the overall design. Precisely because AI works contextually, I can imagine it excelling at tasks like rag refinement.

I don’t doubt that the existing highly optimized automations are absolutely brilliant.

Perhaps the misunderstanding lies in the fact that I personally don’t classify these tweaks as “arty,” but rather as normal (and everyday) design optimizations—tasks I do regularly, while others hardly do them at all. But that’s exactly where AI could be advantageous for everyone who dismisses these tweaks as “arty”: it could lead to better results, and it wouldn’t harm anyone in the process. 

Do you find this completely over the top, or is it simply not a topic in your daily work? Or do you think the subject of AI in the design field is inappropriate altogether?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I'm not quite sure we're discussing the same thing here. 🙂

The typographical programming that manages line-length and -break details is well-honed and follows fairly simple, widely approved rules. Every aspect of this process can be tweaked or changed if the designer doesn't like the generic result.

Almost any change, though, is due to judgment/esthetic reasons, not technical ones. So if you think a 'higher power' here to apply that judgment and esthetic tweaks is a good thing, you'd hardly be in a minority these days. Myself, I see no need for changes this this feature set. It does what I want — and I am a fairly picky, old-school craftsman about typography — about 99.9% of the time, and I have to tweak its results only in specific or difficult layouts. I see that as part of the job — applying my esthetic judgment, not turning a dial on an automated solution.

My thoughts about AI are irrelevant because we've already drowned in it and the tide just keeps getting higher. I don't, however, have much patience or respect for the largely novice/low experience tier of designers who can't wait for everything to be automated and eliminate much if any need for their development of advanced skills or genuine esthetic judgment.

A maxim I find myself repeating at increasingly frequent intervals is the tool is not the task. While that usually applies to hiring situations where the manager or recruiter simply can't think past "4 years experience with [insert specific, often oddball design tool here]" it also applies to those who see this kind of work as being more a matter of learning what buttons to press, and wishing that it were fewer of them, than learning the overarching skill and how those buttons enable it.

So again, if you think the ideal solution is AI-level critique/judgment/artistic vision instead of learning those buttons as enablers of your own... well, I doubt you'll have to wait long in this era.

[ezoli]

Thank you very much for your feedback – very nicely phrased! 😄

I agree with most of your points and share a very similar opinion. Perhaps the rag refinement in your language works much better than in mine, which forces me to adjust it manually more often (I’m not sure). I do think this is one of the tasks where I would welcome AI support (unlike many others). Having AI take over rag refinement doesn’t mean that you lose the ability to influence or make design decisions (e.g., determining how much line adjustment is acceptable or deciding to what extent compromises between text and visual appearance should or shouldn’t be made).

You’re absolutely right that the tool is not the task. But that applies not only to AI, it applies to every tool that supports you in your work. And just because such a tool exists doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn it and use it consciously.

Did I understand you correctly?

[ezoli]

To avoid misunderstandings: I am primarily referring to rag refinement in the context of ragged text, rather than justified text.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I follow. But ragged right depends almost entirely on the 'break over' margin that determines if the app will try to fit a word there, and the sophistication of the hyphenation that will both create wordlets of a desirable length and look ahead/back to prevent stacks of hyphens.

Nearly all of the other line spacing settings apply more to justified text. In my experience, the refined defaults in most apps do a good job with this unless you're working with a nonstandard vocabulary that has many long, hard-to-break words.

There's always room for improvement in the fine details of typography, which is why it's an art. My obvious preference is that designers should learn the art rather than rely on canned intelligence to apply it for them. 🙂

[ezoli]

OK, we are on the same page, and I completely agree. It is definitely helpful to thoroughly learn these skills, and having a connection to typesetting (even from the era of lead typesetting) can be beneficial. In general, I personally find manual techniques both educational and valuable.

But InDesign is not exactly a didactic learning tool. Or would you say that the influence of these programs is so significant that the educational aspect shouldn’t be ignored?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Well, that's two completely different things. Again — the tool is not the task. Mastery of the app, or not, has little to do with mastery of the applications of the, er, app.

You don't necessarily need to be a master of every one of ID's features to use it well for a selected range of tasks... but neither does complete, trainer-level mastery of every element mean you're necessarily any good at using the tool to its best ends.

Think of it this way: there are millions of people who are absolute masters of MS Word, who have learned every side feature and may even train people for a living. But only a vanishingly small percentage of them are bestselling authors. And, I know from experience, some of the most brilliant and insightful authors around barely have Word skills past typewriting.

The two are endlessly confused, and moreso by the end of the spectrum that prides itself on perfect mastery of every app menu. But in the end, these tools don't exist in their own continuum; they exist to enable creative endeavors. I rank the latter skills and abilities higher than the former.

(I won't tell any of the maddening stories I have about employers who can look at an astonishing body of work... and then pass on that candidate because the next one has two full years experience with, say, MadCap Flare. It's a verity, and annoying whether you're a candidate or a hiring consultant.)

[ezoli]

@James, thank you so much. Ideologically, I agree with you, but I draw different conclusions when it comes to using InDesign. For example, the fine-tuning tool for the justified text is also just a helper that saves me from having to adjust every single line manually. Fundamentally, nothing prevents you from manually adjusting every line in justified text, but InDesign provides a practical tool for automatic improvement.

I see similar potential for ragged text – it doesn’t have to be a solution that eliminates the need for thought altogether. Or would you also prefer to do without the fine-tuning tool for the justified text?

[Joel Cherney]

vocabulary that has many long, hard-to-break words.

So, @ezoli, in what language are you getting a bad rag that requires lots of manual line-riding? Russian? Finnish? Armenian? Somali? What language with long hard-to-break words is it? Because I'd absolutely agree, the rag that the Adobe Paragraph Composer produces with default settings in many non-English languages is... not as good as one would hope. But I find myself basically in agreement with James' comments above regarding judgment and aesthetic tweaks, even in languages where riding the lines can be a struggle, such as Russian or Somali. 

I am not certain that the InDesign devs would even be be able to deploy current gen AI in the service of improving the default-settings rag, but like you, I'd far rather see them trying to do that than trying to implement new AI expand-this-picture features, or whatever the flavor of the month happens to be. That being said, I'd personally be rather more in favor of devoting that dev effort to anything at all that was not related to AI. 

[ezoli]

Hey Joel, thank you so much for engaging with this topic. I hope I’m not causing you and james unnecessary effort or frustration! Fundamentally, the existing technology isn’t wrong. I mostly work in German, so I don’t have issues with long, hard-to-break words. But I’ve never set a ragged text without having to manually adjust the rhythm (balancing long and short lines). Of course, I understand that not everyone pays attention to details like this or even focuses on it at all. But when I think about what AI is capable of and how it’s currently being used by Adobe, I’d much prefer if they focused on such “helpers” rather than features that bring no value to my daily work. Even people who don’t prioritize this kind of focus could benefit from such a “helper.” Or do you see this completely differently?

Regarding your last paragraph: You’re right; they could definitely improve many other things before even starting with AI. But they’ve already started with it …

[HD Schellnack]

I'm with you here. I think that typography always needs a bit of manual work, kerning, word spaces and hyphenation and even with tricky settings do not always work automatically, but an AI-optimized setting engine could work nicely here for rhythm, reader-friendly hyphenation and so on. The same could be said for AI as a GREP-helper/replacement, smartly changing quotation marks and dashes etc, maybe stuff like adding a M724 before and after marks, helping with indexing, structured documents, personalized stuff, corrections and so on. I do much of this with text in GPT, turning client-delivered chaos into a clean text with the right dashes and marks etc. Theres a lot of «smart» ID could use, and none of it has to do with image generation, this is something I'd always do and prefer in PS. PS, on the other hand, could do with opening up to other non-Firefly models such as Flux etc.  And of course, so much non-AI stuff that ID (and Illustrator) could do. I still think this programm could do so much more than «just» print (and it could do print better, of course) and it is a bit of a shame to work with so much worse other software to get digital media done, where there is zero typographic control. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@HD Schellnack

AI is just an algorithm - so it will never do it better than a human.

And an algorithm can be implemented without using AI. 

[HD Schellnack]

Well, «AI»/LLM is not AGI (and AGI will not be an algo anymore, if and when it emerges), and what we call AI these days is in some ways already baffling at what it does well, even in its proto-state, and I've never seen a technology with such a hyper-wide, fast acceptance. The thing is not if it is «better», which is super-subjective anyways, but if it faster, cheaper, more efficient and «good enough» or even better than previous automated processes. And it is. Enough for it being the next step in society-wide automatization/rationalisation measures.

The way these tools currently work, they are at the same time amazing and frustrating and they all do not work magically as stand-alone solutions, a GPT-text is never useable as generated, images need work with prompts, loras and in PS afterwards.

But I think ezoli is right that IF you opt for LLM-based tools in Indesign, it would be nice if they weren't shoehorned-in PS-stuff but really a thought- and useful addition to what ID actually does. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@HD Schellnack

To which post are you replying? 

[ezoli]

@HD Schellnack, thank you for your contribution, I completely agree.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

To avoid misunderstandings: I am primarily referring to rag refinement in the context of ragged text, rather than justified text.

By @ezoli

How do you refine your text?

[ezoli]

@robert, thank you for writing! When balancing ragged text, I work with targeted hyphenation and very subtle adjustments to the tracking of individual lines. Using InDesign’s automatic ragged text settings, even with the integrated balance ragged lines feature and extremely lenient hyphenation settings, I don’t achieve optimal results. I’m sending a screenshot showing the ragged text with automatic balancing on the left side and manual balancing on the right side. The text is a simple paragraph within a magazine.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@ezoli

So, in the essence, you drop some "unnecessary" hyphenations and expand some lines - so the right side will look better?

I won't say that it can be 100% automated - but with my ID-Tasker tool - the % can be quite high - based on the thresholds you would set.

Then fine tuning - you could load whole text - as lines - then jump between them and expand or contract them using just keyboard - and cancel hyphenations. 

Two conditions - it's not free and PC only - otherwise, I can guarantee that it will save you a ton of time. 

Some basic functionality can be even achieved with the free version. 

[ezoli]

@robert, no, I usually address hyphenation improvements in the same pass. So, better hyphenation, better rhythm, and various micro-typography adjustments. Your tool sounds very interesting, of course, but apart from the fact that I don’t work with Windows, wouldn’t I still need to adjust each line manually, or am I misunderstanding you? I could imagine that this process could be simplified with LLMs, and I would find it desirable if there were an integrated solution for this. I don’t find the current LLM integrations for InDesign very helpful in daily use, and I also don’t understand how they are supposed to cater to professional users. But a really good tool for balancing ragged text would be a valuable addition and would (further?) set ID apart from the competition.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@ezoli 

Proof of concept:

I've done adding / removal of Discretionary Hyphens - to remove hyphenations - but as my tool keeps references to original text - I need to add "refresh" of the currently edit part of text as after Discretionary Hyphen is inserted - wrong parts of the texts are then selected.