Character text line spacing

[dooovy]

Hi when in character text mode would it be possible when having multiple lines (ie a menu list or bullet points) that if you clicked on the list with the node tool a small box is created that can be clicked on and dragged up and down to increase the line spacing on the fly as in CorelDraw, this is a much quicker way of adjusting by eye, rather than having to use the text edit box all the time, can also be used for a single line to increase kerning.

 

Thanks

[rui_mac]

I'm currently on vacation and I only brought my iPad so I can't test out Affinity Designer and I don't know if this is already working.

The best (at least the simplest) way to adjust leading and tracking/kerning on the fly is to select text and:

 

Press Alt+Cursor Up key to decrease leading.

Press Alt+Cursor Down key to increase leading.

Press Alt+Cursor Left key to decrease tracking.

Press Alt+Cursor Right key to increase tracking.

 

To adjust kerning, instead of selecting several characters, the cursor is placed in-between characters. Then the same Alt+Left/Right Cursor keys are used.

 

Adding Shift will allow to different increments/decrements: 1 em space or .1 em spaces.

 

Of course, this doesn't mean that numerical adjustments in a pallete should be ditched.

[Dave Harris]

In Mac text apps, Alt+Cursor key moves the caret to the ends of paragraphs or words, so we can't use that to address leading, tracking or kerning.

[rui_mac]

Damn!! It works on many apps. All Adobe apps and even in FreeHand. I'm so used to Alt+Cursor keys.

Anyway, there must be a modifier key combo that performs tracking/kerning and leading. Using just commands and/or controls is not flexible enough.

[Dave Harris]

We're re-considering. The next beta will use alt-arrow keys for kerning, tracking and leading (with alt-cmd for bigger changes). Cmd-arrow will do word movements, and ctrl-arrow will do start/end of line. This is something of a trial, to see whether not having the OSX standards is more annoying than not having the Adobe standards. In the long run we'll make it customisable somehow.

 

Incidentally, Designer supports both tracking and kerning independently, but only one at a time is shown in the Character panel, depending on whether the text selection is empty or not. We should be improving the Character panel at some point.