Suggestion Underline options - confusing dialog

[Eugene Tyson]

Is it possible to offset the underline of text, change the stroke type too, maybe dotted, or dashed? 

The interface for Text Decorations is looking like this. 

 

Confusing Dialog

You'd think adjusting the stroke weight would affect the weight of the underline - but this isn't the case - it adds a stroke around the text. 

 

There is no way to adjust the stroke weight of the underline - that or I'm missing something.

[Dave Harris]

I'm afraid not. We get the width and position of the underline and stroke from the font metrics, so they are determined by the designer of the font and there is no way to override them.

[Eugene Tyson]

23 hours ago, Dave Harris said:

I'm afraid not. We get the width and position of the underline and stroke from the font metrics, so they are determined by the designer of the font and there is no way to override them.

How do other systems do it then? InDesign handles it quite well, as did Quark. 

Word even allows dotted or wavy lines. I think it's something that would be essential to a lot of workflows.

[ol4f]

Same confusion and opinion here.

For example you can use the underline options in InDesign to create some kind of highlighting.

[Jeremy Bohn]

What you're asking for is a separate feature from the underline option, which is a text style like bold or italics.

What you're looking for is what InDesign calls Paragraph Rules. I see no evidence of Publisher having this feature which seems like it should be a basic necessity.

[walt.farrell]

22 minutes ago, Jeremy Bohn said:

What you're looking for is what InDesign calls Paragraph Rules. I see no evidence of Publisher having this feature which seems like it should be a basic necessity

I think the Affinity term you may be looking for, rather than "rule", is "decoration".

[Alfred]

32 minutes ago, Jeremy Bohn said:

What you're asking for is a separate feature from the underline option, which is a text style like bold or italics.

What you're looking for is what InDesign calls Paragraph Rules. I see no evidence of Publisher having this feature which seems like it should be a basic necessity.

 

8 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I think the Affinity term you may be looking for, rather than "rule", is "decoration".

 

 

[MickRose]

I disagree with that. Indesign Paragraph Rules are more like Decorations. But Indesign can directly change the colour, size & offset of underlined text. APub definitely can't do that at the moment.

[Jeremy Bohn]

Never in my life would I have thought to call them decorations.

[Eugene Tyson]

1 hour ago, MickRose said:

I disagree with that. Indesign Paragraph Rules are more like Decorations. But Indesign can directly change the colour, size & offset of underlined text. APub definitely can't do that at the moment.

Exactly this - and quark could do it aswell. I used to underline words in kids books with dots, and apply a rainbow gradient... it was funky and easy to do with Underline.

[MickRose]

It doesn't help that there are Text Decorations and Paragraph Decorations. What about "Borders & Fills", "Extras", "Embellishments", "Highlights" - anything but Decorations. But I think we are stuck with it.

[ol4f]

15 hours ago, Jeremy Bohn said:

What you're asking for is a separate feature from the underline option, which is a text style like bold or italics.

What you're looking for is what InDesign calls Paragraph Rules. I see no evidence of Publisher having this feature which seems like it should be a basic necessity.

I had a quick look what people are doing with Paragraph Rules and definetly learnd something new.

And I also realized that what is in InDesign done with an underline (see attached screenshot) is just the characters background color in Affinity. Sometimes it is easier as you think...

[MickRose]

Can APub set character background colour? I thought that was just Pageplus.

"And I also realized that what is in InDesign done with an underline (see attached screenshot) is just the characters background color in Affinity. Sometimes it is easier as you think..."

[ol4f]

1 hour ago, MickRose said:

Can APub set character background colour? I thought that was just Pageplus.

"And I also realized that what is in InDesign done with an underline (see attached screenshot) is just the characters background color in Affinity. Sometimes it is easier as you think..."

Right next to the font color. The same in Designer and Photo.

[MickRose]

Thanks - I didn't know that. Is there a way to change the position/height of the background?

[ol4f]

I don't think so.

So more options for underline/strikethrou and/or  character background would be useful again.

[garrettm30]

I come to this thread after I discovered the lack of underline options, specifically offset and stroke thickness. On the current document that brought me to the forums for this question, I just want to adjust the offset for a font that is otherwise good. It looks like I have to go back to hunting for another font. Please add underline options to the roadmap.

[Alfred]

17 hours ago, garrettm30 said:

On the current document that brought me to the forums for this question, I just want to adjust the offset for a font that is otherwise good.

What font is it? Even if it’s a commercial font, some font designers are happy for users to modify their fonts as long as the modified version isn’t distributed (but you’d have to check, of course, that this applies to your chosen font).

[garrettm30]

4 hours ago, Alfred said:

What font is it? Even if it’s a commercial font, some font designers are happy for users to modify their fonts

It is Vollkorn.

I hadn't thought about modifying the font itself. If the font were essential, I might look into it (I currently do not have any font editing software). However, I think I do not want to do that for the sake of consistency across systems where the font is used elsewhere.

I cite this as an example of how extra controls on underlining could be useful. The document was originally set in Minion Pro (for some reason), but I need to move away from that since kerning with apostrophe in French is terrible on that font. I always used "optical kerning" in InDesign for that font, which yields better results in such cases.

Affinity is making me weed out the bad fonts.

[Alfred]

16 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

It is Vollkorn.

I hadn't thought about modifying the font itself. If the font were essential, I might look into it (I currently do not have any font editing software). However, I think I do not want to do that for the sake of consistency across systems where the font is used elsewhere.

Vollkorn is distributed under the SIL Open Font Licence, so you’re free to modify it if you want (and even distribute the modified version, as long as you don’t use the original — or ‘reserved’ — name) but that’s potentially problematic, as you’ve indicated, if you need consistency across multiple systems.

[kenmcd]

6 hours ago, garrettm30 said:

It is Vollkorn. 

How would you like to change the offset and stroke thickness?

I have been creating a Vollkorn specimen book to demonstrate the OpenType features in LibreOffice.

So you have me curious.

[garrettm30]

On that font, the underline is too low, so I would like to raise it closer to the baseline.

[kenmcd]

4 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

On that font, the underline is too low, so I would like to raise it closer to the baseline.

You mentioned Minion Pro - would you like it to be visually similar?

Or do you have some specifics?

[garrettm30]

As I recall, the underline in Minion Pro is acceptable.

I have completed the particular layout about which I was talking earlier. In this thread I was just giving an example of how the feature request for these additional features could be used. In InDesign, if I saw an underline that is not to taste, I would just fix it with offset or altered thickness as necessary, but we don't presently have such an option in Publisher.

 

[kenmcd]

I compared Minion Pro and Vollkorn underlining and I see what you mean.
Minion Pro is closer to the baseline and crosses the decenders at a higher point.

I love Vollkorn but as I have become intimately involved with it I have found a few issues.
e.g. for some reason the designer thinks the narrow non-breaking space should be the same width as a regular space (he stated this). That would be a problem in some languages who use it a lot.