How do I create fully justified underlines under left align paragraph text?

[yinYangMountain]

Dear Affinity Forum,

Please, I’m stuck and need layout / functionality help:

1) How do I make underlines that are fully justified without text? (See ‘Correct-Look’ / Left Column)

2) How do I make the same paragraph as 1) and while having Left Align text with Force Justified underlines? (See ‘Correct-Look’ / Right Column)

Note: Using underscores (which is what I used to create 'Correct-Look') as a workaround won't suffice—as these appear as dashes in various fonts. Also, using any baseline does not play well with other paragraph / font styles.

Note: I thought 'Paragraph Rules' might be an answer but, alas, I cannot figure this out. And, the Decoration function appears to apply to only one line in a paragraph.

Thanks

[Old Bruce]

Bite the bullet and make a series of lines that are the correct width and separated by the proper 'leading' from the Paragraph style. Use Exact leading, not percent or default or anything else. Group the lines and then draw a text frame overtop and you may need to adjust the top offset for the text.

Text Styles are great, but there are some things they cannot do well if at all. 

[thomaso]

8 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

correct width and separated by the proper 'leading'

Even simpler: Draw 1 line, cmd-drag it down a little, cmd-J to power-duplicate the wanted number. Then just select them all and drag one corner handle to adjust their width + height (height = leading).

[walt.farrell]

16 hours ago, yinYangMountain said:

Note: Using underscores (which is what I used to create 'Correct-Look') as a workaround won't suffice—as these appear as dashes in various fonts

Why does it matter how they appear "in various fonts"?

You are creating a document using a particular font, so all you need to do is use a font where they appear as underscores.

[yinYangMountain]

Thanks for the suggestions. But…

There would be dozens of books—sometimes each containing over a thousand questions and answers—often requiring updates (editing, additions, deletions, etc.) every six months. Thus:

1) Considering the numerous changes applied via style sheets (which is automatic and keeps everything flowing correctly), drawing lines is not an option under consideration.

2) How underlines are created in a document matters because: Underscores are glyphs (a visual structure used to present a character) and, thus, designed to work specifically and stylistically with a particular font-family. So, for example, you cannot simply exchange Helvetica’s underline for Hevetica Neue’s underline while maintaining the same size / thickness / leading / etc.

Note: I've examined a few documents created by the original publishers. They were *.indd. No lines have been drawn. So maybe this is something InDesign does via a Paragraph Rule/Style not available in Affinity Publisher? [How these answer lines were created remains a mystery.]

In the interim, I created another workaround. This, however, would never be approved—as it’s far too time consuming. See attached.

[Old Bruce]

I am really confused. Are you wanting the Answers to be there alongside the questions, in a particular typeface as you have shown? Are you required to guess at how long the answers will be and that is why you need different numbers of lines?

I have to say this is weird, variable answer spaces based on what one person writes as an example answer.

[thomaso]

On 1/19/2022 at 8:31 PM, yinYangMountain said:

Note: Using underscores (which is what I used to create 'Correct-Look') as a workaround won't suffice—as these appear as dashes in various fonts. Also, using any baseline does not play well with other paragraph / font styles.

40 minutes ago, yinYangMountain said:

2) How underlines are created in a document matters because: Underscores are glyphs (a visual structure used to present a character) and, thus, designed to work specifically and stylistically with a particular font-family. So, for example, you cannot simply exchange Helvetica’s underline for Hevetica Neue’s underline while maintaining the same size / thickness / leading / etc.

I don't understand yet why you mention the different appearance of different fonts. I assume the style for the text paragraphs don't have to be the same formatting as the lines, may be even not the same font.

Once you made a decision for a font for the lines you can optimize it with character style properties, as e.g. size, stroke, tracking, scale, baseline, leading override – quite a wide range of options to achieve a specific look, while in particular scale might be interesting if an underscore character gets used + leading override to adjust the leading if it would have to be based on the style for the text. I'd say you can use almost any font for the lines (if you want or need for any reason text & lines to be the same font).

For instance this text frame contains only 1 character _ scaled to 1500 % width:

Once you defined all used styles (1st paragraph, body, lines) you could use the APub feature "Next Style" for a more comfortable, automatic switch between styles.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, yinYangMountain said:

No lines have been drawn. So maybe this is something InDesign does via a Paragraph Rule/Style not available in Affinity Publisher?

You can use tab stops for this, with an underline character specified as the tab leader character.

Affinity Publisher Help: Tabs

[yinYangMountain]

Alfred: Ahh... so use a form of leader dots but, instead, substitute an underline. OK, I'll try that.

[yinYangMountain]

Alfred: It worked. And, although I'm not sure, I'm guessing that's probably the method the original designers used. THANKS!

[thomaso]

40 minutes ago, Alfred said:

You can use tab stops for this, with an underline character specified as the tab leader character.

6 minutes ago, yinYangMountain said:

Alfred: It worked. And, although I'm not sure, I'm guessing that's probably the method the original designers used. THANKS!

This thread of 8 steps now feels like 100 ... :•(    

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