How to you get perfectly aligned/sized text?

[david.cittadini]

I want to type the letter "F" inside a box so that:

 

1.  The left side of the letter "F" starts a position zero, flush to the left side of the box, and

2.  The top of the letter "F" starts flush to the top of the box, and

3.  The height of the letter "F" is the exact same height of the box.

 

However, whenever I type a letter:

 

1.  There is always a gap to the left, I cannot force the letter to start at position zero.

2.  There is always a gap to the top, I cannot force the letter to start at position zero.

3.  The letter never fills the box perfectly.

 

Below shows what I have to do to get what I want, and this method is very, very imprecise - I do not really know if the letter F is perfectly aligned to the left, top or the correct height, it is just a guess.

 

There does not seem to be an easy option to give me this kind of precision over the location of text in a box.  Any help would be appreciated :) 

[Bobaffinity]

All fonts have a  space band on both sides, so I'm not sure that you can accomplish this the way you want to. This is one of those instances where you should do a visual alignment to get the results you seek.

 

Bob

[Guest]

Hi David,

 

1) With a letter not vectorized, you can try the reverse: adapt the box to the letter. With snapping enabled, you can perfectly align the 3 sides and the letter.

2) If you vectorize the letter, you can give it the same height as the square and use snapping for alignment.

I hope to have answered your question.

[dutchshader]

In this post it is explained.

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/42279-fonttext-alignment-with-canvas/

[R C-R]

There does not seem to be an easy option to give me this kind of precision over the location of text in a box.  Any help would be appreciated :)

There is a way to do this precisely: use snapping. For example, the "Page layouts" preset will enable you to snap to the edges or corners of any margins you have set or the "spread" (more or less the equivalent of page size). Change to the "Page layouts with objects" preset & you can snap to the edges or corners of (for example) a rectangle.

 

These presets & various of the snapping options will allow you to snap a single character to one of several of its reference points, including its leftmost, rightmost, topmost or bottommost point, which for script & serif fonts, italic styles, etc. may be very different from a straight, horizontal or vertical edge characteristic of some san-serif, block style characters.

 

EDIT: Keep in mind that Affinity provides text tools, & text is (to simplify a bit) a very special class of vector objects with its own highly complex set of properties & rules that govern how glyphs appear & combine with each other. Generally, a block of text includes more than one character, & in Affinity (like most other apps that support advanced text capabilities) it can include multiple fonts, weights, styles, etc., all in one block.

 

This becomes important when considering snapping & alignment. Consider for instance this screenshot:

Believe it or not, that is just a single Artistic text object with 4 capital "F" characters, all set to 144 pt, with no baselines shifts, or anything else unusual except that each "F" is set to use a different font.

 

Using the "Page layouts with objects" snapping preset, I had no problem snapping it precisely to the bottom left corner of the rectangle, but note that its leftmost point is the serif on the first "F" while its bottommost point is the lowest extent of the 4th "F." If I had been snapping it to the top edge, it would have snapped to the topmost extent of that same "F."

 

Delete that last "F" & it would snap to the topmost point of the third "F;" or change the style of the 1st "F" to italic & that would change the block's leftmost extent; & so on.

 

Such is the world of typography.

[david.cittadini]

Thank you very much everybody, that is most appreciated  :)  :)