Full Justification.

[Steve Gill]

I have an issue with Full Justification that may seem a bit pedantic.

I produced an e-book for a client using Help & Manual 7.1.0. They aren't happy with some spaces that appear at the end of some lines in a paragraph when using Full Justification - they're very fussy about presentation.

I have attached an image which shows what I'm talking about.

FullJustification.png

Is Full Justification affected by the document format, eg. PDF, ePub, etc., and/or is it affected by the application that displays it? I have noticed when viewing the generated PDF on my PC, the spaces appear on different lines when viewing in iBooks on my iPad.

Is there any way to prevent this happening?

Thanks.

Regards,

Steve

[Tim Green]

Hi Steve,

Your Help+Manual version is badly out of date. The current version is 7.2.0 Build 4035. So before doing anything else please download the latest installer here:

http://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads.html?upd

Just install on top of your current version to update.This will not change any of your settings etc.

On your example: There is something very wrong with that font. All the kerning is wrong (spacing between characters), which indicates that it has either been replaced because the actual font you specified is not available or something else is badly off.

When you say eBook, which format are you using? ePub and Kindle are "real" eBooks, the Help+Manual EWriter format is really a new Windows help format and can only be displayed on Windows. If you are using ePub or Kindle then you may need to either choose a different font or embed the font in the book, or both. See here for information:

http://www.helpandmanual.com/help/index ... _fonts.htm

When producing these eBooks it is important to study that entire chapter very carefully, as the formats are very finicky.

If you continue to have problems please mail a demo project to support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) and we will check it for you directly.

[Steve Gill]

Hi Tim,

Your Help+Manual version is badly out of date. The current version is 7.2.0 Build 4035. So before doing anything else please download the latest installer here

Thanks, I have updated to the latest version.

On your example: There is something very wrong with that font. All the kerning is wrong (spacing between characters), which indicates that it has either been replaced because the actual font you specified is not available or something else is badly off.

I'm not sure about that. The client bought H&M 7 at my recommendation and I showed her how to use it. She lives a couple of states away from me so when she was finished entering everything she sent it to me. I was still on H&M 5 so I upgraded to H&M 7 so I could review her document and fix a few issues she had. I believe the original book was in Word documents, and she copy and pasted much of the text into H&M so maybe that's causing the formatting problems.

When you say eBook, which format are you using?

I'm actually referring to PDF format, however, the book will also be produced in ePub and Kindle formats once the PDF has been fixed up.

I'll go through the book (it's very large) and see if I can correct the formatting problems.

Regards,

Steve

[Tim Green]

Hi Steve,

If that is PDF that explains it. It's a problem with the reference printer driver your client is using to generate the PDF, that is why the kerning is off. Problems like this are almost always caused by using an incompatible printer driver as the reference for generating PDF documents.

H&M uses a printer driver to generate PDFs. You can access the reference printer driver settings in View > Program Options > PDF. By default, H&M will use the screen device driver, but you can often get better results by using a real printer driver. By the same token, some printer drivers can also cause problems, particularly optimized drivers from printer manufacturers. It is generally better to use one of the standard drivers supplied with Windows.

On current Windows versions we recommend using the Microsoft XPS Document Writer driver included with these versions of Windows. It produces good results and is always pre-installed. You just need to select it as your reference driver. Otherwise you can activate and select one of the known good standard drivers included with Windows. You don't have to actually have the physical printer. Just add the driver with Add Printer in the printer section of the Windows Control Panel and then select it as your reference driver in Help & Manual. The standard Windows Brother HL-2040 and HL-2060 drivers deliver good results, and standard LaserJets and DeskJets are usually also OK.

Important Notes:

DON'T use use "PDF printer drivers" like Adobe Distiller for this! This will not work properly and is actually counter-productive.

The default page size set for the printer driver in the Windows control panel must be at least as large as the page size you have set in your print manual template. If it is smaller you will get clipping in your PDF pages.

[Steve Gill]

Hi Tim,

Thank you for your help.

I noticed a pattern with the text. Every time the spacing is wrong the word immediately following it has the first character in bold. The bolding was done by the client. When I remove the bolding the text aligns correctly, so it looks like that will resolve the issue.

Regards,

Steve

[Tim Green]

I noticed a pattern with the text. Every time the spacing is wrong the word immediately following it has the first character in bold. The bolding was done by the client. When I remove the bolding the text aligns correctly, so it looks like that will resolve the issue.

That definitely shouldn't happen if the reference PDF driver is working correctly. Check that you are using the current version of Help+Manual first (7.2.0 Build 4035) and if updating doesn't fix it, please mail me a sample project and the .mnl template file you are using at support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) and we will check it.