Description: Minor automatic glyph scaling within a minimum/maximum range can minimize too big word spacing, rivers of justified lines, allowing to typeset narrow columns and more readable text. Combined with custom word spacing and letter spacing, it is the basic tool of DTP software to improve typography and readability. Note: without optical sizing, e.g. variable fonts with "wdth" axis, the suggested/allowed minimum and maximum glyph scaling only a few percent, because distortion of the glyphs destroys their balanced stroke thickness, i.e. the design of the letters. Steps to Reproduce: Create a narrow column with justified text. Actual Results: Too big word spacing, often rivers (overlapping word spacing of consecutive lines). Expected Results: Closer to the desired word spacing, no rivers. Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: See Bug 167648. See also CSS font-width: the font-stretch property at https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/REC-css-fonts-3-20180920/#font-stretch-prop and “Glyph scaling” in Text composition page of Adobe InDesign’s Help: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/text-composition.html More information: R. Schlicht: The microtype package, CTAN: http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/microtype/microtype.pdf
László Németh committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "master": https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/45ec7bd76196dcc60b4c2db2f6f00623ecbaf5a4 tdf#168251 cui offapi xmloff sw glyph scaling: extend UNO/UX/ODF It will be available in 26.2.0. The patch should be included in the daily builds available at https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More information about daily builds can be found at: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Created attachment 202746 [details] tdf168251_demo.fodt: test document
Created attachment 202747 [details] tdf168251_demo.pdf: PDF export of the previous test document Note: the +10% letter spacing and glyph scaling (without hyphenation and custom word spacing) is only for demonstration of the working letter spacing and glyph scaling, also their combination. Line length is ~35 characters, i.e. the minimum value suggested for columns. Using also hyphenation and custom word spacing (and later paragraph-level justification) it's possible to create better paragraph layout with the suggested +3 letter spacing and 103% glyph scaling. Using wdth axis of variable fonts for glyph scaling, i.e. without destroying balanced stroke width and letter design, it's possible to use greater values for glyph scaling.
Close issue (opening new issues for smaller problems).