Soft return ?

[Steve Fairbairn]

Is there any such thing as a "soft return" in ID? I need a line break without creating a new paragraph but can't find "soft return" in any of the menus. What's the trick?

[Steve Fairbairn]

Yep, I'll drink to that :-)

[Guest]

> I hope I am clear on explaining some of these uses.

Clear enough but all bad. I'm adding to jongware's comments.

Paragraph spacing should be controlled with paragraph spacing and a new style. Rag is much better controlled with No Break, and even that should be used with discretion. Hyphenation should be controlled with H&J and discretionary hyphens. If text is to be indented, use an indent. And there is absolutely no reason for a soft return after the first line of a bulleted paragraph.

I'm with the Captain, I never (hardly) use soft returns. If I were asked for legitimate uses one would would be to give a contextual break to a headline. Another would be to break lines in an address - sometimes.

[The Artworker]

No Break can be just as bad as a soft return in certain situations. At least with a soft return with invisibles on you can see what is going on when text flow isn't behaving as it should. No Break doesn't show up you can waste several minutes trying to work out why text doesn't appear to be flowing properly because subsequent edits to the copy have made existing No Breaks wrong.

[Guest]

> No Break can be just as bad as a soft return in certain situations.

That would have to be a rather singular situation and/or the result of rather indiscriminate use of No Break.

Many No Breaks, even to shape a rag, are applied to words that could logically stay together under any situation. Generally the worst they can do is make the rag as bad as it was before they were used in the first place and they have to be at the end a line to do even that. Soft returns on the other hand will always cause problems when they come anywhere in the text other than at the end of the line where they were put: they are much more disruptive and several in a row can throw a whole layout out of whack.

Bottom line even if No Break could be a problem in 1 out of 100 times that would make it 1% as bad as using soft returns.

[MT.Freelance]

Non Breaking Space does show up with hidden characters visible.

It is not a character attribute that can be inherited by accident (which can result in overset text if a whole paragraph acquires the attribute, for instance) as with the no-break character attribute.

Now, if only there was a Discretionary Non-Breaking Space setting that would apply a non-breaking space before the last word of a paragraph. I wonder if a GREP style would cover that?

-mt

[Harbs.]

Michael_Trout@adobeforums.com wrote:
> I wonder if a GREP style would cover that?
>

Yes:

"\s\S+\s?$"

(or "\S+\s\S+\s?$" depending on what you want...)

--
Harbs
http://www.in-tools.com

[MT.Freelance]

Thanks Harbs.

That is all parseltongue to me as I am a total neophyte when it comes to GREP. I've only recently opened the door to what is CS4 at home (being on ID2 prior to that). Although it was ordered at work, it has not yet arrived, so I remain on CS2.

BUT, I will plug it in and give it a go.

What is the difference in the syntax used?

Or, perhaps more importantly, what is a good printed or online resource for all things GREP?

[Guest]

I think I prefer the character attribute though the difference may be nominal. It seems a bit easier to apply because your selection can include part of the word, and it is easier to get rid of: simply click Clear Overrides. Granted this is only safe if you're in the (good) habit of using character styles instead of local formatting.

Having a paragraph style that applies No Break could be disconcerting but doesn't seem that likely. Though I should add that I have found occasion to use just such paragraph styles (it has to do with using an Align To Character tab within one character width of the right margin) and that has given me some headaches when I was careless with Based On.

> That is all parseltongue to me

For me as well and that's been keeping me from trying to learn it. There is book by Peter Kahrel that has been recommended in this forum.

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596156008/?CMP=AFC-ak_book&ATT=GREP+in+InDesign+CS3%2FCS4

[_Olav_Kvern_]

Frozen Tundra wrote: "I always appreciate an obscure reference."

Wait..."H.M.S. Pinafore" is obscure...? It's basic cultural knowledge, like knowing how to pronounce "pwn3d" or "Fifty Cent".

If W.S. Gilbert, the greatest writer of comic verse in English, is "obscure," then what in the world has become of us?:-)

Thanks,

Ole

[Jongware]

>..basic cultural knowledge..

"Parseltongue" seems to be added to basic vocabulary.

Oh -- and my introduction to "Pinafore" was, in fact, through "Star Trek -- Insurrection". But it roused my curiosity enough to delve a bit deeper.

[Michael_Gianino]

Why didn't you just learn it like the rest of usfrom Sideshow Bob?

[claidheamdanns]

Grep is total awesomeness. It can be used to take much of the tedium out of typesetting, and allow the designer to concentrate more on the design. When making templates, it also makes the templates more fool-proof for the person who will actually be putting the templates to use.

That being said, I would have to totally disagree with those who think that soft returns are evil. Soft returns are a very powerful typesetting tool, and while yes, they can be used for evil by those who don't understand how they are properly used, they are not evil in and of themselves.

One of the most basic legitimate uses of a soft return is when your editor wants to change the wrap of a paragraph. A soft return is the most logical way to do this, without picking up the before/after space of the paragraph style, while still honoring the keep rules in the paragraph style.

[BobLevine]

Not correct if you have the paragraph composer in use. A soft return could easily rewrap the entire paragraph and make it look like crap.

Bob

[claidheamdanns]

Oh, and I don't use paragraph composer when I have an editor involved, for the exact reason mentioned by Bob, but when there is no editor involved it is my preference to use paragraph composer and let it wrap naturally. I think it does a pretty good job.

[Joel Cherney]

One of the most basic legitimate uses of a soft return is when your editor wants to change the wrap of a paragraph. A soft return is the most logical way to do this, without picking up the before/after space of the paragraph style, while still honoring the keep rules in the paragraph style.

I wonder if this is actually the most logical way, as you claim, or if it's a matter of preference. I'd assume that nonbreaking spaces and the No Break attribute would be superior ways to affect the wrap of a paragraph, but I deliberately say "superior" instead of "most logical." In my case, No Break is the best, because both the nonbreaking space and the soft return would interfere with my translation memory tool. However, sometimes I use the NBSP and the soft return anyways, because it's the least-bad solution in a given circumstance.

So, if "logical" == "least bad" then I might be willing to agree. However, different people obviously have different ideas of what is "most logical."

[Peter Spier]

I'm with Jongware on this. The biggest problem with using a forced linebreak anywhere except where you ALWAYS want a line break is that any number of things -- adding or deleting a word or correcting a typo, changing the column width, for example -- can leave you with a line that breaks at the beginning instead of the end. Non-breaking spaces and No Break are less likely to cause this kind of trouble.

[Jongware]

Well put.

The soft line break inserts a new line as sure as a paragraph break (regular Hard Return) does. You wouldn't want to insert hard returns and change justification to "Full, all lines", just to avoid a single badly broken word -- even when the result looks the same as with a soft line break!

It's sort of the same as using a tab instead of a single space, somewhere in the middle of a running paragraph. Sure, it might work for that one occurrence, entirely indistinguishable from a "regular" space, but as soon as the text reflows due to editing, the tab will jump out in a most inconvenient way.

[claidheamdanns]

A non-breaking space or changing to non-breaking would do the same thing, if there was change in the paragraph content. So, at this point I think it is just a matter of preference. Personally, I would prefer to just let InDesign do it's thing. But editors always want to tweak something, even if it's not the same way that they tweaked the exact same paragraph last time.

[Peter Spier]

claidheamdanns wrote:

A non-breaking space or changing to non-breaking would do the same thing, if there was change in the paragraph content.

Not necessarily. A forced line break will ALWAYS break the line at that point. A non-breaking space will simply prefnt the line from breaking at that point. This means that if the line break were to be forced to the beginning of the next line due to an edit you'll get a near-empty line in the middle of your paragraph. With the non-breaking space the following text will simply follow naturally and the line will break further along.

[claidheamdanns]

Yes, but what we are talking about here is where an editor wants to push a word to the next line. So, apart from using a soft return, your method would be to group that word together with the following word, via no break in the the paragraph/character or via a non-breaking space character.

So then, if a word was taken out of the paragraph somewhere before that, we could conceivably still be left with a nasty-looking break in the text.

An additional issue with using the non-breaking function is that it causes an override in the style, which is not desirable.

I do use non-breaking styles in GREP, for instance, to make sure that the a.m. does not get separated from a time, or to keep web addresses from breaking. But since these are written into GREP, they do not cause an override in the style.

[Peter Spier]

It's not the problem of the editor pushing the first word to the next line, it's when he or she comes back and makes a second change. At best a non-breaking space will simply disappear visually (and it is NOT a style override, by the way, just another character as is the forced break, as opposed to No Break -- but the desirability or lack thereof of having the occasional override is another discussion) and at worst it will screw up the line like the forced break.

You can do what you want, but I prefer the odds with the non-breaking space.

[Joel Cherney]

You can do what you want, but I prefer the odds with the non-breaking space.

Indeed - the chances that it will appear in the middle of a line and not unduly alter the composition of the paragraph are much better than the odds that a soft return will, after a second edit, just happen to fall on the end of a line. It depends on a wide variety of factors, of course, but I'm in general quite pleased that I have so many ways to affect text composition. I use 'em all. Using only soft returns is something like using only tracking - you starve yourself of options, and the elegance of your layouts can suffer as a result. It doesn't necessarily suffer, of course, but the chances are good.

[claidheamdanns]

Peter, I may not have worded it accurately, but that's exactly what I was talking about. And yes, I meant the No Break function was a style override, not the non-breaking space.

I definitely not opposed to using new methods. I've tested out your method, and I can see where your non-breaking space has merit if only a single word is being pushed, but quite often it is 2 or three trailing words on the end of a line or a cascade within the paragraph.

Here's a good example for the soft return:

Tasting Times:  11 am – 5 pm, Monday – Friday; 11 am – 6 pm,

Saturday – Sunday

I have been asked to push 11 am – 6 pm down to the next line. This would require 4 separate non-breaking spaces, or I could just use on soft return. I tried it both ways.

[Jongware]

Claidh, I actually use the "No Break is an override" part to restore any messed-with paragraph to its "normal" state ...

I don't care what I did to a particular paragraph, or why, but I just may want all of its custom tracking and tweaking be gone because. Typically, if there were some pretty major editings in the text, this'd make all earlier tinkering obsolete, and possibly even harmful.

Your manually applied Soft Returns would stay behind ...

[Gavin Anderson]

Not sure why I didn't notice this before, but Jong actually used the proper abbreviation for my Scots Gaelic SN. Hats off to you. I'm impressed!