Engine update: cleaner underlines, truer tabs, smarter curves
A fresh round of engine fixes went live today. Same method as always: we compare our output against Publisher's own output for real documents, and we fix the differences. Here's what changed.
Underlined form blanks draw as one clean line. Think of a signature line: "Name: ________". Publisher draws that as a single bar. We used to chop it into a bar per word. One test document went from 24 underline segments to 1. Phantom underlines under empty text are gone from the Word and InDesign exports too.
Tabs land where Publisher puts them. In paragraphs with a hanging indent, our tab stops measured from the wrong edge. On one file we measured, a tab sat 18 points from where Publisher put it. It now lands within a tenth of a point. Decimal tabs got the same treatment in the Word and IDML exports.
Text follows curved and rotated shapes. Text inside a curved frame now respects the shape's rotation when it wraps. And a word that almost fits on a curved line no longer breaks in two: "sub-ject" comes out "subject", the way Publisher sets it.
Chart fills reach Word and InDesign. Cross-hatched chart bars and pattern fills used to survive only in the PDF export. They now carry into the Word and IDML packages too. Shadows also got sharper across the board: soft shadows, glows, and shadow colors that follow the outline color now track Publisher more closely, and grouped 3D shapes get their lighting back.
Numbered lists count correctly. A document that runs two numbering sequences in the same list, like separate question and chapter counters, now shows the numbers Publisher shows, even when the sequence changes mid-list.
Every fix was scored pixel by pixel against Publisher's own output on thousands of real files, and shipped only when it won. If one of your files came out wrong in one of these ways, run it again. The fixes are already live.