Justify Text Columns?

[EJ]

I have imported a .pdf originally made in Quark on a mac. Graphics came across OK and the text came in OK.............almost. The fonts are OK but in the original there are sections of justified double columns. At least they are beautifully justified in Adobe Reader. With Xara the right hand sides of the columns are very poorly justified.
How to fix?

Attempt 1. I can correct each line separately using tracking. This is a pain in the butt but is possible. The default jump value for tracking is 10 units. For each line my tracking requirement is between 1 and 10. Thus I have to put manual values into the box and this is a real PITB.

Question 1. Can I change or tweak the default tracking value to 1?

Question 2. Can anyone suggest a different solution to achieve justification?

Other programs may be the answer but my usual friend CorelDraw does not play well with these pdfs. Any suggestions gratefully accepted.

Erik

[Soquili]

Erik does the text appear in text blocks within Xara Xtreme or as individual lines of text?

Would it be possible for you to post the pdf for others to test methods of applying justification?

[EJ]

Bill,
the text has come out as individual lines of text in Xara. However, each Xara line goes over several of the column lines. I have attached the Xara file-after removing two photos. It is a respectable 25 KB.
The original pdf is 39 MB which was why I got involved since I said that seemed a tad large for a pdf with two ordinary photos. When I got it into Xara I easily brought it back to a couple of MB which was what I expected. But in the process I realised the justification problem.

Erik

[Albacore]

Opening your file in XPro 4 i get four blocks of text with your references as mess at the bottom, what I mean about that there are a mixture of separate words and lines of text. You have got to remember that each programme renders text differently each package has a different text engine and that is the advantage of Adobe's Creative Suite where the text engine is similar in all packages.
If I were in your shoes I would start a new 2 col. doc. and copy and paste the four blocks of text and retype your reference section so that you have full control of justification and tracking then whack in your photos. Sorry the start of the second col. at "Banyaning Cave" is not a full block but you could easily sort that and the rest out in 10 mins.

[Egg Bramhill]

I'm probably missing something here but when I open the xar file there's no mess at the bottom. See screen grab.

[EJ]

Egg. You are right. There is no mess at the bottom. That is the way it should be.
Albacore. I tried cut and paste operations with the text lines and got no joy whatsoever.

I finally managed to solve my problem with Corel Draw. It will import accurately justified columns after all.

However, I would still like to solve the problem in Xara.
I have simplified the situation by importing the original file again into XX4 and removing all but one text line. This is in black in the attached file.

Then I opened the original file in Corel Draw and imported the same section of text into Xara as a pdf. That is the red text. I superimposed the red onto the black by lining up the left hand side. It is now easy to see the difference in quality of justification.

On the right is the result of manual tracking adjustment, line by line of the black Xara text. The result is very close and acceptable but is painful to do and I would not do it regularly on a full sized mass of text.

Manual tracking is the only way I can get it to work. The tracking values are all less than 10 units, so they have to be put in as say 3, tried and then put in as 4 and tried again etc. There must be a better way to do this sort of thing.

If the default movement of the tracking arrow was 1 instead of 10 then this would be a huge step in the right direction. Do any of the tweak gurus know where that value is in the registry and if it can be adjusted?

I know that Xara can justify properly if I totally retype the text but that seems a bit counter productive to me, and luckily I don't have to with Corel playing nicely.

Any other thoughts would be welcome.

Erik

[Albacore]

What I meant about the mess at the bottom was that some of the text was usable other bits were not single words! but not really usable and I counted at the bottom, 25 pieces of text and in my opinion over 12 lines of text that is not really usable for formatting and justification.

On the right hand side which you were talking about the first line is split into two areas of text and then we have a block of text which you can strip the format away and then reformat. This could only be done on the first part and after spending about 2 mins. from 265), down I realise that each line had to be be reformatted making this text just as easy to retype rather than copy and paste. I also tried saving the doc. as a PDF but his also caused the need to reformat when copy and pasting back into XPro. Even in Acro the righthand column was split into 2 text boxes with the second starting from the same area at "265)," down. I have no tinkerbell dust to make this easier bar retyping or using the Backspace bar frequently to gain the formatting that you want. However I would suggest opening the original PDF file in an Adobe product like Acro Reader or similar product and copying the text from there which would give a more accurate rendering of your text. Hope the last suggestion helps!