Affinity Publisher Customer Beta 1.7.2.442: Leading stops working

[Adriandw]

I've been working on some decorative text for a display panel (using AfPub on the Mac).

So I've been tweaking the typographic settings for characters and pairs of characters in the text: ligatures, swash, alternates and stylistic sets.

Depending on the selection of flourishes applied, I need to adjust the leading.

Initially, leading adjustment works as expected, but there comes a point when I can't make any more changes to the leading.

The dynamic display of what a leading adjustment would look like as I hover the mouse over the different settings no longer works, and it's impossible to change the leading at all.

This is not font dependent - I've recreated it using Garamond Pro, Trattatello, Linux Libertine and Gabriola.

I also re-opened the afpub file in the Released version of Publisher, but the problem persists.

The only way round it that I've found is to cut the affected paragraphs from the document,  past them back in without format, apply the desired leading and then reapply the stylistic settings.

 

Adrian

[Jeremy Bohn]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to do, but leading is not for characters but is the spacing between lines. If you want to adjust the height of just a character then you need to use the baselines adjustment setting in the Character panel.

[walt.farrell]

14 minutes ago, Jeremy Bohn said:

If you want to adjust the height of just a character then you need to use the baselines adjustment setting in the Character panel.

The Character panel also lets you override the leading for a selected character or characters. The leading between that line of text and the preceding line will be the greater of the paragraph leading value and the characters' leading value, I believe.

In other word, if the paragraph leading is 12, and some character selection on a line has a leading of 15, the leading for that line will be 15.

[Adriandw]

Thanks for your suggestions 

@walt.farrell  @Jeremy Bohn

Maybe an image would help clarify what I'm trying to do.

In the text below (set using Gabriola), I've chosen alternate forms for several individual characters, including the k in Stockbridge and the first h in Church in the line below.

I would like to increase the leading of the paragraph (or just a single line) because of the additional height of the alternate letter h.

But Publisher Beta won't let me change the leading at this point. 

The only bypass I have found is to start again with default text form throughout, set the leading that I now know I need for that paragraph, and then apply the character overrides.

The ability to flip into a different persona is really innovative, so I thought that flipping into the Designer persona might help here. It didn't.

  

 

[walt.farrell]

Thanks.

Can you provide a sample file that has the problem, and more of a description of how you're trying to apply the leading override that isn't working?

[Adriandw]

@walt.farrell This screen capture shows the only way I know to change the leading, via the paragraph properties.
When it works, you can hover the cursor over the various options to see how the leading changes would affect the visual appearance,
and then click on the setting you want to apply.

As I said in a previous post, the leading change setting does work initially but then stops working after I've tweaked some of the characters.
The attached file displays the problem (on my iMac, at least) on the first three paragraphs of text which have had stylistic changes applied at the character level.

They are set in Gabriola but the problem has occurred with Garamond Pro and Linux Libertine.

The problem does not occur (i.e. I can still change the leading) in the final paragraph which has not had individual character changes applied and which is set (in this example) in red in Linux Libertine typeface.

 

MorleyCrucifixGabriola.afpub

[walt.farrell]

Thanks. The paragraph panel should work if you want to change the leading for the full paragraph. I'll look at your file.

If you want to change the leading only for the paragraph lines with the swashes I think you would use the Character panel instead. Select the characters, then use the leading override in the Character panel.

If I had to guess at this point, I'd guess that the character changes you've made are applying some local (character) formatting that is overriding the paragraph panel settings.

[Adriandw]

Walt - thanks.
I hadn't yet found the leading override that was hidden away under Character/Positioning and Transform.

I think your theory is probably right: the special character has overridden the leading for the paragraph in such a way that you cannot make any more changes to paragraph leading.

But you can still increase (though not decrease) the leading using "Leading Override" under "Positioning and Transform".