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Leading should default to 120% (not 103%)


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Leading (in paragraph settings) should default to 120% rather than 103% - like in other design software.

Apart from 120% being the standard in other software like Adobe CS. 120% leading is known to be best practice in graphics design in general. It's just a better starting point that does not even have to be changed in most cases.

Moreover a leading value of 120% has even been the default in the successors of Affinity products.

If you don't want to change the default of 103%, please make the default leading value configurable in the settings dialog!

 

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120% leading likely comes from compatibility with MS Word, which is why ID & Q et all use it. Depending upon the font & language, 120% can be too loose or too tight.

You can change it to be a default, though. You need to make the change, update defaults and text styles.

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120% is a standard in graphics design in general. This is explained in any good book about graphics design/typography.

Haha, yes, 120% can not be suitable, that's why you can change the value if needed. But in the majority of all cases 120% is the way to go - or at least to start with.

A deafult of 103% just makes no sense - unless you want documents with a lack of leading to become a synonym for being "made with affinity". Even PagePlus did it right - like the rest of the world.

 

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Sorry, but if you read about typography and calligraphy, you'll understand that Words "standard" 120% parameter is not a recommendation, and each font need different settings depending of its design (that's the whole purpose of these different designs, in fact: to combine purpose, lisibility and economy (economy: or how much text by page depending of the parchment/paper cost and selling price you want to achieve)).

Usually, you'll use the font's settings, done by the designer, or you'll accentuate it a little bit depending of  your design, if you have room or not in your page.

It's hard to teach not to use those 120%, since people trust too much "default parameters" instead of thinking and analysing their work, but usually 120% is too much and lines will look like independent lines in a title, or it'll be a pain to read a long text.

Reading good books or typographers’ blogs can help, for example:

http://paris.blog.lemonde.fr/

http://www.typogabor.com/

Here he talks more about "gris typo" and justification parameters since it's a reccurrent problem with ours apps, giving tip to be carefull of leading in the same way :)

 

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51 minutes ago, Wosven said:

people trust too much "default parameters" instead of thinking and analysing their work,

This is so true. 

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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Still, 103% leading currently is the default in affinity products - and it's just plain stupid.

And it's totally out of question that the person in front of the machine still needs to think.

It's also out of question that a default is just needed as a starting point. Or would you really like to show a popup to ask the user for the desired leading when inserting text? LOL

Moreover, it's causing unnecessary pain when coming from any other competing product. 120% leading is the standard default value - like it or not.

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3 hours ago, designchris said:

Still, 103% leading currently is the default in affinity products

No, it's not, at least in Publisher. The default leading is taken from the font metrics. For example, for Arial it's 103%, but for Calibri it's about 122%.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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9 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

No, it's not, at least in Publisher. The default leading is taken from the font metrics. For example, for Arial it's 103%, but for Calibri it's about 122%.

For Gabriola it’s 170% (to allow for the optional swashes, some of which are huge).

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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For my part, I am not too bothered by this, since we are able to set the leading as a percent or as a multiple in styles in addition to absolute. InDesign only allows "Auto" and absolute point sizes for paragraph styles (or am I mistaken?).

I do agree that the font default is often too narrow. Because we work in French, I always check to see if the descenders clash with accents on the capitals below. Here is a sampling of a few fonts with their default settings in Publisher. Some are okay, some not at all:

1034024677_ScreenShot2019-06-28at9_00_20AM.thumb.png.c14652eac42872387edb5eb906a16616.png

 

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6 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

No, it's not, at least in Publisher. The default leading is taken from the font metrics. For example, for Arial it's 103%, but for Calibri it's about 122%.

OMG - yes! Thank you for pointing that out!

I didn't notice that so far. Wow, that's changing the whole discussion.

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1 hour ago, Dave Harris said:

As Walk says, we get the default from the font metrics. You can however change that for new documents via Edit > Defaults > Save.

Can you elaborate on that, please, Dave?

I think I understand saving defaults, but in the context of adjusting paragraph leading, which needs to be relative to both the font and font size, what default setting are you suggesting we could adjust/save?

Thanks.

Never mind. I think that the hints from @Old Bruce and @MikeW are enough to enable me to play with this. Not that I plan to change it. I like the approach that you and the team have taken, Dave.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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24 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Can you elaborate on that, please, Dave?

I think I understand saving defaults, but in the context of adjusting paragraph leading, which needs to be relative to both the font and font size, what default setting are you suggesting we could adjust/save?

I think Dave means if you want 120% to be the default then feel free to set that as the default.

I would try it with some text selected in the No Style for Paragraph and Character then go to the Paragraph Studio. Select the leading and set to % and choose 120% and then go to Edit > Defaults > Synchronize from Selection and then Edit > Defaults > Save. I would not advise doing this because I think it is a foolish choice but if anyone wants to they can try. 

Again I would strongly advise to NOT do this.

I did it for my Space After Paragraph setting it to 0 points and that has stuck. I am happy with that.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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4 hours ago, garrettm30 said:

InDesign only allows "Auto" and absolute point sizes for paragraph styles (or am I mistaken?).

Yes, and since I use a grid for body text, I adjust leading accordingly for body text, and play around for titles and headers, etc. I don't need a popup, when the text feel right, I set the grid, the leading of paragraphs, and voilà! :)

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40 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Can you elaborate on that, please, Dave?

I think I understand saving defaults, but in the context of adjusting paragraph leading, which needs to be relative to both the font and font size, what default setting are you suggesting we could adjust/save?

Thanks.

Kinda like I mentioned in the first response...

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  • 5 months later...

Publisher is out and suffers from the same problem. It's just incredible.
PagePlus, Adobe CS, ... and even Word do it right - but Affinity people seem to persist on knowing it better.

As much as I like Affinity products and the idea of breaking Adobe's monopoly - such basic stupid decisions almost make the product a no-go.

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6 hours ago, designchris said:

Publisher is out and suffers from the same problem. It's just incredible.
PagePlus, Adobe CS, ... and even Word do it right - but Affinity people seem to persist on knowing it better.

such basic stupid decisions

I rather suspect that the vast majority of us are not suffering at all and assuredly feel that since it is their software, the Affinity people have a perfect right to design it the way they choose.  “Persist in knowing better” with “basic stupid decisions” is not a very nice way to solve your issue, even should Affinity decide to do it.  (Which I strongly hope they do not!)  Why not just use @Old Bruce‘s solution above, and leave the rest of us to adjust our leading to our hearts’ content?  Just a thought.  Merry Christmas!


24" iMAC Apple M1 chip, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 16 GB unified memory, 1 TB SSD storage, Ventura 13.6.  Photo, Publisher, Designer 1.10.5, and 2.3.
MacBook Pro 13" 2020, Apple M1 chip, 16GB unified memory, 256GB  SSD storage
,  Ventura 13.6.   Publisher, Photo, Designer 1.10.5, and 2.1.1.  
 iPad Pro 12.9 2020 (4th Gen. IOS 16.6.1); Apple pencil.  
Wired and bluetooth mice and keyboards.9_9

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The whole topic is not about any*one* suffering, but the product suffering from not being very user-friendly. Especially (but not only) non-pro users are affected. All the PROs here are not, because - of course - they know how to create aesthetic masterpieces with perfect leading, etc.

How is it better to start with aesthetically broken styles than with maybe not perfect but still alright ones?

Should we open a thread at Adobe, Microsoft, ... asking them to switch to horribly looking defaults?

Merry Christmas.

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On 12/9/2019 at 5:48 PM, fde101 said:

What problem would that be?

 

By this do you mean ignoring the values provided by the font and using an arbitrary number that is unlikely to have anything to do with reality?

Sounds like Adobe CC is too far away from reality to be used in professional environments. But Affinity products for sure are far ahead of Adobe. :D

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15 minutes ago, designchris said:

Should we open a thread at Adobe, Microsoft, ... asking them to switch to horribly looking defaults?

Why do you believe that Adobe, Microsoft, et al, know better than the font designers what the leading for their font should be?

Shouldn't the designer be the expert on how their font will work best?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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