Why do I get text overflow if I have asked Infix to fit text

Hello Infix

I may have asked this before at some point

Basically, if before reimporting a translation into Infix, and having politely asked Infix to fit text to boxes, why would I get any overflow problems signalled afterwards?

Thanks

Hi,

If the text that you are importing is too large to fit in the text box then it will overflow. Infix will try to fit text to a text box, it cannot fit the text box to the text.

In this situation you just need to change to the text edit tool and manually resize any text boxes that have overflowed text in them.

Regards,

Martin.

Hello Martin

But that kind of ‘ignores’ the basic question

Why isn’t the text adapted to fit the text box.

Is there perhaps a minimum font size that Infix does not want to go below?

Why do I have to deal with overflow when I asked Infix to fit the text?

Can you explain further?

Thanks

Hello Martin

I just have to ask you again about this

What does ‘fit text to box mean’ in fact?

If Infix does not reduce the text size, then how does it try to fit the text to box?

I’ve had an overflow problem yet again on a small job which suggests to me that it is not fitting text to box.

I just don’t get it.

Thanks

When ‘Fit text to box’ is active Infix will try to adjust text so that it fits - the is handy when translated text is more verbose than the original. The adjustments include the spacing between letters, words, lines and paragraphs plus the font size. However they are subject to limits; Infix will not go on shrinking all the metrics indefinatley since that could yeild text that is either too scrunched-up or too small, or both.

This is why, in some cases it will try but then give-up and report an error. These are the cases when there is simply too much text to fit reasonably.

If while editing a text box, you choose Text->Align->Full… you will see the text fitting dialogue.
Drill down into this and you will see the metrics and their limits.This will give you an idea of what Infix is doing though there is no way to directly modify these settings on a global level.
You can however do it for individual text boxes, even after translation import.

Wow, I feel like Columbus who has just ‘discovered’ America. Others were already there but he didn’t know it existed.

The question is now when do we set the tool and on which document.

I assume for my purposes which you know, it is the edited pdf (the one that is going to reimport the translation)

Please confirm.

I would also like to suggest that in the dialogue box where the translators tick “automatically fit text where needed”, there is a link to the 'align text>align>full dialogue box.

Can this feature be also be used even where no text is imported? In other words, could it be used on any pdf when editing?

Finally, about what it says in the handbook

“The fitting process stops as soon as an acceptable result has been achieved even if all metrics have not yet been used.”

This explains something I noticed on the 'Bird Migration Job" (different font sizes in many text boxes that had to be changed one paragraph at a time)

I would say that if the ideal font size is 14 and the minimum is set at 10 for instance, then it would be a shame to stop at 10 (the minimum) if 13.5 could be achieved.

Is this what happens as it is my interpretation of what the manual says and may not be reality.

Anyway, I will definitely look more closely at this configuration box as overflow is the translators main worry when importing back in.

Thanks for your help on this.

Regards

Yes, the settings go into the document you are importing into.

Text fitting can be applied during normal editing and isn’t restricted to translation work.

Having a link to the dialog from the translation dialogue is a very good idea - we will work on that.

I think the fitting code will try to alter font size as a last resort and by as little as possible. However, work is on-going in that area especially with the new PDF to XLIFF converter comming on-line in the near future.