Forum / Jurgen, Carson...

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    Dolemite
    Jun 18, 02:37am

    How's that restoration of the ability to post work in justified lay-out coming along?

  • 0001_pabst_blue_ribbon_time.thumb
    Dolemite
    Jun 27, 05:20am

    *ring!…ring!*

    "Hel-looooooo?

    Hey, there, Jurgen, s'up? Ahhhhh, so you guys *are* working on it! I was beginning to wonder, there, buddy! That's good! Good to hear it! Day and night, eh? No need to kill yourselves over this, now... believe me, I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to do it either. I mean, what DO all those other sites DO, have some little gremlin crawl up in there, count the unused spaces in a line, whip out a slide-rule, divide it up and space every letter out so it works perfectly each and every time and just like that?

    Yeah, I know... that couldn't be it... BUT WHAT COULD IT BE?! Eternal mystery, eh? ...Ha! Well, it just might be exactly that... black hole of the techno world… untouched by human hands...

    Oh, come on now, don't be embarrassed, that's just silly. Who cares if there ARE 17,384 online magazines, blogs, poultry... processing-plant newsletters and granny recipe-exhange clubs that have somehow figured it out? Like my daddy said that one time we went to visit him: "You are only responsible for yourself, so screw the other guy, and get his cigarettes if you can."

    Well, no, you're right, I can see how that doesn't really apply here... at all...but... how about that old writer-guy, then, that wild man…something about 'comparisons are owed to us'? Odious?! Come on, now, it's not *that* bad, for some ol' school quote…OH! Odious! ODIOUS! Comparisons are odious! Man, I've been hearing that wrong for years! huh... yeah, weird... yeah, it does happen… Well, huh... anyway... yeah... yeah........... yeah... that's right... that's right... yeah, sometimes it DOES be that way.

    Okay, back to the grindstone then. Look, seriously, don't wear yourself out on this thing. It's really not that important, it'd just be nice, you know... it's not all that... wait a minute... that reminds me! I have an old electric typewriter that somehow manages to do it. If you want I could send it to you... Maybe bust it open, have a look inside. Hey! Ya never know! YA... NE... VUH... KNOW! It might just be some kind of wire-thing you need to hook up, or some kind of lever you could push or twist... tweak... No...? Well, you're prolly right.

    Alright... yeah... Well, hey, thanks for calling. You too. buh-bye..."

  • Apc_logo_02.thumb
    MichaelDickes
    Jun 27, 10:50am

    Hug?

  • Yankee.thumb
    Carson Baker
    Jun 28, 07:42pm

    Hey Matt,

    I'm sorry we don't have this built. I really would like to offer justified text, but it's just not that easy. Yes, I know InDesign can do it. I know Word can do it. And I know some typewriters can do it (poorly).

    The problem is actually that web browsers don't do a good job of it, and it's the reason why almost every news site in existence doesn't post their articles with justified text even though that's how they appear in print.

    I've actually put some thought into this feature. I first considered finding and replacing hyphens in submitted stories with soft hyphenation so that justification could wrap more easily and making justification a style option in the rich text editor (perhaps I will still do this). But this takes time and there are a lot of other things that take time too.

    Part of the problem with building software is that not everybody uses it in the same way. In order to contain the complexity of the software, I have to be opinionated about how things work, and sometimes I have to sacrifice features for the sake of maintainability or usability, or something like that.

    Justification isn't a huge concern for me because I think in 99 times out of 100 applying "text-align: justify" hurts the readability of text -- even in the most modern browsers. The result is a lot of rivers of whitespace, uneven word spacing, and unnecessary hyphenation.

    That's just the way the web works right now. My expectation is that things will get better as e-books evolve and people start reading on their iPads and Google Nexuses.

  • 0001_pabst_blue_ribbon_time.thumb
    Dolemite
    Jun 28, 08:08pm

    Thanks, Carson!

    (and for hopefully taking my above post in the spirit it was written: goofy-fun)

    ((but unless I'm truly and completely mistaken, this feature *was* in use up until last year or so, right?))

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    mxi wodd
    Jul 01, 11:20pm

    (One year later):

    But we used to be able to do it.

    What happened?

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