Text Align option Distribute does not work with Scroll Bar present

[Miles R]

I decided to set some of my text boxes with the Distribute option of Text Align. This gives nicely justified text.
However, if there is a Scroll Bar present, the text becomes jagged again. So, now I have an inconsistency in appearance between the text boxes that need a scroll bar and those that don't.

Anyone come across this before and know if this is a feature or a bug? If so, its yet another annoying little niggle.

[Bulzie]

Looks like when you go to edit the field either if you have scroll bars or not, it shows the text format as you typed it into the box (not with the align option). The display option is just that I guess, for display only and not if you click on that field.

[Miles R]

Bulzie,

Thanks for the reply, but the text is not typed into the text box. The text boxes are all Locked and only for reference purposes. The text itself comes from fields in a database table - which itself is copied and pasted from elsewhere. So, the text has no carriage returns except at end of paragraphs or to help readability.
Whether or not the scroll bar is shown or not is determined by the actual text that comes from that particular row of the table.
I would have expected consistent results, so if Left, all text is left aligned, if Distribute, then all text is Justified. Clearly this does not work if the Vertical Scroll Bar is present. I think this is a bug.

[Bulzie]

Not sure a bug, if you did let people edit the data in that field, imagine trying to read/edit long paragraphs of text if in the distribute option format. Can you let them view it by a report instead, could put Can Grow to "Yes" so it scales. But might not be ideal if text will be really long.

[Miles R]

Don't really see your point. The Distribute option justifies the text in the text box, so why should it be different if there is a scroll bar or not?
p.s. In my case, there is no editing of data in the text box and there is no "them". Its my private project for personal use. I want to see the text on the screen in a nice format which is why I wanted it always justified, whether there is a cursor or not.

[June7]

In my test, with Distribute and scrollbar available, text remains justified until either cursor is placed in textbox or scrollbar is clicked. I don't really see any advantage to Distribute in a textbox. There is a school of thought which says fully justified text is harder to read because of the irregular spacing. The last line of box can look really weird.

[Miles R]

Thanks for the reply. In my tests, I did not get any problem with the last line - it was always left aligned without any large spacing between the letters or words.
Interesting point about the fully justified text being harder to read. Not sure publishers would agree with that, as pretty much all books are published with fully justified text.

Its not a big deal of course, but just would have liked to have the text aligned the same way whether there was a scroll bar shown or not, also, don't want the alignment to change when clicking in the box or scrolling.

I have gone back to having left aligned text in all text boxes for consistency, so the problem does not arise.

[June7]

I don't think books change space between letters, just between words and publishing programs can auto-hyphenate. I am looking at a book now and even though lines are right and left justified, can barely detect variable spacing and last line of paragraph is not distributed.
Here's what it looks like on my form.