Leading should default to 120% (not 103%)

[designchris]

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

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

Write a few lines in Arial using Designer - are sure that this font comes with proper leading? And why does it look at least quite OK in all those other programs?

[Catshill]

On 12/9/2019 at 7:21 PM, Fixx said:

First thing  in creating a publication should be setting styles. (Well, first is setting document size.. but after that.)

Yes I agree with that. I often go through my publications and remove the default styles and ones that APub has “invented” so to speak.

[walt.farrell]

26 minutes ago, designchris said:

Write a few lines in Arial using Designer - are sure that this font comes with proper leading? And why does it look at least quite OK in all those other programs?

I have. It looks fine to me with Publisher's default, for the Arial font that I have. Certainly better than going to 120%, which is too widely spaced between lines.

[MikeW]

40 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

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?

Many/most fonts don't use maximum values in the ascent/descent values for a couple reasons. But set some text in Vietnamese and whatever the default line spacing is used for Arial will probably be too tight (I don't actually know anymore because I don't want to reset APub back to its defaults...).

10 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I have. It looks fine to me with Publisher's default, for the Arial font that I have. Certainly better than going to 120%, which is too widely spaced between lines.

Like I mentioned earlier, 120% is just what has been traditionally used, mostly due to Word's default. It is too loose when setting letters that do not have ascending/descending diacritics. It's fine when setting something that uses ascending diacritics. When there are both ascending/descending diacritics it begins to get tight when those letters on successive lines line up so ascending marks are directly below a line with descending marks.

But it is just a "safe" default. That's all it is. Any percentage that Serif would choose (and percentage it should be) will never usually do for a given typesetting job. Which is why it's a good thing defaults can be changed: this ability can/should satisfy everyone, including designchris. 

So I'm at a loss as to why all the whining about how Serif has chosen to handle it. Like the defaults? Leave them alone. Don't like 'em? Change them and be done with it.

This cranky SOB is now gonna retire from the discussion...

[Seneca]

1 hour ago, designchris said:

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.

I'm not sure what's your problem. Affinity Publisher gives you all the tools you need to get what you want.

And don't call stupid things you don't understand as this may backfire.

[designchris]

On 12/16/2019 at 11:48 PM, MikeW said:

So I'm at a loss as to why all the whining about how Serif has chosen to handle it. Like the defaults? Leave them alone. Don't like 'em? Change them and be done with it.

 

If there was a global app-wide setting for that, I'd be happy!

Anyway, thanks everyone for joing this truly hot discussion!

[Dave Harris]

On 3/2/2020 at 10:48 AM, designchris said:

If there was a global app-wide setting for that, I'd be happy!

Anyway, thanks everyone for joing this truly hot discussion!

You can use Edit > Defaults > Save to make the current defaults apply to new documents.

[designchris]

On 3/11/2020 at 10:12 AM, Dave Harris said:

You can use Edit > Defaults > Save to make the current defaults apply to new documents.

OMG - thank you so much!