V-Justify Updated to Version 1.6.2

Another update to V-Justify has been released.

Version 1.6.2 includes a couple of important new features, as well as several bug fixes.

New Feature: The new “Justification Target” area

A new “Justification Target” area has been added to the UI that includes two options: (1) “As reported by InDesign’s own vertical justification”, and (2) “The bottom of the text frame.”

The default choice, “As reported by InDesign’s own vertical justification,” provides the same behavior as previous versions.

However, for cases where this first option didn’t work (mainly due to InDesign bugs), we have added a new option.

So if you find that V-Justify was failing to justify the text in a particular text frame, the second option, targeting the bottom of the text frame, is often more reliable.

For a more detailed explanation of these two options, and the reason they are needed, see the “Advanced” section below.

It’s important to understand that both options use V-Justify‘s engine to vertically justify the text frame. In both cases, your minimum and maximum values are respected!

New Feature: Apply maximum or minimum settings, even when this does not successfully justify the text frame

Until version 1.6.2, if V-Justify was not able to successfully justify the text frame, it would reset the spaces between paragraphs to their default values (for all paragraphs modified by V-Justify).

However, I have received several requests to apply the maximum (or minimum) values, even if they do not cause the text frame to be fully justified. This can help the text frame look fuller even if there is not enough flexibility in the user-defined values to fully justify the frame. In such a case, the space before and after all paragraphs will be set to the maximum (or minimum) allowed by V-Justify.

This is now possible by holding down the Ctrl key (Cmd on a Mac) while clicking the Justify button.

So, without Ctrl, V-Justify will try to vertically justify the frame, and, if it does not succeed, will reset the space between paragraphs to their default values.

With Ctrl, if V-Justify is not able to fully vertically justify the frame, it will nevertheless keep the maximum (or minimum) space between paragraphs as per V-Justify settings.

(If the Justification style is set to “Loosen Only”, the maximum values will be applied. If it is set to “Tighten Only”, the minimum values will be applied.)

This feature is also hopeful when trying to understand why V-Justify was not able to vertically justify a particular text frame. Are the maximum values we specified really not enough to get the text to the bottom of the frame? Well, now you can click Justify while pressing Ctrl to visually see how far down the text frame the maximum values reach.

New Feature/Bug Fix: Text frames with stroke and inset are now fully supported, as well as scaled text frames

V-Justify failed to work properly on text frames that had a stroke applied (an outline). Likewise, if the text frame had a positive inset value (padding), or if the text frame was scaled vertically (not set to 100% vertical scaling), V-Justify would fail.

In version 1.6.2, these issues have been resolved. V-Justify now works on text frames with stroke, inset, or that have been scaled.

Bug fixes

V-Justify version 1.6.2 fixes several minor bugs, including a known issue whereby it would add space-before to paragraph styles that had been set to “ignore”. This only happened in cases where the previous paragraph was set to “span columns,” and only when the “tight” option was invoked.

Advanced: What is a “justification target,” and why do I need 2 options?

One of the biggest challenges in programming V-Justify is identifying the lower limit of a text column – the “justification target.” The justification target is the location to which the column should be expanded downwards.

Even InDesign’s own vertical justification feature gets it wrong sometimes!

For instance, if the text in a text frame contains an inline anchored object, InDesign is unable to vertically justify a text frame with its own algorithm.

In other cases too, clicking on InDesign’s “vertical justify” option fails, with the result that the last line of text in the frame is not actually placed at the bottom of the frame.

On the other hand, InDesign is often able to calculate the justification target in complex cases that would be impossible for a scripted solution such as V-Justify. For instance, InDesign can succeed when the text in the frame wraps around graphics on the page, or when there are footnotes at the bottom of the page, or split and span columns are used.

The first option, “As reported by InDesign’s own vertical justification,” in the new Justification Target area (see screenshot above) temporarily applies InDesign’s own vertical justification to the text column in question, measures the vertical position of the bottom line, and then disables InDesign’s vertical justification. This measurement is then used as the justification target. (This option is how previous versions of V-Justify worked.)

In many cases, this works fine, and in some complex cases, as described above, only this option will work.

But, using this option, if a bug prevents InDesign from correctly identifying the justification target, V-Justify will fail too.

Therefore, in version 1.6.2, a second option has been introduced: “The bottom of the text frame.” With this option, V-Justify simply assigns the bottom of the text frame as its justification target, thereby bypassing all InDesign bugs.

For complicated text frames (including frames containing footnotes, or that have complex span- and split-column layouts), the first option, “As reported by InDesign…” is necessary.

But for all other cases, I would recommend using the second option, “The bottom of the text frame.” If this makes sense for a given page, it is the safest (and quickest) option.

This free upgrade is available for download now!

V-Justify version 1.6.2 is a free upgrade for all users. Download it now from the My Account page!

Buy V-Justify now!

To purchase a copy of V-Justify, click here.

Download the free V-Justify trial

To get an instant download link to the demo version, fill in your details in the form below.