Dropcaps degraded in latest AP version

[AFY7]

I have a book interior that I created about a year ago. It has many drop caps. It is impossible to tweak their layout with the most recent version of Affinity Publisher.

Note image A. On the left is the drop cap made with an earlier AP version. On the right is the drop cap from the same file using the current AP version. Previously, I could keep the first word together and still adjust the distance to the text independently. With the current version that is impossible.

Image B shows this problem more clearly.

Is there any way to regain control over drop cap placement?

[AFY7]

Solution!  Keep distance to text small and add one-third space to second and third lines!

Edited July 14, 2020 by AFY7
To be more complete.

[Wosven]

Hi, I think the parameters are wrong and keep from good readability.

The boittom of the drop cap should be aligned with one of the text baseline, and the lines of text with the drop cap should be left aligned for readability.  As if the drop cap was in an invisible rectangle.

[AFY7]

Wosven,

Thank you. You baseline advice is excellent. However, I can't seem to adjust the font size of the drop cap through the Character dialog.

I like preserving the first word intact, however. Perhaps 200 years from now designers will do it my way and wonder when it originated.

Perhaps not.

[Wosven]

I don't think they'll do this in 200 years since there are centuries they realise readability is better this way, when eyes don't spend time searching where lines begin and end

You need to modify the character before creating a character style for the drop cap, or modify later this character style to be able to modify the drop cap.
At some point, trying modifying manually won't apply if styles are already applied.

[AFY7]

Wosven,

I definitely like your guidance for bottom alignment of the drop cap with the third line of text. To my eye, however, keeping the first word together is more readable. Splitting the word seems odd.

Maybe the the rectangular box you described is used because it is much easier to implement. I'm styling all 25 drop caps in my book individually, each tailored to the dimensions of the letter. An "M," for example, needs to be styled differently from an "I."

I'll look again tomorrow.

Thanks.

Edited July 14, 2020 by AFY7
Additional thoughts.

[AFY7]

Wosven,

Who thinks the readability is better? Do you have data establishing it as so? And what about design?

Designers at Random House agree with me.

See below from p. 42, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs by John Updike, 1989, Random House. This is a matter of art, not history.
 

[Wosven]

I suppose the fact that by default the most used apps for layout everyone use like inDesign an QXPress, and taking few pics from magazines around me this early in the morning will show clean and nice layouts, don't prove anything... but it happens we find sometimes badly done jobs, and that how I'll qualify your example.

(Notice in France we rarely use small caps in the first words, but when done, they would follow the way those examples are done).

[AFY7]

Wosven,

My point is that we needn't be hidebound (English, meaning unwilling or unable to change because of tradition or convention) in this matter.

And guess what. You have proven my point for me!

 

[lacerto]

More generally I guess there are multiple standards and house styles, and no "objective" rules. Each different style can have good reasons for using them. 

EDIT: One good point for just using the app-provided drop-cap feature with all its restrictions and doing the best that it can offer is if the publication will be available also digitally, since custom drop-cap creations normally degrade accessibility (e.g., reading or searchability of the text is disturbed by having the initial in a separate text frame, or parts of text in some other way detached or separated from the body text (even if just with forced line breaks and extra spaces or tab characters).

[AFY7]

Oh! The corruption!
[From The Coast of Good Intentions by Michael Byers, published by Mariner (Houghton Mifflin), 1998. This is a book of short stories. It was originally printed on white, acidic paper that has turned yellow over time.]