Justification, Hyphenation (SHY) and Stability

[thoth444]

I am presently finishing a book of short stories which will be published from the manuscript formatted using Nisus Pro. Everything has been working well to this point. Editing is coming to a close, and I recently started applying the font and justifying the text with hyphenation turned on. Suddenly the text has become a big mess: it's unstable and I cannot tell if the lines will be hyphenated the same way from moment to moment--constantly shifting. In one instance, the justified line will be hyphenated perfectly, but upon re-reading (after saving), the line will be broken and hyphenated differently, with hyphens added to words mid-line also. Additionally, there sometimes will be three hyphens splitting a word. Very frustrating--particularly to some as picky as I am. Should I hyphenate manually and turn off hyphenation? Should I kern each line manually also, or turn off kerning? What produces the best formatted text? I don't mind the work, but I do mind a shabby, unprofessional looking and formatted manuscript.
Perhaps Nisus Pro is not up to the rigors of a finely formatting manuscript, and I should format the manuscript using a different program.
Any ideas?

Thank you for any help offered

[martin]

What version of OSX are you using? NWP relies completely on the system (OSX) when it comes to hyphenation, and if I recall correctly Tiger (10.4) had hyphenation bugs like you describe. I believe Apple remedied the multi-hyphen bug for Leopard (10.5), but I couldn't say if the actual hyphenation choices are any better.

[thoth444]

Too bad, Martin! Yes, I use Mac OSX and it is an old version -- 10.3.9.
I have solved the problem by turning on hyphenation, then putting in hard hyphens, then turning off hyphenation. No extra hyphens. Pretty good justification. Sometimes I tighten up the kerning. I think it will look pretty good for a self-published book. Yes, it is time consuming, but I want it to look good.
Thanks.

[martin]

It is too bad, but I'm glad you found a solution that does the trick for you. I hope your work goes well.

[dshan]

It should also be noted that NWP is supported only on Mac OS X 10.4 and above. Using 10.3.9 you're lucky it even runs.

Does nobody ever read the system requirements information that comes with software like Nisus?

[martin]

Very true dshan- we often get customer emails asking why NWP won't launch on their old systems. But we should probably cut thoth some slack, perhaps he's using an older version of NWP.