Jukka
I’m afraid you are in error here when you criticise the reasons for the left justification of the text. Though you may prefer the aesthetics of full justification, i.e. even paragraphs, educational psychologists, disability researchers and typographic stylists have all shown, through research, that left justification is easier to read. The lack of artificial spaces between the words, and the artificial stretching of individual letters (depending on font) allows the eye to follow the flow of text much easier. In the short-term, for example in forum posts, this may not seem so important. But for many people it does make a big difference when reading large amounts of text.
In fact, there is a growing backlash against the very people that you criticised, but not for the reason you give. The designers were the ones who started the trend for full justification.
You also mention hyphenation. Hyphenation is not a bad thing but if you have ever compared a fully justified text with a left justified one, you may see that there are one of two issues:
1) either any given paragraph will have an large number of lines that end with hyphenated words, which doesn’t help with the flow of reading
2) or printers try to compensate, and limit hyphenation by putting in even more ‘white space’ between words and letters.
At the end of the day it is a personal preference but please do not overly criticise a publisher for doing what is recommended to assist many readers. Aesthetics is what caused the problem for many readers in the first place. What is happening now is a return to focussing on the reading experience rather than the “look”.
I am sure you are wondering why I intervened. It is because I work in the disability field, and so have a considerable knowledge of issues relating to visual and learning disabilities. And it is not just “disabled” people who have problems. These issues affect many people in the wider population. Apart from wearing glasses, I have no reading problems, but I do read many books a month, and even I find unjustified text easier to read, and a faster process.
If you wish I could provide you with a plethora of research references to back up what I have said above, which I have refrained from doing for now because this is, after all, an aviation forum.
Regards
Amrit