Text options/bugs in Designer

[Ggraphic]

Hi everybody! Amazing work with Designer!
I am working as a graphic designer and I make extensive use of typography. Of all the wonderful tools Designer provides, seeing serious typographic options was a relief! (Still missing a glyphs panel though, which is really important I think, especially with dingbats or special characters drawn within the typeface).

BUT, I may miss something, but to me is really weird to see an auto-hyphenation text box missing in such a complete piece of software, especially in english! Am I overlooking it?

I would like also to let you know that sometimes ( i really can't get the ratio in this, it just seem to happen randomly) if you type a precise paragraph leading distance (let's say 1 pt) Designer reads it as line height numbers (so leading as 1 lines) instead of 1 pt, and sometimes even mixes both measurements, resulting in weird unprofessional spaced text or forcing you to use two different systems within the same document, which is really confusing. 

I don't know if that's intentional and I am missing how to use one of those or if at least one of the two systems can be deactivated.

I attach two screenshot showing what i mean. One text uses 12 pt leading, the other writes 1 pt but is in all evidence 1 line height! 


I really hope you improve these simple text features (hyphenation, glyphs and fix leading) to have a really amazing program for professional use also outside of illustration!

BTW the text rendering is FANTASTIC, to see such sharp and beautiful typography is worth the price alone!

Hope to be of some help, keep it up!

[Dave Harris]

Thanks for the feedback. We don't currently support auto-hyphenation. That's something we'll have to add for Publisher. In the mean time you can use soft hyphens to hyphenate manually.

 

We have several ways of setting paragraph leading. If you click the leading popup, the top few entries should be Default, Exactly, % Height, At Least, Multiple. Which of these is selected affects how what you type into the box is interpreted. When the displayed value is in brackets, it means it's a calculated value. For example, set Exactly and 12pt, and the display will show 12pt. Set % Height and 100%, and the display will show (12pt), because 100% of a 12pt font is 12pt.

 

That's how it should work. I'm surprised to see the 1pt displayed for what does not look like 1pt leading. That's probably a bug - it looks like this is the Windows version and it may be getting the units wrong. Can you remember what you typed to get it into that state? Which items are ticked in the popup?

[Ggraphic]

Hallo Dave, many thanks for the reply! I can't wait for publisher to be ready, really!

I figured it out about the brackets and exactly % height etc, which would be fine if it was consistent (even if it would be great to be able to select a default — Exactly OR %Height— , maybe document based, as it's working with selecting pixels pt mm etc for measurement).

I am used to just type in directly the value and adjust from there by eye. So i guess the bug appears typing directly the value, because it happens frequently to me as I often use typefaces i already know how i want them to be spaced and lead. 

It's a Mac version, 1.4.2 on last version macbook pro running Yosemite

Thanks a lot, this suite is going to be a masterpiece with all the energy and listening you guys put into it!
 

[Ggraphic]

I attach a copy of the project, 1 pt is set to exactly, 12 pt on default.

text leading bug_affinity.afdesign

[JimmyJack]

Ggraphic,

 

On the blablabla lines you have a 12 in the After Paragraph Indent field. Set that back to zero and the 1 will act like a 1 in leading. Now you can change the leading to 12 and all will be well.

You were sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul so to speak.

 

(you also have a 1pt line return in-between "Serif" and "blabla".... not sure if that was on purpose.)

 

[Dave Harris]

I figured it out about the brackets and exactly % height etc, which would be fine if it was consistent (even if it would be great to be able to select a default — Exactly OR %Height— , maybe document based, as it's working with selecting pixels pt mm etc for measurement).

 

If you change it, it should become the default for new text objects in that document. If you then use Edit > Defaults > Save, it should become the default for new documents, too. That will save all the object defaults: text ones like font, and also shape ones like stroke weight and fill.

[Ggraphic]

Many thanks JimmiJack, you are completely right! the weird thing is I am completely sure I did not touch After Paragraph Indent at all, could maybe any Adobe-minded keystroke activate that? Maybe a shift+return?

Thanks Dave, i think my problem then is that often i get a after paragraph indent completely unintended, which explain what I though was a inconsistent behaviour for default leading!

i try to recreate this from a completely new doc and see how in the world i could have changed after paragraph indent

thanks a lot guys!

[Ggraphic]

I messed up a bit with it trying to understand. Am I right supposing that when doing a text box the after paragraph indent is set automatically (at least this is what i see happening) with the same pt value of text height? Which, in my case is 12. 
I can then change leading values and it actually works correctly. But if i change text height value (let's say to 200) After paragraph indent is still at 12!

I suppose my problem then is
1— that the API (after paragraph indent) is not automatically set to 0
and
2 — that it does not update when changing text height value, but it remains set to an initial default, working somehow inconsistently. 

An example: if i write a world in 12pt text height, press enter and write another world, the leading is 24 pt (automatic API of 12 +normal auto leading of 12), if i write in 50 pt, pressing return gives me a leading of 62 (auto API of 12+ normal auto leading of 50)!!. In my opinion leading should be in the first case 12, in the second 50, unless specified intentionally with the API control.

i think API function is totally useful, but only when needed, not always, and especially not always set to one initial value (12 pt in my case).

 

Is there a way to bring the automatic API always to 0 pt, so leading decides also end of paragraph indent, and make use of API only when in need? 

If you correct however API to 0 and then save, you are right that every new text-box within the document has API at 0, so ultimately the question is is: why API for the first text box is automatically given the (fixed) text height value instead of being 0? can i change that?


Disclaimer: Writing this only trying to understand how this works if it is an error of mine and if not, really to help you with your, once again, amazing piece of software!

Thanks a lot, here an example of what i mean
 

text leading bug_affinity 2.afdesign

[Dave Harris]

I messed up a bit with it trying to understand. Am I right supposing that when doing a text box the after paragraph indent is set automatically (at least this is what i see happening) with the same pt value of text height?

 

No. The After space is independent of the text height. However, both have default values, which both happen to be 12pt as shipped.

 

At least for Frame text. Art text has a default of 0pt for After. This is because Art text doesn't line-wrap, so people tend to use hard line breaks, and wouldn't want a gap after every line.

 

Frame text does line-wrap. It's better to use After space to separate paragraphs than to put a blank line. Of course, you can also use a first line indent to mark where new paragraphs start, in which case you might not want the After space. We had to pick one scheme or another for our defaults and we went with After space rather than left indents. I think it's the more common style - it's what we naturally use in this forum, for example. Feel free to change it for your documents. I describe above how you can set new defaults.

[Ggraphic]

All right, I see now!

the default saving is indeed a powerful feature, thank you both very much for the explanation and your time!