Show special characters

[cdw]

These are still far too small in Publisher v. 2.1 – just about unusable to be honest.

[MikeTO]

IMO they are about the right size and they're about the same size as in ID for the most part, although with some inconsistencies. Some apps have symbols that are too large, such as the dot for spaces in Apple Pages.

Are there specific characters you find hard to see?

You could also try changing the colour of the special characters by setting a layer colour. Some people prefer orange for better contrast.

[cdw]

IMO you should go to Specsavers! InDesign's 'Hidden Characters' are at least twice the size of a similar Publisher 'Special Characters'. They are no where near to being useful for me and I deal with a lot of text (for books) etc. Nowhere near! 😀

Get an InDesign doc side by side with a Publisher one and go to 200% view, then you'll see; and it's not just because I use a Mac!

[cdw]

The 'Invisibles' in Apple Pages may be large but, at least you can see them!

[MikeTO]

8 hours ago, cdw said:

IMO you should go to Specsavers! InDesign's 'Hidden Characters' are at least twice the size of a similar Publisher 'Special Characters'. They are no where near to being useful for me and I deal with a lot of text (for books) etc. Nowhere near! 😀

Get an InDesign doc side by side with a Publisher one and go to 200% view, then you'll see; and it's not just because I use a Mac!

I did that before I posted. I took a screenshot from CreativePro that showed hidden characters in ID and typed the same text in the same font in Affinity. Paragraph marks, tabs, spaces, etc., all looked near identical.

[GarryP]

15 hours ago, cdw said:

These are still far too small in Publisher v. 2.1

Just saying that they are “too small” probably isn’t enough to tell anyone what you actually want.

If you can give a visual mock-up which shows them at the size you want them to be, without reference to other software which other forums members might not use, then that would be useful to show people what you are suggesting.

[cdw]

MikeTO:

So you haven't put identical docs side by side then! I'm using an 2017 iMac and when I put the docs side by side it is quite obvious that the 'special characters' are not the same size; in fact they don't come close. It's not until I go to 400% in Publisher, and InDesign still at 200%, that they look relatively the same. If you can't replicate what I did accurately don't bother making baseless comments; I'm trying to find things out and help others who may be suffering the same problems and I don't need or want your pointless comments thank you!

GarryP:

If I say something is 'too small', guess what, I think it's too small and I would like it to be 'bigger'! The Publisher 'Show Special Characters' feature is 'too small' compared to the one's used by Adobe InDesign, which to my sight, is just about right; the one's used by Apple Pages are a tad too big for me. As I say above, the InDesign characters are about twice the size of the one's used by Affinity Publisher. If you think the size in Publisher is fine and dandy, then that's OK for you but, for me they are just 'too small' to be useful. I hope this clarifies things. Good day...

For those who feel they have to have 'proof' I append a useful pdf.

Special Characters.pdf

[GarryP]

2 hours ago, cdw said:

If I say something is 'too small', guess what, I think it's too small and I would like it to be 'bigger'!

I understood that you want them bigger but you didn’t say how much bigger you want them to be.
1% bigger; 5% bigger; 10%; 25%; 50%; 100%; 200%; 400%?

I have no problem with the user being able to make them bigger (or smaller) if they wish to do so, it sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to be asking for, I was just trying to find out how much bigger you think they should be because what you consider to be right may be too big for some other people.

(I don’t have InDesign so I can’t see what you think is “just about right” and I don’t use Pages so I couldn’t see what you think is “a tad too big”. Which is why I suggested giving us an example.)

In your example you only give us one type of special character – the space marker – so how much bigger should the other special characters be? E.g. Tab, paragraph marker, section marker, index marker, note marker, anchor, etc. (See attached image for just some examples.)

[cdw]

GarryP

I think you make my point exactly... if you zoom into the Publisher section you will be able to make out some tiny little marks between the words; whereas, the InDesign section seems perfectly clear to me.

quod erat demonstrandum!

[GarryP]

So you would like the space markers to be around the same size relative to the text as they are in InDesign, I get that.
What about the other markers and special characters that I mentioned?

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, cdw said:

So you haven't put identical docs side by side then! I'm using an 2017 iMac and when I put the docs side by side it is quite obvious that the 'special characters' are not the same size; in fact they don't come close. It's not until I go to 400% in Publisher, and InDesign still at 200%, that they look relatively the same. If you can't replicate what I did accurately don't bother making baseless comments; I'm trying to find things out and help others who may be suffering the same problems and I don't need or want your pointless comments thank you!

Let's please be polite.

I did compare them side-by-side and here is part of the comparison, ID on the left, Publisher on the right.

I spent a great deal of time comparing ID and Affinity's special character symbols when I created the full special characters charge for Affinity 2.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/176386-special-characters-in-publisher-quick-reference-chart/

Your comparative screenshot shows only the symbol for a space. Is this the only symbol you have with an issue with? Personally, I prefer Affinity's dot because it's more readable. But your comparison shows ID in orange and Affinity in blue and the light blue is much less visible. It would be better to compare them in the same colour. Change Affinity to orange or ID to blue for a fair comparison.

 

[deeds]

Not only is there a significant size difference, this is further amplified by Affinity's stylisations further negatively affecting the weight of the bodily parts of the symbols, and the odd offsets.

 

I agree with the OP. Double the size. And remove or otherwise absolutely minimise the stylisations of the symbols, and keep their vertical offsets consistent such that fast perusing, overall observance and tracking and rapid saccades only need go left to right without any consideration of otherwise needless vertical analysis and consideration. 

[Conrad Hoffman]

On a similar note, and I can't find it now, there was a way to show all the special characters for a font, but the table was too small to tell the difference between them. If that still exists, it needs to be much larger.

[walt.farrell]

38 minutes ago, Conrad Hoffman said:

On a similar note, and I can't find it now, there was a way to show all the special characters for a font, but the table was too small to tell the difference between them. If that still exists, it needs to be much larger.

You may be referring to the Glyph Browser, and if you thought the characters were too small, then you may not have adjusted its settings to show them larger.

If you want to play with it, and provide some screenshots, that might be useful. But it is not really related to this discussion. There are other discussions about the Glyph Browser which might be more appropriate.

Window > Text > Glyph Browser should bring it up for you.

[Conrad Hoffman]

That was it- thanks! No problem sizing it now, no idea what confused me before.