Unnecessary first line shift in XeTeX

Question

Using XeTeX I noticed how first line is shifted with \usepackage{indentfirst} in a document which I don't want to happen. In LaTeX everything works Ok. Examples:

XeTeX:

\documentclass[a4paper,oneside,14pt]{book}
\usepackage{xltxtra}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{extsizes}
\usepackage{indentfirst}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{plain}
\linespread{1.5}
\setdefaultlanguage{ukrainian}
\setmainfont{Times New Roman}

LaTeX:

\documentclass[a4paper,oneside,14pt]{book}
\usepackage{ucs}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T2A]{fontenc}
\usepackage[ukrainian]{babel}
\usepackage{extsizes}
\usepackage{indentfirst}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{plain}
\linespread{1.5}

The question is how to fix this indentation? Should I use some manual indentation instead of indentfirst? Will it be then a "wheel"?

Answer 1

This is not an indentation problem: you should have received a message Overfull \hbox during the typesetting and you can test it by enabling the draft option in \documentclass, which will pring a black blob next to the overfull lines.

In this case, rewriting is usually the easiest remedy. Also changing the pagination parameters can help. Anyway, such problems should be addressed only when the document is in "almost final" form.

By the way, the setup Polyglossia does for Ukrainian is

\PolyglossiaSetup{ukrainian}{
  script=Cyrillic,
  scripttag=cyrl,
  langtag=UKR,
  hyphennames={ukrainian},
  hyphenmins={2,2},
  frenchspacing=true,
  fontsetup=true
}

which doesn't include indentfirst. Instead of loading the indentfirst package you can also say

\setmainlanguage{ukrainian}
\PolyglossiaSetup{ukrainian}{indentfirst=true}

that wouldn't change the setup for other languages. Changing this locally or globally (with the package) is a choice that depends on many factors, so take your pick.

Note that \setdefaultlanguage is a deprecated name for \setmainlanguage.

A tip
An interesting way for setting \emergencystretch locally to a paragraph (not in list environments, where things can not go as intended) so that TeX has more chances to correct bad breaks, you can say

Text of a paragraph that doesn't set well
and here's where it ends.{\emergencystretch=1.5em\par}

Here starts the following paragraph.

Answer 2

I think the right idea was given by Werner. I tested the same text with other fonts and got right indentation.

Changing geometry I got right result but I think my solution isn't so elegant but it works (with Times New Roman and cyrillic text).