> On 27 Feb 2026, at 12:24, Henning Hraban Ramm <[email protected]> wrote: > > Am 27.02.26 um 11:09 schrieb Mikael Sundqvist: >> Hi all, >> Hans and I are exploring some new alignment features, in particular >> ragged right. One of the problems is to get a "nice rag". Attached is >> a sample with three different settings for various hsizes. The quote >> comes from a Twain book, and is in German, since that might be more >> challenging. >> So, please, which one, if any, look in general better, and, more >> importantly, why? >> The prize you might get is a new keyword to align. > > Thank you for looking into this. Very nice choice of text! > > Good “Flattersatz” (ragged setting) in opposite to “Rauhsatz” (unjustified > setting) should avoid hyphenation and should have a good rhythm, i.e. > alternation of longer and shorter lines, the “Flatterzone” (ragged width, > underfull tolerance) can be quite big. > > Under these criteria, none of the samples is good, all have too many > hyphenations, and in “bad” places (not only at composite word boundaries). > While the hyphenation differs, none of the examples avoids “bad” hyphenations. > All have rivers with the quotation marks. > The short lines could be even shorter, otherwise the rhythm of all three > examples is acceptable. I miss protrusion. > > I can’t decide which example I like best – all three have their “moments” in > some areas.
What Hraban said ;) My additional two cents: 1st cent: In my opinion the first and last full lines would ideally be shorter than the second and penultimate line. This is the rule for ragged right titles and should work equally well for full paragraphs. 2nd cent: With ragged typesetting, a hyphenation on the final full line should be forbidden(“Pla-\break ckerei” is exceptionally bad) 3rd cent (bonus): If there is this much text, it would be not be hard to make sure the last (partial) line is at least two long or three short words long. Best wishes, Taco ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : [email protected] / https://mailman.ntg.nl/mailman3/lists/ntg-context.ntg.nl webpage : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / https://context.aanhet.net (mirror) archive : https://github.com/contextgarden/context wiki : https://wiki.contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
