How to use typographic variables?

[anweid]

The help pages for Affinity Designer 1.5.2.58 (German, under a German 64-bit Windows 7) state that it is possible to use special variables in expressions to define things in edit fields. E.g., this works nicely in the transformation panel by selecting an object and writing 'w' in its height field, effectively making the object quadratic. Nice.

 

The help pages also tell me I could use the expression '12pt / x' to define the x height of text, and that the variables

• xheight,
• ascent and
• capheight

are supported. Unfortunately, trying any syntax that I could think of in the text height field, it always ignored that syntax and did not change any text height (but kept the height at its previously defined 12pt). The expression '12pt / x' mentioned in the help pages didn't work, either, no matter whether or not inputting the spaces. It seems that I am missing something somewhere. It would be nice to know where I need to enter what expression in order to, e.g., set a text's capital height to, say, 5mm. Thanks for your help.

 

Andreas Weidner

[R C-R]

Expressions like 12pt/x work fine for me on the Mac versions, exactly as described Dave Harris' explanation here. They work with or without spaces & with other units like mm or inch instead of points.

 

But to do anything, some text must be selected, either an Artistic or Frame text layer or some or all of the characters in either of them.

[anweid]

I waited several updates and tried again to use typographic variables, but still to exactly NO avail. Either this features is still not implemented in Designer version 1.6.4.104 (on Windows 7, 64bit, German), or I'm still doing something wrong. In 2017 as well as now, I tried the following:

1. Create a frame text object.
2. Type some text into it.
3. Select some of that text.
4. In the 'character' panel, type '1cm/a' (without the quotes) into the text size edit field and hit the return key.
5. Nothing happens. The '1cm/a' is just replaced by the text size in points that had been there previously.

I cannot imagine what could be wrong with the above. If I type '10/w' into an edit field from the 'transformation' panel, everything works exactly as expected (no-one would WANT to enter '10/w' into that edit field, but it works perfectly). I just don't have any luck with the typographic variables a, x and c when entered into the 'text size' field. Thanks for the help.

Andreas Weidner

[Polygonius]

To be on save side - make sure that both attributes are set to to what you wish (signs and break/paragraph) and if you use text-style or text-template make sure that you really mark all signs, spaces, breaks... before setting your attributes.

[Alfred]

8 hours ago, anweid said:

If I type '10/w' into an edit field from the 'transformation' panel, everything works exactly as expected (no-one would WANT to enter '10/w' into that edit field, but it works perfectly). I just don't have any luck with the typographic variables a, x and c when entered into the 'text size' field.

 

I can confirm this in Affinity Designer 1.6.4.104 on my Windows 10 system, If I use 72pt/x in the Transform panel it uses the x value there (i.e. the horizontal position coordinate) but if I try to use a similar expression in the Text Size input control in the Character panel it has no effect.