Publisher: Leading Override

[JustinAddison]

Need help in Affinity Publisher with Leading Override. I am trying to justify the switch from InDesign to Affinity Publisher. But AP just isn't as intuitive. One of the things that drives me nuts is that the Leading Override is nowhere near the font size on the top bar when editing text. Is there a way to add it up there?

There still seem to be too many things that keep me from making the switch, even though InDesign is bleeding me dry.

Thanks for any help.

[Wosven]

Leading is in the top bar as it should be, and since Leading override is a character option, that's in this panel that you'll find it. Clicking on the "a" button on the top bar will bring the character panel in view if it's not.

If you need to use it a lot, perhaps a character style with a shortcut would be better.

[JustinAddison]

I appreciate the suggestion, but I publish a newspaper, and we need to change text sizes and leading constantly. We already use text styles, but we make further changes. I need those commands easily accessible, front and center. If I have to open another panel every time, it's going to be counterproductive. I guess I just really need AP to be as close to ID as possible before I can make the switch.

Thanks for your suggestion. 

[walt.farrell]

My first question would be, are you changing the leading of a paragraph, or doing some kind of override adjustments to a single line within a paragraph? That's not completely clear to me from the discussion so far.

If you're changing the leading of the paragraph, you have the Leading specification in the Context Toolbar, and you also have keyboard shortcuts available, which you can see in the Text > Paragraph Leading > ... dialog. But if you're overriding the leading of an individual line within a paragraph, you'll need the Character Panel.

Note that you don't necessarily "have to open another panel every time". You could leave the Character panel open..

Edit: Oh, and welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, Justin.

[JustinAddison]

Thanks, Walt. I am making newspaper pages. I create headlines with a text style, which sets the font, font size, etc. After I do that, I almost always have to change the font size to fit the headlines in the allotted space. I then need to adjust the leading. In InDesign, the font size and leading size are right next to one another on the top toolbar. That’s not how it is in Publisher. I would like to set up Publisher with the same, or similar, tool settings as I use in InDesign. For me having the two tools separately is confusing and not user-friendly. I would also like to be able to change the font and lighting sizes with the up/down arrows (see photo), instead of using the drop-down menu. Having all of the text adjustment tools in one area is extremely helpful when laying out the pages.

[walt.farrell]

Thanks for the additional info, Justin. Yes, they're further apart, though both still on the Context Toolbar.

In my experience with the Affinity applications, though, adjusting the font size sets the proper leading for that font and font-size automatically, based on the metrics built into the font. So I've never needed to adjust the leading; just the font size.

Of course, your needs and mine may be very different

[R C-R]

17 hours ago, JustinAddison said:

I appreciate the suggestion, but I publish a newspaper, and we need to change text sizes and leading constantly.

But how often do you need to change the leading override?

[Fixx]

OP does not really need to adjust leading override, but leading. And those are unconfortably far apart in UI. OP could though indeed use leading override instead as that is at least in the same panel as font size.

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, Fixx said:

OP does not really need to adjust leading override, but leading. And those are unconfortably far apart in UI.

If I understand what you mean about 'uncomfortably far apart in UI' it wouldn't make any sense for Leading Override to be a paragraph attribute, would it?

Leading Override is actually a line attribute but since the UI only has Character & Paragraph panels, it appears in the Character panel, which seems more logical to me.

[Fixx]

For OP it does not really matter if they are logically in the right places, they are just physically so far apart that it is too long a trip to make with mouse... usually it does not matter but here it is a repeated routine which soon becomes drudgery.

[JustinAddison]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

But how often do you need to change the leading override?

Well, I need to change the leading. The leading override is the only tool I can find that does that. 

[Move Along People]

-

[walt.farrell]

58 minutes ago, JustinAddison said:

Well, I need to change the leading. The leading override is the only tool I can find that does that. 

I'm curious why you need to change the leading?

When you change the font size the leading will follow automatically, as long as you've left it alone (the "default") setting as @haakoo has shown just above. (And that field is the paragraph leading field, not leading override, by the way. I'm not sure which one you've been using.)

[JustinAddison]

Just now, walt.farrell said:

I'm curious why you need to change the leading?

When you change the font size the leading will follow automatically, as long as you've left it alone (the "default") setting as @haakoo has shown just above. (And that field is the paragraph leading field, not leading override, by the way. I'm not sure which one you've been using.)

Because I'm fitting text (mainly headlines) into an area. I use different leadings to improve the look or to fit the headline better into a space. For instance, many headlines are 24 point text, with the leading at 26. But sometimes I need to increase the leading to 27 or 28. Some fonts present better with increases or decreases to the leading. 

Also, on a slightly different note, I noticed that the text box outline disappears when I'm typing. It's there when I stop typing. Strange. I find it helpful to be able to see the text box (which is usually decided into columns) while I'm actually typing. Is there a setting where this could be fixed? Thanks.

[Wosven]

Using the shortcuts is simpler, at least you need to learn half of the ones needed for this, and use the scroll button on the mouse* and the modifier keys for the other) :

• (Precise) Increase/decrease baseline: 4 shortcuts
• (Precise) Increase/decrease text size: 4 shortcuts

* I begin on a Mac Apple II, switched to a PC with Win95… and wasn't able to go back to a mouse without scroll button when I went back to a Mac, so I keep on using a "PC" mouse with it. It's so usefull, and scrolling to increse/decrease values in Affinity apps is a time saver.

[Wosven]

5 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

When you change the font size the leading will follow automatically, as long as you've left it alone

Sometimes, you just need to gain 1mm so the body text will get room enough. This means not having your text smaller, but only modifying the leading if it's large by default. And to keep text aligned most of the time (for example, all the text but header are on the baseline grid, and the 1st line of the header is positionned to look like on the grid), I never use  "default", that's not predictable.

I never use it on adds either, where we have more freedom, but that's because I'm a control freak (at least for work)

[walt.farrell]

13 minutes ago, JustinAddison said:

Also, on a slightly different note, I noticed that the text box outline disappears when I'm typing. It's there when I stop typing. Strange. I find it helpful to be able to see the text box (which is usually decided into columns) while I'm actually typing. Is there a setting where this could be fixed? Thanks.

As far as I know you can't change that behavior.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Fixx said:

For OP it does not really matter if they are logically in the right places, they are just physically so far apart that it is too long a trip to make with mouse... usually it does not matter but here it is a repeated routine which soon becomes drudgery.

What do you mean by "physically so far apart"? They are on two different studio panels because only one of them (leading) is a paragraph attribute.

 

1 hour ago, JustinAddison said:

Well, I need to change the leading. The leading override is the only tool I can find that does that. 

Look for "Paragraph Leading" on the context toolbar when either a block of text or text in it is selected. It should be the item immediately to the left of the Columns selector:

Alternately, set it in the Paragraph Studio Panel.

[JustinAddison]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

What do you mean by "physically so far apart"? They are on two different studio panels because only one of them (leading) is a paragraph attribute.

 

Look for "Paragraph Leading" on the context toolbar when either a block of text or text in it is selected. It should be the item immediately to the left of the Columns selector:

Alternately, set it in the Paragraph Studio Panel.

I've tried that, but as far as I can tell it doesn't actually do anything. I select text, then make the adjustment with the Paragraph Leading and absolutely nothing happens. Maybe it's a bug on my download.

 

[R C-R]

10 minutes ago, JustinAddison said:

I've tried that, but as far as I can tell it doesn't actually do anything. I select text, then make the adjustment with the Paragraph Leading and absolutely nothing happens. Maybe it's a bug on my download.

Is the selected text more than one line long? If not, leading (the vertical spacing between lines of text) won't have any visible effect.

Are you perhaps just trying to make a single line of text fit into a smaller width without changing the font size? If so, adjusting its tracking might do what you want.

[JustinAddison]

4 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Is the selected text more than one line long? If not, leading (the vertical spacing between lines of text) won't have any visible effect.

Are you perhaps just trying to make a single line of text fit into a smaller width without changing the font size? If so, adjusting its tracking might do what you want.

Yes. I selected an entire paragraph. I've tried with large blocks of text, single lines...The "paragraph leading" doesn't do anything. Like I said, maybe it's a bug that will be fixed on the next version.

 

[A_B_C]

The "paragraph leading" doesn't do anything. Like I said, maybe it's a bug that will be fixed on the next version.

I think that’s most likely because you changed Leading Override to a value different from Auto. By doing so, making changes on the context toolbar won’t have any effect.

[A_B_C]

Have a look at this video. Does it makes things clear? 😀

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, A_B_C said:

I think that’s most likely because you changed Leading Override to a value different from Auto. By doing so, making changes on the context toolbar won’t have any effect.

Thus the reason for "Override" in the name of the feature?

@JustinAddison, it might be worth reviewing the options listed in the Paragraph Studio Panel help topic to get an idea of how they can be combined to produce different results, like how Space before, Space after, Space between same styles, etc. interact to control spacing.

[A_B_C]

Justin, you really don’t have to use Leading Override for your headlines, for these will be a separate paragraph anyway. Why don’t you just use Paragraph Leading for that purpose, and maybe adjust Space After, if needed? Changing Paragraph Leading will override your headline paragraph style anyway. There’s no need to use Leading Override.

(Personally, I hardly ever use Leading Override, as this setting is easily forgotten, once set.)