Each shrinking or stretching method is executed in maximum of three steps.

Three steps allow the effect of copy fit to be "mild", "moderate" and "strong". "Mild" copy fit values are always set up in the first step, "strong" values are set in the last step.

For each step, a method may be enabled or disabled, by entering a value in the appropriate field. See below for details.

Regarding combinations of values, fitting algorithm continues to try various values of parameters, until the text fits, or two consecutive iterations have values which difference is less than the variation specified in the configuration. If the variation is 0, algorithm tries to find the best possible value, changing parameters in the substeps of 1/1000pt.

Field values

Track

a value 0 disables the tracking change, and the values different than 0 enable the tracking in tenths of percentage. For example, 2 means 0.2 percent.

Base

a value 100 disables the character horizontal scale/base change (it means, leave the base on 100%). the values bigger than 100 widen the characters, and the values smaller than 100 make them narrower.

Space

a value 100 disables the character spaceband change (it means, leave the spaceband on 100%). the values bigger than 100 widen the space between words, and the values smaller than 100 make them narrower.

The sum of the values of any step has to be greater than the sum of values of the previous one. The first step has to be active. values 0,100,100 are not allowed for the first step, because these values disable all the methods.

The last step is to be the 'strongest' one.

Example

If you specify the step field values as:

track     base   space

0         97     100

1         96     95

2         92     93        

this means that the third step may produce not more than 0.2% of tracking, reduction to 92% of original horizontal scale and reduction to 93% of original spaceband.

After each step, software controls check if the operation was successful (e.g., if a line was added in stretching or was cut in shrinking), and if it was, does not proceed.

If the first step fails, the second one is executed and tested, and if that one fails too, the third and the last one is carried out.

If, after the third step the paragraph still has the same number of lines, it means that the operation failed, because the imposed limits were too narrow to effectively fit the paragraph, and a warning message is displayed.

Variation

The values specified in step fields of each method are compared against the allowed variation, and the value of the variation is subtracted or added during operations. The least variation is 0. If the variation is 0, algorithm tries to find the best possible value, changing parameters in the substeps of 1/1000pt.

The higher variation is, the copyfitting will be faster.