Engine update: fewer font swaps, text that fits, sheets that line up
A big batch of engine work went live today. This is the whole list, kept short. The method is the same as always: we put our output next to Publisher's own output on thousands of real files, and we fix what differs.
Fewer documents need a substitute font. Our converter now recognises far more of the typefaces that real Publisher files ask for, and lays their text out with those faces' own letter widths and line heights. That matters because a substituted font changes where every line breaks, which moves everything down the page. One church postcard we checked used to come out with its body text in bold italic from top to bottom. It now comes out plain, the way Publisher sets it.
Text that overflowed its box now shrinks to fit. Publisher quietly reduces the font size when a headline is too long for its frame, and the templates switch that on for you. We didn't do it, so text spilled over the edge or got cut off. We do it now. We compared the result against Publisher's own output on thousands of real files before switching it on.
Sheets of labels, tickets and business cards land on the right grid. Publisher stores the exact grid in the file: the margin to the first copy, the gap between copies, how many across and down. We were reading part of it and guessing the rest. Now we use what's stored. Sheets coming out with both the right number of copies and the right positions went from 318 to 336 out of 415.
Things that used to vanish now show up. An empty picture frame has a thin rim around it, and we were drawing nothing at all, so a photo column came out as blank paper. Checkboxes on forms had the same problem. Counting every shape a file says is there that we never actually painted, an 897 file test set went from 915 down to 615.
Lines break closer to where Publisher breaks them. Two more rounds of hyphenation rules, taken from watching where Publisher itself puts a hyphen. Web addresses got a rule of their own, and French text got its own pass.
Word files. Long tables used to creep taller row by row, because Word quietly adds a bottom margin to every cell. That's gone, so a table holds the height Publisher gave it. Framed photos inside a group could arrive as empty white boxes, with the frame painted over the photo. They stack in the right order now. And filled WordArt keeps its outline instead of arriving as a pale, unstroked word.
InDesign and Affinity files. Decorative BorderArt frames inside a group survive the trip. Text wrap no longer empties the frames next to a picture in Affinity. Fancy WordArt banners stop getting clipped. Pictures and text interleave in the document's real stacking order, and picture frames carry their own border and fill. See Word and InDesign exports catch up for the earlier round.
We'll go deeper on a few of these over the next couple of weeks. For now, if one of your files came out wrong in any of these ways, run it again. The preview is free, and conversions are unlimited for a one time $49.