Paragraph leading not working

[benwiggy]

I've just been tearing my hair out trying to work out my leading wasn't working -- and all because of "Leading Override" in Character style.

 

What on earth is the point of that? And any reason why it sets it own arbitrary value when you've expressly set the leading in the Paragraph panel?

[walt.farrell]

16 minutes ago, benwiggy said:

What on earth is the point of that?

To allow you to have a part of a paragraph (the line(s) containing a particular character or word or phrase) with different leading from the rest of the paragraph.

17 minutes ago, benwiggy said:

And any reason why it sets it own arbitrary value

It doesn't, that I've ever noticed.

Perhaps you set it accidentally?

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, benwiggy said:

And any reason why it sets it own arbitrary value when you've expressly set the leading in the Paragraph panel?

Like @walt.farrell said, it doesn't do that by itself. By default it is set to 'auto' (indicated in the numeric filed by parentheses around the displayed number), where the default is determined by the font size of the selection.

One not so obvious way to reset it to the default is to type just "()" in the Leading Override field (without the quotes). That will automatically set it to the default when you leave that field.

[benwiggy]

It seems to be setting that value in .indl imports. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have set such a thing in InDesign, even if it existed.

 

Even so, anything that negates the behaviour of another attribute should have some kind of 'flag' showing that the overridden value is currently not taking effect. Workflows often involve multiple people, who may not realise what someone else has done.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, benwiggy said:

Even so, anything that negates the behaviour of another attribute should have some kind of 'flag' showing that the overridden value is currently not taking effect.

Depending on what different users might consider to override some attribute of one or more object types, that could include just about anything that is not purposely set as a default. So just for text objects, in the Character panel alone among other things that could include any or all 8 positioning & transform attributes if they are not set to the defaults. In the paragraph panel, that could include any paragraph not using the same text attributes as all the others in the same text block (whether it is frame text or art text object).

For any kind of object, a non-zero shear or rotation could be considered an override of the defaults, as could any color that is not the same in every instance of that object type.

Beyond that, there is the entire Defaults system built into the apps with sync, save, revert, & factory reset to consider, & all the different text styles any document could have.

Basically, there are not many places where any number of attributes might typically override or even completely negate the effect of some other attribute(s) in all but the simplest of projects.

So minimally, for this to be useful there would need to be some way for each user to define what kind of attributes they would want to see flagged if they were not set to the defaults, & also some way to specify what they would consider to be document or application defaults.

[soapman]

On 12/28/2021 at 4:06 PM, R C-R said:

Like @walt.farrell said, it doesn't do that by itself. By default it is set to 'auto' (indicated in the numeric filed by parentheses around the displayed number), where the default is determined by the font size of the selection.

One not so obvious way to reset it to the default is to type just "()" in the Leading Override field (without the quotes). That will automatically set it to the default when you leave that field.

THANK YOU! this has been driving me crazy for years. Sometimes i wish they just had a "easy mode" toggle that disables and removes half the tools.

[JPScot]

The character override suggestion solved this problem for me. The leading issue is only appearing on imported InDesign files, so I think it's a 'feature' in the process. For me it's a very small price to pay for being able to use port legacy documents across to Publisher. These forums are a gold mine of tips and I can always find answers to any issues I'm experiencing. Thanks to all who contribute!