Abstract: In order to avoid the problem of the last line of the body text not being justified when it is not the end of a paragraph but is followed by a footer, a converter/processor (13) is provided to modify the print data stream produced by another converter/processor (12) from the revisable or editable text data stream. If during conversion from the revisable data stream to the print data stream a "last body text line" is found and it is not the end of a paragraph, a latch (34) is set. Then, with each line of print data stream text, the latch is checked, and if the latch is set and the text line ends with a carriage return, the carriage return is replaced with a zero-index-carriage return and an index. These act similar to a carriage return in all cases except one--the text line which they terminate may now be justified.

Abstract: Overstruck text is justified by distributing the white space residue at the end of the unjustified line among the interword spaces for justification. The amount of the residue distributed is used to determine a number of overstrike characters which will overstrike the text including these expanded interword spaces. This is accomplished by placing controls in the text stream during editing to delineate the text to be overstruck. Before printing, these controls in the edited data stream are detected to cause the print line to be first justified by expansion of interword spaces and then followed by overstriking with the appropriate number of overstrike characters determined during the justification process.