Paragraph leading

[scadwe]

I have a problem with line spacing. I can adjust the spacing between paragraphs, but there does not seem to be any way of adjusting the spacing within paragraphs. According to the help files, paragraph leading should do the job, but no amount of adjustment seems to have any effect.

[walt.farrell]

Do you have the paragraph text selected when you're making the adjustment?

[scadwe]

Yes, either one or many paragraphs or part of a paragraph. It makes no difference.

[scadwe]

I have been playing around further with this problem and it seems that paragraph leading works with existing paragraph styles, but doesn't work if the style has already been modified. e.g. body+ which has some characters in bold fails to change, while body will accept new leading, if the paragraph style is reset to the original.

[walt.farrell]

I'm a bit confused now. Are you talking about changing the leading of an existing paragraph, or updating an existing style to use a different leading.

For the former, I  now realize that you would use the Character panel, and apply a Leading Override.

For the latter, I think you would need to either (a) adjust the leading by the Character panel and then Update the style using the icon at the bottom of the Text Styles panel; or (b) Edit the style in the Text Styles directly. I would have expected (b) to change all the text that had not been otherwise overridden. That is, as long as some paragraph didn't already have a leading override via the Character panel, I would expect that changing the leading in the underlying text style would affect that paragraph. I'll have to play with that some more

[PatrickOfLondon]

Hi Scadwe,

 

I was mystified by this too, until by trial and error I found the following:

 

(a) have both the Paragraph panel and the Character panel in view.

(b) in the Character panel, find the Leading Override control (Positioning and Transform section, left hand side, fourth item down).....

       and use its drop-down arrow to set it to Auto. I had somehow set it to some other value,

       which caused the effect you noticed (i.e. adjusting paragraph leading had no effect).

(c) in the Paragraph panel, find the Paragraph Leading control (Spacing section, left hand side, second item down), click in it, and use the mouse scroll wheel to adjust.

 

Does this work for you?

 

 

[Chris_K]

Hi scadwe

Paragraph leading seems to be working fine here. As PatrickOfLondon says check that you do not have an leading override applied on a character level

Cheers

[Chrisw5]

I'm still mightily confused by this fuction. If I leave the settings in the Character panel alone, the box in the Paragraph panel will expand and contract the spacing quite happily, but it goes from 11.4 to 12.8, to 14.4, when all I want it to do is go from 11.4 to 11.5, to 11.6, etc.

Is there a way to make it do that, and if there isn't why not ? What am I missing ?

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Chrisw5 said:

I'm still mightily confused by this fuction. If I leave the settings in the Character panel alone, the box in the Paragraph panel will expand and contract the spacing quite happily, but it goes from 11.4 to 12.8, to 14.4, when all I want it to do is go from 11.4 to 11.5, to 11.6, etc.

Is there a way to make it do that, and if there isn't why not ? What am I missing ?

The leading specifications in the Paragraph panel seem to have pull-down values that are (for me) integer point sizes, or if text is not being measured in points then values that are equivalents to integer point sizes. However, you can type in the field and specify any value you want.

[Chrisw5]

Walt, on my system, the default leading in the Character panel is set to 12.4, and unsuprisingly, that's what I get when the leading box in the Paragraph panel is set to Default. However, my experiments show the following effects by using the drop down menu in the Paragraph leading box.

Default: Rolling the mouse wheel actually changes the drop down menu to Multiple, and increases the leading from 12.4 to 13.9 to 15.7 - an increment of 1.5 followed by 1.8., although you can select increments of 0.5. Why ? That just seems bizarre to me.

Exactly: Rolling the wheel gives increments of 1. Logical, but too big in my opinion. In this setting, yes I can type in whatever I want, and hit the Enter key, but how clunky is that ? Why not just make exact increments 0.1when the wheel is rolled ? That would give total flexibility, and ease of use.

% of height: Seems to work exactly the same as Multiple.

At least: Seems to work exactly the same as Exactly.

Multiple: Worked differently to the way it worked when I got there from default, as the incements were 1.5 followed by 1.6.

To me, the whole function is bizarre, and unnessecarily complicated. All I want to do is roll the mouse wheel, and increase or decrease the leading by whatever I want. This appears to be the only function in which Microsoft Publisher is easier to use than Affinity.

 

[PatrickOfLondon]

There do seem to be some oddities around this (in addition to the observations by Chrisw5), which I would suggest need sorting out by the developers.

For example, if I start with a blank document and add a text frame and some paragraphs,

...then click in the Paragraph leading control (Paragraph panel,  Spacing section, left hand side, second item down), and scroll the mouse wheel,

the units shown in the control seem to change randomly from points (e.g. 12.4 pt) to some strange decimal number...

...and that number does not correspond with the number and units shown in the Character panel, Leading Override control (Positioning and Transform section, left hand side, fourth item down).

 

I attach a (marked-up) screenshot illustrating this.

 

A few further notes:

1. it does seem strange to have the Paragraph Leading control, and the Leading Override control, in different panels. But for more advanced users there might be a good reason for this, which currently escapes me
2. if the Leading Override control's setting is anything other than Auto, could the background colour of the Paragraph Leading control automatically change, maybe to yellow, to indicate that what you set there is not what you are going to get?
3. Similarly, in these circumstances, could the background colour of the Leading Override control also be changed, maybe to yellow, to match the "alert" background colour in the Paragraph Leading control?

 

 

 

 

[scadwe]

I agree with PatrickOfLondon on one point; it would be useful to flag up when you are attempting to change something which is over-ridden in another setting. Whether this should be by means of a pop-up message or, maybe, a tool tip, I am not sure. Certainly, some indication would help novices who are using a trail and error approach to achieving some effect to avoid a long hunt for a solution.