Tracking adjustments based on variable data length

I have been wrestling with a business card layout today on which the designers chose (vexingly) to force justify all text to a 1" text box.

I have been able to force the text of all data thus far to cooperate by creating resources for each line including a custom tracking value and building my rules with those. Thus far they have all been either static text or identically formatted text (phone, fax cell), so no issues with hardcoding the tracking value. Good stuff.

I am down to the last variable, and it has stumped me. The email address. Because the length of the names before the @ vary (from 3 to 7 letters, in the selection of names I've been given for now), the tracking values will need to be different in order to get a force justified look.

I've spent a couple of hours combing the boards for a solution and am no further ahead. Anyone have any strokes of genius regarding how I might manage this?

I'm attaching a PDF sample of the card, as well as the collected job (in case someone is really keen). Thanks so much for any guidance.

ETA: The bulk of the variable data - including the troublesome bit - is on page 2 of the pdf.

LBA_BUSCRD.zip

LBABUSCRD-Output.pdf

Maybe this will suit your needs:

return "<p br=false quad=JJ>" + Field("Email");

Per the FusionPro VDP Creator Tags Reference Guide, Quad is an optional paragraph tag. Specifies the quadding. Valid values are: C, L, R, and J.

C = Center

L = Left

R = Right

J = Justify with last line aligned left.

JJ = Justify all lines.

More examples can be found here.

Thanks so much for your reply, David.

Unfortunately, the justification tag won't do what I need. It simply increases word spacing to fill the text box. What I require is letter spacing which, as far as I can tell, can only be achieved using tracking.

True. But an email address is one word. When a single word is forced justified the spacing is applied between the characters. See the attached PDF.

Line 1 is one word left justified.

Line 2 is one word force justified.

Line 3 is 2 words force justified.

Line 4 is one word force justified.

You are absolutely right. I don't know how I missed that. I tried (I thought) every alignment tag option and had no success. Clearly I didn't try the forced justified tag.

Maybe my brain had gotten a little fuzzy after banging away at the manual tracking all day. Let's say that. :-P

Thank you so much, David.