Two Tools to Work with Text:
Show Me Rivers & Typefitting Tool

As you know, the river in the text it is a vertical or oblique line of spaces that occasionally forms in a typographic composition and makes it ugly.

And who among us will like that they will say about his layout that it is ugly?

The problem is that the layout designer does not see these rivers, because he does not read what he is making up. The rivers are seen by editors and readers.

Here is a tool that allows you to show the rivers in the text without even reading it. And there are three ways to get rid of them.

Here is the description, in English and Spanish language.

https://dotextok.ru/documentation/ShowMeRivers. Manuals.zip

Made originally in Russian, the script is fully localized in English and Spanish — the interface and the manual have been translated. For the French language, only the translation of the program interface has been done.

After purchase you can localize this script for your language too.

A common language module and an idml-file of the Manual in English are here.

https://dotextok.ru/documentation/ManualAs_idml&language.jsxinc.zip

So that no one says that your layout is sloppy and ugly. Even if you haven't heard these unfair words about your work.

If you don't know anything about this problem that appears in the process of creating a text that is easy and pleasant to read, this article may be of interest to you:

https://creativepro.com/type-how-to-a-river-runs-through-it/

Felici: “There’s no reason that software couldn’t be designed to automatically avoid rivers or flag them when they’re unavoidable. Programs can “see” perfectly well where word spaces appear and spot distracting alignments.”

Well, such program deigned.

Demo-version of the program is here:

https://dotextok.ru/documentation/Demo Mode.zip

Marc Autret about Show Me Rivers:

https://indiscripts.com/post/2024/11/indesign-script-show-me-the-rivers

Video by Ivan Gomez (Profe Ivan)

https://youtu.be/6g6dKephws8?feature=shared

Typefitting Tool

Useful script for typefit the selected paragraph.

All the information is at your fingertips and you don't have to dive into successive InDesign panels to get to it.

On the other hand, the tools to make adjustments to the paragraph are also at hand.

The ability to adjust the kerning of spaces is a very elegant solution. It is more convenient than playing with tracking, which tends to deform the appearance of the characters. Add that to the possibility to choose the composer in the same window, and it's a great tool for page layout.

Two languages are supported – English and Spanish, the manuals are here:

https://dotextok.ru/documentation/FitText_Eng.pdf

https://dotextok.ru/documentation/FitText_Esp.pdf

To buy both these scripts:

https://shop.dotextok.ru/en/kategorii/product/view/4/83