Publisher 1.8.2 (Windows): Perplexed about Leading Override

[MikeA]

Publisher is the first page-composition program (or word-processing "engine") in which I have encountered a Leading Override option. The program's online help notes: "The Leading Override setting can be used in cases where you have a handful of characters that need special handling, for example, because they use different fonts with sizes that look visually different."

"Handful of characters" — and Leading Override's being in the Character palette, not the Paragraph palette — struck me as meaning it's an optional setting that can be applied to a few selected characters for special purposes. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

If I have several lines of text that are wrapping within their text frame*; if I select just a few characters in one of the lines; if I enter "0" for the Leading Override — nothing happens. [ * Meaning: Publisher itself is doing the line-wrapping — these are not forced line breaks.]

If I select a line by putting the cursor at the start and pressing End while holding down the Shift key, I select all text on the line excepting the final space at the position where Publisher wrapped the line. If I enter "0" for the Leading Override — nothing happens.

If I extend the highlighting to the right by one more character (thus highlighting the space at which the automatic line-wrapping has occurred) and then enter "0" for the Leading Override — the entire line jumps upward to the point that the line is now superimposed directly on top of the preceding line. It's as if someone had entered a carriage return without a line feed.

What is the logic or algorithm here? Why did that final space have to be selected? If Leading Override is not for baseline-shifting a few selected characters, then what is its purpose? What would be a typical use case?

A related question: When you've established leading either via text style or via manual formatting, do you get the precise nominal value only if the Leading Override setting is "Auto"?  If that is in fact the case, I'm wrong in thinking it's an optional setting. Entering the correct value in that field might be critical to ensure you're getting the exact line-height value you've set via the Leading field.

Why would I think so? I noticed finally: When the Leading Override setting is "Auto," its value in the Character palette seems to become identical to — and to be updated in "real time" to remain identical to — the Leading value in the Paragraph palette. When "Auto" isn't used, the Override field's value seems to make its own decision about its current value. So it could possibly be causing incorrect line-height values without a user's realizing it.

 

[GarryP]

I was under the impression that Leading was applied to whole lines of text rather than a set of consecutive characters within a line.
While Publisher allows you to apply a Leading Override to a set of characters I think it determines the actual Leading for the whole line of text by taking the largest setting that has been given to any of the characters in that line. Therefore, if you set some characters Leading Override to be 5pt while the rest of the line has Leading Override of 12pt, the line will use 12pt. On the other hand, if you set the characters Leading Override to be 24pt while the rest of the line has Leading Override of 12pt, the line will use 24pt. Does that make some kind of sense? (That’s how it looks to me but I don’t use Leading Override a whole lot, except to make all of the lines of text in a paragraph further apart or nearer together.)
If you want to shift a few characters up or down then you can use the Baseline Override setting just above the Leading Override.

[walt.farrell]

First, the normal leading for a paragraph is specified in the Paragraph panel, in case you weren't aware of that.

For the leading override (Character panel, or Context Toolbar), consider two situations:

1. You select only a few characters of a line. First note that the entire line has its normal leading, based on the paragraph definitions. You can increase that leading for the characters you've selected. But you cannot decrease it, because decreasing it would affect the non-selected characters, too. Perhaps what you really want to do is adjust the baseline of the selected characters?
    
2. You select the complete line. In that case you can increase or decrease the leading, which will adjust the baseline of the entire line. So when you set the leading to 0, the line moves up and overlays the prior line.

[MikeA]

@GarryP
Thanks for your reply.

>> While Publisher allows you to apply a Leading Override to a set of characters I think it determines the actual Leading for the whole line of text by taking the largest setting that has been given to any of the characters in that line.

I think this must be right.

I have observed the "override" setting seeming to make its own decision about what it's supposed to be at times — leaving me wondering: exactly what leading did I set for a given paragraph? Not meaning just the nominal value, but what's the actual line height?

So: If I have established a particular line height via the Leading field in the Paragraph tab, do I guarantee getting precisely (and only) that value, baseline-to-baseline, only if the entire paragraph's (or text style's) Leading Override setting is "Auto" initially? I don't want to leave this kind of thing to chance; I need to ensure a predictable result.

>>  If you want to shift a few characters up or down then you can use the Baseline Override setting just above the Leading Override.

Yes, that makes more sense to me. It's clearly an attribute applied to specific characters and seems completely predictable.

 

[MikeA]

@walt.farrell

>> You select the complete line. In that case you can increase or decrease the leading, which will adjust the baseline of the entire line. So when you set the leading to 0, the line moves up and overlays the prior line.

I assume by "increase or decrease the leading" you mean "increase or decrease the leading override. In the situation I was referring to — a multi-line paragraph automatically line-wrapped within its text frame — selecting 0 or more character(s) and then changing Paragraph > Leading (as opposed to Character > Leading Override) affects the entire paragraph, not just the line containing the cursor and/or a few selected characters.

The initial confusion is: to me "override" connotes a temporary condition. So NO override — a value of zero — would make sense as meaning "don't change anything." But in some circumstances "zero" has quite a dramatic effect. :- )

 

[walt.farrell]

15 minutes ago, MikeA said:

I assume by "increase or decrease the leading" you mean "increase or decrease the leading override

Yes, sorry for the imprecision.

15 minutes ago, MikeA said:

So NO override — a value of zero —

Zero is not "no override". No override would be the value you see in the Character panel before you make any changes. For Arial, the Character panel will show a default of (if I remember correctly) "(12.4 pt)".

The parentheses indicate it's a default. And the 12.4 pt is the default leading specified by the font designer. 

By specifying 0 you removed the default, or for Arial you removed 12.4 pt of leading, causing the lines to overlay each other.

[MikeA]

>> Zero is not "no override". No override would be the value you see in the Character panel before you make any changes. For Arial, the Character panel will show a default of (if I remember correctly) "(12.4 pt)".

Yes, I finally saw that 'zero' doesn't mean 'no override'. For now I'm assuming that selecting ’auto' for the Leading Override value is the right thing to do if you want to ensure that you're getting precisely the baseline-to-baseline height you specified in Paragraph > Leading.

Once you select Character > Leading Override > Auto and confirm it by pressing Enter or Tab, the value shown in the Leading Override field immediately changes to the same value that you previously set in Paragraph > Leading.

It wouldn't hurt for Serif to expand the documentation in that part of its online help file, explaining the behavior a bit better. They could, for example, include an example. :- )

[MikeA]

Can Character > Leading Override be set to Auto as the default value for all styles — thus, applicable to every new document?

Is that done by selecting Save Styles as Default in the Text Styles panel's "hamburger" menu? Or is there some other way to configure "application-wide" default settings for text formatting?

If the former — maybe about 90% of the job gets done quickly by making a new document, editing style Base, selecting the "Auto" setting for Leading Override, and then immediately selecting Save Styles As Default.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, MikeA said:

Can Character > Leading Override be set to Auto as the default value for all styles — thus, applicable to every new document?

The Character panel Leading Override automatically defaults to the Paragraph Leading, Mike. I don't see why setting it to Auto would be needed.

For example, if you're working in a paragraph of Arial text, at 12pt font size, the paragraph leading is automatically 12.4 pt as specified by the font designer. And if you look at the Character panel it will show (12.4 pt), where the ( and ) indicate it is an automatic default value. If you change the paragraph leading to 20 pt, and then look in the Character panel, you will see that the override leading is shown as (20 pt), which again is an automatic default value, as shown by the ( and ) around the value.

What problem are you trying to solve by making it say Auto, instead, since that would give the same effect as you get now?

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, MikeA said:

Can Character > Leading Override be set to Auto as the default value for all styles — thus, applicable to every new document?

For all practical purposes, "Auto" is the default Leading Override setting. It is just that instead of the "Auto" text appearing in that field (which tells you nothing specific about the leading value) the actual default leading value is shown, inclosed in parentheses to indicate that it is the default.

If you pop open the Leading Override submenu & select "Auto" note that "Auto" is immediately replaced by the actual default value. Alternately, you can enter just the left & right parenthesis characters with no numbers between them & when you leave that field the numbers will be filled in ... automatically.

[MikeA]

I'm not finding the Leading Override setting consistently defaulting to "Auto."

Example: I just re-opened a document I've been working on. I have not edited its Base style. When I right-click Base in the Text Styles panel and select Edit, then in the editing dialog click Position and Transform, I see that the Leading Override value is 0 pt., not Auto—not at all what I want.

Next test ... I started a new document, selected Base in the text styles panel, then selected Edit Base. Once again the override value was shown as 0 pt. I changed it to Auto and saved the change. Then I selected Edit Base again. The value had returned to 0 pt. But I've already seen that in some circumstances a leading override of 0 point has a disastrous effect, so I'm not liking that "0 pt" as the default value.

Next: Edit the style Body (derived from Base) and try to set its default override value to Auto. Same thing happens — it's back to 0 pt. when I edit it again.

I'll skip the details about other things I tried. For the moment I'll try this approach and hope it does what I want.

1. Edit style "Base".
2. Set its point size to some familiar default such as 12 and its paragraph leading to an exact value rather than simply "1". (Auto leading is no way to typeset a book. Or anything else. IMO.)
3. In the edit style dialog, set the Leading Override value to "Auto" (and hope that when it reverts to displaying "0 pt." that's only some kind of bug in how the value is displayed.)
4. Select the Save Styles as Default option in the Text Styles panel and hope that it sets application-wide defaults (for all new documents).

As most styles are derived from Base, hopefully this changes their Leading Override settings all to "Auto".

This Leading Override "thing" (unlike baseline shift) is unknown territory to me and adds a variable I'd be happy to live without.

 

[MikeA]

>> The Character panel Leading Override automatically defaults to the Paragraph Leading, Mike. I don't see why setting it to Auto would be needed.

What I'm saying is that I've observed the leading override value not always defaulting to the paragraph leading setting. As a result I ended up with bizarre, irrational-seeming line height settings... finally hacking around in the program for quite a while and trying different things revealed that the override setting, when it was "off," was causing the problems. Small wonder someone in another thread commented that he'd been banging his head against the wall with Publisher's leading settings and could not figure them out. I suspect he'd run up against this same problem and didn't know precisely what the problem was. Neither did I...

(As I said in the other comment, using a setting of "auto leading [some multiple of the nominal point size]" is no way to typeset a book — notwithstanding the type designer's own specs for default leading. I've never worked on a book whose designer specified, say, "12 / some multiple of the nominal point size." Just Say No To 'Auto' Leading™.

[walt.farrell]

14 minutes ago, MikeA said:

Small wonder someone in another thread commented that he'd been banging his head against the wall with Publisher's leading settings and could not figure them out. I suspect he'd run up against this same problem and didn't know precisely what the problem was.

I'm not sure which thread you mean, but the common reason for confusion seems to be that some users don't understand the difference between "leading" and "leading override", and try to use the leading override setting in the Character panel when they should be using the leading setting in the paragraph panel. You're the first I've seen sho has raised this other issue, which I will need to study further before I can comment meaningfully.

 

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, MikeA said:

Next test ... I started a new document, selected Base in the text styles panel, then selected Edit Base. Once again the override value was shown as 0 pt. I changed it to Auto and saved the change. Then I selected Edit Base again. The value had returned to 0 pt.

I am in no way an expert on Affinity's text styles, but after using APu > Preferences > Miscellaneous > Reset Default Text Styles to return the text styles to factory defaults, I opened the Base style for editing in a new document & got this:

Note that down in the Style settings text box "Leading Override" appears twice, first as "0 pt" & then as "auto," but in the Character > Position & Transform section it is set to "Auto."

I have no idea why it appears twice in the settings text box -- maybe it is because the Base style is a group style, but that is just a guess. However, "Auto" does seem to be the actual default "Leading Override" Character panel setting for any style based on the Base style.

[MikeA]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Note that down in the Style settings text box "Leading Override" appears twice, first as "0 pt" & then as "auto," but in the Character > Position & Transform section it is set to "Auto."

@R C-R

How interesting. Thanks for posting the screen shot. I'm going to see if the forum will let me post one of my own ... [a moment later: nope. The forum bug persists. Cannot attach screen shot. <grumble>]

I followed your procedure exactly and then on opening a new document and editing style "Base": Where you see:
  Edit Text Style ("Base") > Character > Position & Transform > Leading Override : Auto
I see:
  Edit Text Style ("Base") > Character > Position & Transform > Leading Override : 0 pt.

I'm using Windows version 1.8.2. Are you using the Windows or Mac version? Judging by something I learned a few days ago, the Mac and Windows versions do not handle certain text style operations the same.*
________

* I saw a video in which a Mac user of Publisher manually formatted some "[No style]" text, then immediately opened the context menu for style "Body" and updated it—and then attached the updated style to the text she had just formatted manually. In the Windows version, to do that I would first have to assign the style to the text, then format the text manually. Only after that does the "Update [name of style]" option become available in the style's context menu.

[MikeA]

7 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm not sure which thread you mean, but the common reason for confusion seems to be that some users don't understand the difference between "leading" and "leading override"

I didn't note the exact thread — it came up in a search here — but it was kind of an old one.
Having been through that confusion, I daresay you're right about its source. :- )

 

[R C-R]

58 minutes ago, MikeA said:

I followed your procedure exactly and then on opening a new document and editing style "Base": Where you see:
  Edit Text Style ("Base") > Character > Position & Transform > Leading Override : Auto
I see:
  Edit Text Style ("Base") > Character > Position & Transform > Leading Override : 0 pt.

I'm using Windows version 1.8.2. Are you using the Windows or Mac version?

My sig at the bottom of my posts shows what I am using.

Are you sure you started as I did by resetting Affinity Publisher's Default Text Styles Preference to the factory default?

[MikeA]

I followed your procedure to the letter. Yes, I'm sure.