text overstrike-overline

[eluengo]

Is there any method to make an overstrike or overline on (a) word(s) or character(s)? == a line like underlining but on top of the words instead of under the words (as the normal underline)

(to make certain mathematical expressions in Affinity Designer and/or Publisher)

Emilio

[Old Bruce]

It is called Strikethrough and is in the Character Panel, you can leave the little colour thing to 'clear' and the line will be the text colour instead of the grey I have here.

[eluengo]

No, no, I don’t mean strikethrough !

What I mean is a line ON TOP of the characters/glyphs/letters, not through the middle or under those.

Like the example I send.

Emilio

 

[Pšenda]

Try Paragraph Decoration (negative Top) with Space Before Paragraph. 

[thomaso]

5 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Try Paragraph Decoration (negative Top) with Space Before Paragraph. 

This probably wouldn't work sufficiently since @eluengo wants to use it like character style, applied to "word(s) or character(s)" only, not entire lines or paragraphs.

Unfortunately I don't know of a formatting method either, it appears additional, separate stroke objects are the only way. Used as floating pinned objects can make them at least move with text flow and text changes.

 

7 hours ago, eluengo said:

(to make certain mathematical expressions

This makes me wonder if there would exist special font files for maths which possibly contain the desired glyphs?

Here for instance seem to be some maths fonts listed ... https://ctan.org/topic/font-symbol-maths

[lepr]

14 hours ago, eluengo said:

Is there any method to make an overstrike or overline on (a) word(s) or character(s)? == a line like underlining but on top of the words instead of under the words (as the normal underline)

(to make certain mathematical expressions in Affinity Designer and/or Publisher)

Yes, follow your regular letter/character with the Combining Overline glyph.

[walt.farrell]

59 minutes ago, anon2 said:

follow your regular letter/character with the Combining Overline glyph.

Good idea; thanks.

Not perfect, though, as the combining overline is sensitive to the height of the letter it's applied to:

[Alfred]

12 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

the combining overline is sensitive to the height of the letter it's applied to

Interesting. I’d expect the one over the ells to be higher than the one over the tee.

[FredB]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

Interesting. I’d expect the one over the ells to be higher than the one over the tee.

I wouldn't. I'd expect it to be at one height for uppercase characters and lowercase characters with ascenders, and a lower height for (lcase) characters without. Which is what seems to be happening.

[Alfred]

26 minutes ago, FredB said:

I'd expect it to be at one height for uppercase characters and lowercase characters with ascenders, and a lower height for (lcase) characters without.

That’s an entirely reasonable expectation, but not if (as per Walt’s comment) it’s “sensitive to the height of the letter it’s applied to”!

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

That’s an entirely reasonable expectation, but not if (as per Walt’s comment) it’s “sensitive to the height of the letter it’s applied to”!

Depends on which height one uses

For some font metrics I would expect tee and el to have the same "height", and for this purpose they do.

[Alfred]

41 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Depends on which height one uses

For some font metrics I would expect tee and el to have the same "height", and for this purpose they do.

[Pšenda]

Hi @Alfred,

there may be an error in my browser (android Chrome), but I've been having trouble viewing your embedded images (maybe only GIF?) for a long time.

[lacerto]

(...)

[thomaso]

6 hours ago, anon2 said:

Yes, follow your regular letter/character with the Combining Overline glyph.

Does it work centered for you? – To me the overline appears horizontally shifted, to the left if the letter follows the overline, to the right if the letter gets typed first:

[eluengo]

Thanx to all

Discussion very interesting, the capability isn't yet installed in AFPUB but it will surely be in any future.

Both solutions are interesting, I'll try overstrike glyph and pinned line solutions (this last can be also interesting in certain applications like drawing obtuse angle over letters, or also old style abbreviature details like in icons and hand-written religious texts)

Emilio

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, thomaso said:

To me the overline appears horizontally shifted, to the left if the letter follows the overline, to the right if the letter gets typed first:

The letter must be typed first. The combining characters are applied to the character that precedes them. But for me, the combining overline is properly centered on the letter:

(These are spaced letters, each with the combining overline following it. The spaces are not necessary, and are there only for clarity. Font is Arial.)

[thomaso]

42 minutes ago, Alfred said:

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

For some font metrics I would expect tee and el to have the same "height", and for this purpose they do.

Whenever I need it, I get annoyed not to know if there are clear, unambiguous terms for these dimensions. In English or another language.

According to this site in German the "Schriftgrad" = "Schriftgröße" (~ font size) would influence the vertically position of the overline for capitals + taller letters but the position itself seems to be unnamed here, unless the "Á-Linie" (Akzentlinie) is the overline position, too. – Same for the x-height which doesn't define/name the position of the overline or the dots of i and umlaut but a position slightly below only.

Do the terms "Fleisch" and "Kegel" (Kegelhöhe) used formerly for lead setting have an equivalent in digital fonts? Those would name the largest dimensions of a glyph and possibly name the position of the overline, too. Unfortunately the English wiki version doesn't show this picture:

 

 

[thomaso]

27 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

The letter must be typed first. The combining characters are applied to the character that precedes them. But for me, the combining overline is properly centered on the letter:

Strange, can't get it centered. – Here a new text frame, left aligned, Arial. First typed M then double-clicked the "combined overline" in the glyph panel. The overline seems to be centered with the text cursor.

Another oddity: The text cursor stops blinking as soon I double-click in the glyph panel. If I then use the delete key not the most recent glyph but the entire text frame gets deleted. As if activating the glyph in the panel partially deactivates the text cursor. Feels someway buggy. @anon2, @Old Bruce you are mac user, right? How does this work for you?

[Alfred]

19 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Whenever I need it, I get annoyed not to know if there are clear, unambiguous terms for these dimensions. In English or another language.

Does this help at all, Thomas?

[walt.farrell]

18 minutes ago, thomaso said:

but the position itself seems to be unnamed here, unless the "Á-Linie" (Akzentlinie) is the overline position, too. – Same for the x-height which doesn't define/name the position of the overline or the dots of i and umlaut but a position slightly below only.

I don't think there's a term shown in that diagram. And I'm not sure if there's a term in general.

To further confuse things, here is an A with diaeresis (aka umlaut) and a combining overline, followed by one with 3 combining overlines. I don't think there would be specific terms for the height lines when multiple combining items are added to a single letter.

 

[lacerto]

(...)

[Old Bruce]

34 minutes ago, thomaso said:

@Old Bruce you are mac user, right? How does this work for you?

Combining Diacr.... etc marks gives me Lagarto has shown, with the odd exceptions of lower case i an j get the dots replaced with the mark.

[lacerto]

(...)

[Old Bruce]

And to further add to the subject, not all fonts have the overstrike (Overstrike probably sounds better in Italian) so we have to take that into consideration.