Drop Caps and Vertical Justification Misalignment

[Efvee]

Hello everyone!

I have searched the forum but I could not find anyone reporting the particular issue I am seeing. When I apply vertical justification to a text frame that also contains a drop cap the drop cap size no longer matches the second line of the paragraph. This results in an appearance that is undesirable for my layout staff. I am attaching a screen shot below. The left paragraph shows the correct sizing with vertical justification turned off, the second shows the problem with the leading and drop cap misalignment. Is there any way to solve this?

Unfortunately, manual adjustment will not work in this case because vertical justification applies variable spacing.
 

Thank you! 

[MikeTO]

There's no easy answer to this situation. Your example is very subtle because the vertical justification barely changes the leading so it would be nice if Publisher could adjust the height of the drop cap to match. But if you deleted half of the lines of text, the lines would be widely space and the drop cap would become huge.

Serif has chosen to calculate the drop cap height based on the leading prior to vertical justification. I believe InDesign doesn't allow a paragraph with a drop cap to be vertically justified and instead vertically justifies the rest of the text in the frame. IMO that is worse because then the leading within the frame would be inconsistent.

If there are just a couple of these you could manually tweak the drop cap. While changing the font size does nothing, you can change the horizontal and vertical scaling by equal amounts to increase its size. Of course you would have to change its baseline offset to shift it back down, too.

I would just avoid the situation - don't use vertical justification with drop caps and instead use a baseline grid to keep everything aligned.

[MikeW]

30 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

There's no easy answer to this situation. ... I would just avoid the situation - don't use vertical justification with drop caps and instead use a baseline grid to keep everything aligned.

Amen.

30 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

... I believe InDesign doesn't allow a paragraph with a drop cap to be vertically justified and instead vertically justifies the rest of the text in the frame. IMO that is worse because then the leading within the frame would be inconsistent. ...

I have no idea if fixed leading + vertical justification would work in APub. The below screenshot from ID shows three text frame of the same width.

#1 with a frame filled with placeholder text, no V-Justification

#2 what happens in ID when the frame height is changed and V-Justification is applied. This demonstrates Mike's point about the different methodologies.

#3 is as #2, but the leading has had a fixed value applied.

While this does work, it is a not-recommended hack/work-around that only increases work for layout people. I personally never V-Justify text frames.

[thomaso]

You can save a Character Style with the required drop caps manipulation and assign this in the Drop Caps options. This way you have to setup it only once for all drop cap instances. Unfortunately, it does not react immediately if you modify the stretching or shifting value of the style but requires to re-assign the style in the drop caps menu again. – However, like @MikeTO I think there are better and less cumbersome ways to achieve the wanted leading in paragraphs with drop caps.

[MikeW]

Same problem with character styles as with custom leading. I think.

It may work for a particular vertically justified frame, but for another with less or more justification, it will need tweaking. 

It's just a lot of work for little reward. 

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, Efvee said:

... When I apply vertical justification to a text frame that also contains a drop cap the drop cap size no longer matches the second line of the paragraph. This results in an appearance that is undesirable for my layout staff. ...

I think the only way to deal with this currently is to select the drop cap and use the Character panel to adjust its size and apply the necessary leading offset. A right royal pain.

Like others here I rarely if ever use vertical justification. It has its place, as for pull quotes for example. To put it bluntly I think it makes the page look wrong/sloppy/amateurish. A rather strong opinion and it may just be me. I find nothing wrong with a blank line or two at the bottom of a page, compared to inconsistent (and random) line spacing throughout the entire document.

Ask why does your layout staff want to use the vertical justification? White space is not our enemy.

[Efvee]

Thank you all for the feedback. I really appreciate it.

It seems to me the best way to ensure page to page consistency is with the baseline grid. I will see if I can talk my layout people into it.

It would be nice to have Affinity Publisher calculate the drop cap based on actual line position, i.e. after calculating the line spacing but obviously that is a future hope and is no immediate solution.