Optical alignment

Optical alignment uses preset or custom rules for aligning characters at the start and end of paragraph text as well as at tab stops.

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Optical alignment is typically used to introduce hanging punctuation where punctuation marks are outdented at the start and end of paragraph text.

As a result, the feature is best configured for a base paragraph style (e.g., Base), with the option of manual fine tuning via the Character panel as needed. This will automatically apply relevant optical alignment rules when characters such as “ and ‘ are typed at the start and end of paragraph text (at Left Indent or Right Indent) or at tab stops. This is without manual selection of the character itself.

Two types of optical alignment are possible: 'Manual' where a lookup table of rules is used and 'Font' where the font itself provides optical alignment control. The latter is applicable to fonts that have been designed with in-built optical alignment capabilities—this is emergent technology.

Text panel Options menu To apply optical alignment:
  1. On the Text panel, tap Expand next to the currently applied text style.
  2. Tap the style's Options menu to the right of the style, and select Edit <style name>.
  3. From Character>Optical Alignment, change Type to 'Manual'.
  4. Tap OK.

This invokes all the listed alignment rule presets, plus any added custom optical alignment rules.

Text panel Add To add a custom optical alignment rule:
  1. As above but tap Add. A new rule entry appears first in the list of rules.
  2. Edit the rule as follows:
    • Left—The percentage of the character to be outdented at paragraph's Left Indent or tab stop; 100% means the whole character's width will be outdented.
    • Right—The percentage of the character to be outdented at paragraph's Right Indent or tab stop.
    • Characters—The character to be optically aligned. The character you type in your paragraph that matches this character will be automatically aligned.

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