Suggestion Underline options - confusing dialog

[EmailGeek]

Is it now possible to offset an underline in Affinity Publisher 10.1, given it’s been a requested feature for at least three years?

[garrettm30]

1 hour ago, EmailGeek said:

Is it now possible to offset an underline in Affinity Publisher 10.1, given it’s been a requested feature for at least three years?

No. The length of time since it has been requested unfortunately does not have anything to do with it. For one thing, there are many hundreds of requests (many of them good ones that I too would like to see eventually), and Serif can't get to them all right away. Furthermore, so far as I know, Serif has not yet given any indication that they do intend to make changes in regard to further underline options.

[Gideon S]

Yes I wish we had more underline control. In InDesign I would control the underline to make it thicker, transparent, and lower giving it a much more professional appearance. In Publisher, I'm stuck with the same color as the text (I think), just a thin line and wherever the font positions it. 

[garrettm30]

3 minutes ago, Gideon S said:

In Publisher, I'm stuck with the same color as the text (I think)

That part, I am happy to say, is untrue. We can change color of the underline independent of the text. But you are right that the thickness and position is not changeable. Since we can change the color of the underline, it would also be good to be able to set whether the underline is above or below the text, but this we cannot do either.

[Gideon S]

6 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

That part, I am happy to say, is untrue.

You're right, I just discovered this! I am currently experimenting with paragraph decorations as an underline. I successfully created a custom underline using a paragraph style with decoration, but can only apply it to an entire paragraph, not just a single word (like for online links within a paragraph). Is this true that you can only apply paragraph styles to an entire paragraph (I guess that makes sense...)

 

[garrettm30]

3 minutes ago, Gideon S said:

Is this true that you can only apply paragraph styles to an entire paragraph (I guess that makes sense...)

 

That part, yes, because it is a paragraph attribute.

However, we are talking about underline color, which is a character attribute, and you change that too. Look in the decorations section of the Character Studio.

[Gideon S]

Got it thanks. I'm able to change the underline color, just not thickness.

[garrettm30]

6 minutes ago, Gideon S said:

I'm able to change the underline color, just not thickness.

That's right. I'm sorry to say that is the current state of it. That is why we are asking for additional controls like thickness in this thread.

[loukash]

Toying a bit today while still working in Publisher v1, suddenly I had a few ideas how to at least partially achieve a few different underline "styles" by using a combination of character and paragraph attributes plus a little bit of basic math:

That's on the premise of a basic 20 pt font size with 20 pt leading.
Not everything is possible but at least in some cases it may give you a few more options.