Conflicting display of leading.

[walt.farrell]

23 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I think there must be more to it than that because @uneMule keeps mentioning a "Median" option for leading override. I am still struggling to understand how that would work or what useful functionality that would add to the Affinity apps.

My interpretation of that: Median would be a new value for the Leading specification in the Paragraph panel. When specified, if some of the lines in a paragraph had different Leading values (due to Leading Override, or to use of %-font-size where some lines have a different font size), then Affinity would calculate a the median leading that would give all of the lines an equal leading. That way, you wouldn't have some of the lines in the paragraph having one leading, and others a different leading, which could look messy. All would have the same leading, calculated across the complete paragraph rather than individual lines having their own values.

[thomaso]

25 minutes ago, R C-R said:

a "Median" option for leading override. I am still struggling to understand how that would work or what useful functionality that would add to the Affinity apps.

In my understanding the app is working this way already: if 1 paragraph contains several font sizes and has its leading set to % then the leading respects the sizes and adjusts the leadings per line accordingly. As illustrated here.

27 minutes ago, R C-R said:

putting the Leading attribute in the character panel (which I do not think @uneMule has suggested)

The second screenshot of this post is an UI mockup with the leading field placed next to font size in the character panel, it is texted with "suggestion".

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, thomaso said:

In my understanding the app is working this way already: if 1 paragraph contains several font sizes and has its leading set to % then the leading respects the sizes and adjusts the leadings per line accordingly. As illustrated here.

In my understanding @uneMule is suggesting a new option that gives identical leading on all lines, calculated from the median value among all the lines,

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[thomaso]

5 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

In my understanding @uneMule is suggesting a new option that gives identical leading on all lines, calculated from the median value among all the lines,

Maybe. But then why with % ?

If I have 3 sizes (with 3 auto-leadings) and want none of them to be used but a median instead why should I want to enter any specific % which I actually don't want to get used? In that case I simply would avoid % and use one of the other options, e.g. "exactly" or "at least".

Such a median for leading could vary a lot with the differences between font sizes. Using a median feels to me rather like a coincidental value, as if I would not care but want to get surprised from the visual result.

Median or average? I guess with both it may happen that with certain size differences some leadings might look unsufficent while others look too large in relation to their font size.

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, thomaso said:

If I have 3 sizes (with 3 auto-leadings) and want none of them to be used but a median instead why should I want to enter any specific % which I actually don't want to get used? In that case I simply would avoid % and use one of the other options, e.g. "exactly" or "at least".

You wouldn't. You would say "median", rather than xx%.

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

It is a character attribute, though:

It is an attribute that can be applied to one or more characters but it affects every character on the line equally because a line of text can have one & only one vertical line spacing, which is what leading refers to. Leading override is therefore not a character attribute because it cannot affect only the character(s) it is applied to.

16 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Using a median feels to me rather like a coincidental value, as if I would not care but want to get surprised from the visual result.

To me, it seems like a good way to make the distinction between paragraph leading & leading override harder to understand.

[thomaso]

11 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You wouldn't. You would say "median", rather than xx%.

Just "median" isn't sufficient. Median of what? Of the font sizes? Therefore @uneMule's idea/wish was to use %.

Imagine a paragraph with three font sizes 10, 20, 30 pt. Their median is 20. Lets say the leading should be 120%, which is 24 pt. Then the 30 pt text would have a leading smaller than its size (80%). – Can't be serious.

A median would depend extremely on the differences between font sizes – and therefore can result in an extremely weird look.

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[R C-R]

19 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You wouldn't. You would say "median", rather than xx%.

Would you expect this median leading override value to be calculated without regard for any differences in font sizes within the selected lines of text?

5 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Yes, but there is no such thing as line attribute.

Functionally, because you cannot override the leading of only part of a line of text, that is precisely what leading override is. 

[thomaso]

31 minutes ago, R C-R said:

To me, it seems like a good way to make the distinction between paragraph leading & leading override harder to understand.

The various threads about (often against) leading override demonstrates that some people did not understand it, and therefore can't understand a difference between leading  and leading override. In 20 years I experienced 3 professional colleagues (educated as graphic designers) of different companies who didn't use paragraph leading (and style) at all but always and only used leading override (and character styles) for years.

[thomaso]

17 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

there is no such thing as line attribute.

Every leading override affects the entire line. Even if it is not assigned to any character but set between two characters only.

Assigning leading override to certain characters (spaces incl.) specifies additionally what happens to what line if the text flow changes. This way a leading override can affect a different amount of lines if the text flow alters, depending on the positions of the characters in the text which have it assigned. – Compare the video in this post:

 

[uneMule]

Bonsoir à tous.
Mon intention ou propos n'est pas de revenir sur leading override et leading.
L'idée est de pouvoir utiliser dans un même paragraphe des caractères de tailles différentes et de pouvoir malgré tout avoir un leading homogène et géré automatiquement dans le paragraphe. C'est tout.
Je me suis dit, mais toute proposition est bienvenue, qu'une solution est de pouvoir définir pour un corps de caractère "une intention" d'interlignage.
Dans un même paragraphe, j'ai du corps 8, 10, 12. Je défini le comportement de tout ce texte comme utilisant un leading pour un corps 10. Et je peux toujours définir dans paragraphe un %.
Dans tous les cas, le paragraphe aura un leading homogène.
C'est ça l'intention.
Hormis le fait de signaler que dans l'état actuel des choses, les informations sont confuses. Et manifestement, je ne suis pas le seul à le penser... et le dire.

*****

Good evening to all.
It is not my intention or purpose to go back to "leading override" and "leading".
The idea is to be able to use characters of different sizes in the same paragraph and still have a homogeneous and automatically managed leading in the paragraph. That is all.
I thought, but any proposal is welcome, that one solution is to be able to define for a character size "an intention" for leading.
In the same paragraph, I have size 8, 10, 12. I define the behaviour of all this text as using a leading for size 10. And I can always define in paragraph a %.
In any case, the paragraph will have a homogeneous leading.
That's the intention.
Apart from pointing out that as things stand, the information is confusing. And obviously I'm not the only one who thinks so... and says so.

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[walt.farrell]

15 minutes ago, uneMule said:

In the same paragraph, I have size 8, 10, 12. I define the behaviour of all this text as using a leading for size 10.

But if you do that, any lines with 12 pt text will possibly have their characters collide with the lines above or below them. Perhaps not with 8/10/12 but what about with 8/10/15.

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, uneMule said:

The idea is to be able to use characters of different sizes in the same paragraph and still have a homogeneous and automatically managed leading in the paragraph. That is all.

But if you want that, why not avoid using leading override (by setting it to "Auto") & then set leading in the Paragraph panel?

Alternately, use text styles.

5 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Only if it is bigger than the leading of the rest of the characters on that line.

There is nothing for it to override unless it is larger than the paragraph leading. How this works would be easier to understand if the Character panel did not permit setting leading override values less than the paragraph leading value.

12 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

I think that it is actually applied to the preceding character even if it is not selected (highlighted)

I just set the leading override to 500 pt with the cursor between two characters of the word brown in 21 pt Tahoma. It had no effect.

[thomaso]

3 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Only if it is bigger than the leading of the rest of the characters on that line.

No. Though this is the most common use of leading override, it also can reduce the paragraph leading, and even set it to 0, leaving only "space after" as a visual leading.

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[thomaso]

8 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I just set the leading override to 500 pt with the cursor between two characters of the word brown in 21 pt Tahoma. It had no effect.

Was brown in the 1st line of a frame? Leading override never affects the first line of a frame – different to "baseline shift" (which, by the way, always affects entire words, even if set just between to characters without selecting any).

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[thomaso]

2 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

That's what I have mentioned many times already within this thread. 

I was replying to this:

35 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

52 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Every leading override affects the entire line.

Only if it is bigger than the leading of the rest of the characters on that line.

My last screenshot shows paragraph leading of 15 pt only – and 2x smaller leading override (8 pt and 0 pt) affecting all lines, or with other words, affecting "the leading of the rest of the characters on that line". So, there the leading override is not bigger than the leading.

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Was brown in the 1st line of a frame? Leading override never affects the first line of a frame – different to "baseline shift" (which, by the way, always affects entire words, even if set just between to characters without selecting any).

OK, you are right about that. It was in the first line.

9 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

I do not understand what you mean. Test what happens if you specify 1pt leading override for all characters of a line in a paragraph that has e.g. 20pt leading.

Yes, that will also override the paragraph leading with the smaller value, but only if it is applied to all characters on the line ... so once again I assert that leading override is actually a line attribute. 😛

[R C-R]

25 minutes ago, thomaso said:

No. Though this is the most common use of leading override, it also can reduce the paragraph leading, and even set it to 0, leaving only "space after" as a visual leading.

Not to beat this to death, but why would you want to do this?

It sounds a lot like trying to use leading override as a substitute for paragraph leading, which I think is best avoided.

[thomaso]

9 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Not to beat this to death, but why would you want to do this?

It's not about whether I would or would not want to do this. It was only in response to Lagarto, who wrote, leading override would apply/affect …

1 hour ago, Lagarto said:

Only if it is bigger than the leading of the rest of the characters on that line.

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However, meanwhile this discussion seems to have quite a few cross posts and repeats. So I better leave now.

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