Case where Adobe Paragraph Composer interferes with spans and table

[m1b]

Hi all, I'm planning to post a bug report on uservoice, but I was hoping I could get a few people to test my demo document and see if they see the same bug.

To test:

1. open my attached .indd

2. place your insertion point cursor in the paragraph colored magenta.

3. type a character (what happens? for me the spanning breaks dramatically—see graphic below)

4. type another character (what happens? for me it goes back to normal

5. keep typing (for me it jumps back and forth)

I have noticed that if I change the magenta paragraph from using Adobe Paragraph Composer to Adobe Single-line Composer, the problem goes away. But it took me a while to troubleshoot it, so it would be nice to fix it.

Anyway, if you have time, please let me know your results, and which version of Indesign and OS you are running. I will link to this post in the bug report so Adobe can read your results too. Thanks.

- Mark

[m1b]

I have reported the bug. Please vote on it, if you can.

- Mark

[m1b]

I was hoping at least one person could confirm that it isn't just on my system! 🙂

If anyone had a chance could you please open my demo document and see if you get the same result I got, shown in the gif above? Only 5 steps to test!

@Peter Kahrel @rob day @Marc Autret @Eugene Tyson  @Mike Witherell 

[Eugene Tyson]

Hey hey - didn't even see this post!

Another peculiarity is that with Balance Columns turned on - the Paragraph Composer works fine. No need to switch to Single Line Composer. 

I suspect it's trying to adjust the paragraphs while you're typing - but the single line composer doesn't adjust the paragraphs as you type. 

And if you Balance Columns it is somehow working it out for best fit or something. 

I made some notes years ago about how the Composer works - maybe it makes more sense to you than it does to me - I think I got it from InDesign Secrets many many many years ago -or it could have been the InDesign Bible or Adobe CS InDesign by David Blatner

Adobe Single-Line Composer.
In the past, programs like QuarkXPress and PageMaker have used single-line composition methods to flow text. This method marched line by line through a paragraph and sets each line as well as possible using the applied hyphenation and justification settings. The effect of modifying the spacing of one line on the lines above and below is not considered in single-line composition.

If adjusting the space within a line causes poor spacing on the next line, tough luck. When you use Adobe Single-Line Composer, the following rules apply:

• Adjusting word spacing is preferred over hyphenation.
• Hyphenation is preferred over glyph spacing.
• If spacing must be adjusted, removing space is preferred over adding space.

Adobe Paragraph Composer
InDesigns Adobe Paragraph Composer (called the Multi-Line Composer in previous versions) is selected by default. It takes a broader approach to composition by looking at the entire paragraph at once. If a poorly spaced line can be fixed by adjusting the spacing of a previous line, the Paragraph Composer reflows the previous line. The Paragraph Composer is governed by the following principles:

• The evenness of letter spacing and word spacing is the highest priority. The desirability of possible breakpoints is determined by how much they cause word and letter spacing to vary from the Desired settings.
• Uneven spacing is preferred to hyphenation. A breakpoint that does not require hyphenation is preferred over one that does.
• All possible breakpoints are ranked, and good breakpoints are preferred over bad ones.

The paragraph composer is more sophisticated than the single-line option, offering generally better overall spacing because it sacrifices optimal spacing a bit on one line to prevent really bad spacing on another, something the single-line method does not do.

However, there is one frustration in dealing with the paragraph composer: When you try to edit text or play with tracking to get rid of an orphan or widow, the paragraph composer keeps adjusting the text across several lines, often counteracting your nips and tucks. The single-line composer doesn't do that.

[Peter Kahrel]

This goes back at least to CS6. A bug was posted back then. No idea what happened to it.

[m1b]

Thank you all for testing! 🙂 So I know that it isn't a problem local to my system.

@Eugene Tyson that is good information! My usual (naive?) approach is (a) I use Adobe Paragraph Composer until it gives a bad result (often!), and then (b) I switch to Adobe Single-line Composer just for that paragraph and do my best to fix it.

@Peter Kahrel thanks, that doesn't surprise me but I tried to find an existing bug report and nothing appeared in uservoice that I could find.

@Mike Witherell thanks for your comments... the demo document might be a little messy, as it was copy/pasted out part way during the cleaning up of someone else's document, but I had the paragraph styles working the way I wanted. This bug—now confirmed—appeared during a real use case and it was weird because it was easy to fix—just change almost anything: add a character, remove a character, change the table width, and the whole thing would go back to normal... only to fail again when another change triggered it again. And I couldn't find any reported instance of this issue, so I felt the need to post something here, even though I had found a workaround.

> But when would I validly do that? Override Paragraph Composer with Single Line Composer? I wouldn't do so, normally, would I?

Oh dear! This is literally what I *normally* do! See my comment to Eugene above. Is there a better way to fix a bad composition caused by Adobe Paragraph Composer?

However in the case of my demo document, it is ikely that I was fiddling around before I realised some of the parameters of the presumed-bug. But when I "Clear Overrides" on all text in the demo document, the bug is still evident.

> But if I edit the paragraph style Body to use Single-Line Composer, it functions correctly.

Yes! that is the workaround that I used. But I only needed to change the last paragraph before the span (the magenta paragraph).

> Interestingly, I notice the Heading and the Table Caption are set to Span; but the table styles are not set to span

Not too interesting... I set the Heading and Table Caption to span because they are in the text frame that has 2 columns, but the table styles—meaning the paragraph styles used for the table cells' text—don't spam because a cell doesn't have columns. As an experiment I set the table cell paragraph styles to span, but it didn't change anything, which makes sense.

I appreciate you all looking into it and confirming the bug. Thank you again!

- Mark

[Mike Witherell]

I'm not sure I'm understanding the matter, but I noticed that Body in your example document is a paragraph style defined as Paragraph Composer; yet, overridden to Single-Line Composer. When I type a single additional character, the whole rest of the text disappears, as if a bug. 

But when would I validly do that? Override Paragraph Composer with Single Line Composer? I wouldn't do so, normally, would I?

But if I edit the paragraph style Body to use Single-Line Composer, it functions correctly. 

If I again set it to Paragraph Composer, it has the disappearing problem.

But if I set Keep Options to 2+2, the problem goes away again, for either Single-Line or Paragraph.

Interestingly, I notice the Heading and the Table Caption are set to Span; but the table styles are not set to span.

(For the sake of my testing, I began with the Reset to Base button on Body Paragraph Style, and setup just a few essential attributes.)

Another test: I opened your sample document, selected the textframe, and copynpasted it into a new fresh document. When I tried backspacing the text in the same line you specified, all the rest of the text went into overset. But if I backspaced a second time, third time, fourth time, etc., the rest of the page went overset and did not come back from overset. That outcome was different from the off-with-one-backspace, on-again-with-the-second-backspace.

Not sure if my observations help the discussion!