Gutenburg – full justification feature request

Hi,

If you’re referring to text justification, that feels like an area that a plugin should extend. Justified text manipulates the text in a manner which may not be good for readability, and while there may be some use cases for this, I’d suspect they do not fall within the likehood of being a majority requirement.

If you still do feel like it should be a thing, I would encourage you to create a GitHub issue and it can be discussed at length though.

Hello Marius L.J. ,

That’s a good point – Full text justification with inbuilt readability check.

A simple readability check might be to limit the number of forced spaces per gap, no-hyphenation. This means that some lines will not be fully justified, but most will, giving a similar overall appearance to the layout.
The user might be permitted to adjust their own (default) settings so they can make their own decisions about what sort of justification they want (rather than being absolutely deprived of the capability).

Are you saying that full text justification, is not part of the essential functions of an editor, or an editor that specializes in layout?

Thanks

• This reply was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by MKSnMKS. Reason: improved formatting and layout

You might poke around in the make.www.ads-software.com blogs when justification was removed as a default button for TinyMCE. The same reasons still apply.

Editor changes in 4.7

Hello Steve Stern,

Thank you for the link.

Editor changes in 4.7

It says;

The underline and justify buttons have been removed from the bottom row. Underlining is a bad practice as readers can confuse it with links (bad accessibility), and it does not insert a semantic element. Justifying has uneven browser implementation, and in many cases is bad for readability. Keyboard shortcuts for both will keep working.

(bold added by me).

As I understand it, Gutenburg is aiming to be a substantial improvement upon the previous editing system. Some may even be hoping for revolutionary – though I am not sure of that.

I have made this feature request here in Gutenburg.
I have not made it here for the present editor in WordPress, which that article is about.

There are several ways to solve problems, which include fixing the problem, or eliminating the problem. The old editor has eliminated the malfunction problems caused by full text justification be removing the function.
This same method of solving the problem may persist in Gutenburg, or perhaps a more innovative method of solution could be obtained.
Or if a full solution is not achievable, then system could be created to allow the user to make their own decision/choice (e.g. be warned that this justification setting may result in poor appearance in some [listed?] browsers).
If required, then a more fuller explanation can be provided, that enlarges on the dangers of using full text justification, and may include “a don’t blame us policy”, if needed.

However, if there has already been decision made regarding full text justification based on up to date technologies and capabilities, and the conclusion has been found to be not worth while, then that’s okay.

But if this omission in functionality is due to an simple overlooking of the assumptions made in the previous editor, possibly due to similar members of the design team, then this feature request will hopefully act as a reminder to revisit previous assumptions or decisions, in the light of the new venture.

There has been the suggestion that such feature be made as a plugin, and there are already editors that include this function. And the link that you supplied, said that the function had previously existed.
So this shows that the function has previously been possible (though with detracting outcomes in a few situations), is possible to create, and is possible to integrate into an editor.

The only main limitation seems to be ;
whether the developers of Gutenburg (the new? editor) will let the user have the option to make their own decision, as to whether they want this or not, in their own editor.

Thanks

I just had a poke around on the plugin page for Gutenburg at ;
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/gutenberg/

and found the following;

Editing focus

The editor will create a new page- and post-building experience that makes writing rich posts effortless, and has “blocks” to make it easy what today might take shortcodes, custom HTML, or “mystery meat” embed discovery. — Matt Mullenweg

and note

makes rich posts effortlessly

and

make it easy what today might take shortcodes, custom HTML, or “mystery meat”

looks like the aim is to “make” something new ,that does much which is lacking in the present system.

I encourage the development team to strive for this ideal.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by MKSnMKS.

Justified text has the same problems now as with 4.7, readability and uneven browser implementations makes this a bad experience, and adding lots of warnings into the editor is an even worse experience for the writer.

Hello Marius L. J. ,

I’m inclined to agree – yes leave the warnings out, by default – the user could be left the option setting of choosing to either a brief or verbose warning.

There are many aspects of website behavior that depend on the browser and device that the website is being viewed on, which is what a responsive website is for.

Perhaps full justification can be brought into the modern era, by having an algorithm that responds to the type of browser that they visitor is using.

A really simple browser handler, would just cancel justification if any of the problematic browsers are detected. In which case it could default to left right or center justification.

But as development advances, the handler to maybe cope with increased detail to achieve good results.

Also as time goes by, it might be expected that browsers will be able to handle full justification better.

Thanks