2.1 beta1: "use justification in LyX work area" should be a Pref

[Isaac Oscar Gariano]

As the width of the LyX text area is variable based on zoom setting as well as window size, and screen DPI if is almost certainly not going to be the same as the text width in the generated pdf. But in order for justification to look good, you often need to reword stuff, or add manual hyphenation or line breaks, but doing that to make the LyX display better will make the PDF worse!

So unlike a WYSYWIG editor (like Microsoft Word), I cannot see why you would want a justified display in LyX in the first place. So I wonder if anyone actually uses this feature?

Although it might be nice if we could get it to be roughly accurate with the generated PDF (you'd have to have the document specify the font, font size, and text width, and implement TeX's linebreaking algorithm).


— Isaac Oscar Gariano
________________________________
From: lyx-devel <lyx-devel-bounces at lists.lyx.org> on behalf of Daniel <xracoonx at gmx.de>
Sent: Saturday, December 2, 2023 12:30:52 AM
To: lyx-devel at lists.lyx.org <lyx-devel at lists.lyx.org>
Subject: Re: 2.1 beta1: "use justification in LyX work area" should be a Pref

On 2023-12-01 12:23, Daniel wrote:
> This refers to a surprisingly brief discussion:
>
> https://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-devel@lists.lyx.org/msg181030.html
>
> Basically, the idea was to move "Use justification in LyX work area"
> from document settings to pref.
>
> I take it the one reason to do so is that the setting is an individual
> preference. I for my part don't like reading text where justification is
> used without proper line-breaking and hyphenation that avoids huge
> spaces and rivers. But I can see that this is still a personal preference.
>
> So, when reading someone else's document I would like it to show up with
> my preferred setting and I wouldn't want to change that person's
> preferred setting of the document (and maybe forget to reset it).
>
> (I have not seen specific reasons against making it a preference.)
>
> Any chance this might be done after all?
>
> Daniel

This was not to complain about LyX line-breaking. I think, given it's
general limitations, it's quite good. But it is no LaTeX output. And the
nice breaking is one reason I prefer reading LaTeX documents.

(I also think typographers generally agree that unless larger spaces and
rivers can be avoided, justification is to be avoided. I take it that is
why it is not used on the web. Maybe a point for avoiding it by default
in LyX as well.)

Daniel

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