Specking and selection of type in Publisher

[Nivrams]

I'm new to Publisher, as are most others. I am finding specking and manipulating type very difficult. For instance, I have found no way to set 14 point Walbaum (or anything else) with 16pt leading. There are two locations that indicate size, the horizontal tool (Menu?) bar and the character box. Only the horizontal tool bar affect a change in size. Changing the font size in the character box does nothing. There is no control labeled leading as such, just something called "Leading override" in the box, whatever that means. Leading is a hard number in points, regardless of font size. Auto leading is the default number of points allowed to a specific size. If this is what gets overridden, then the results should be in the total amount of points, not just the amounts added or subtracted. In any case the default leading appears huge, with no supporting data that I can see. Font layout is a trial-and-error eyeballing process. Unless I'm missing something, there is no way of controlling leading in the tool (Menu?) bar.

The glyphs window for Bodoni ornaments resulted in a blank box, necessitating a trial and error search for the desired glyph. I don't yet know if this is generally the case or just with this font, or non-alpha numeric fonts. In any case the glyphs panel is needed in for searching through graphic fonts. Have I missed something?

[R C-R]

There are far too many text formatting options to cover more than a few of them in one post, but a few things to consider you might find helpful:

Leading is a paragraph attribute; leading override (in the Character panel) can be used to override paragraph leading for selected (highlighted) text. It will be applied to all of the line where the text is selected.

Point size can be set on a per character, word, or whatever basis by highlighting it & changing the size, for example in the dropdown on the context toolbar or in the Character panel. Frame text point size for the entire text block can be changed by selecting it with the Move tool (so the bounding box shows, not the text cursor) & using either of the above (context toolbar or Character panel) or by dragging the extra bounding box control handle on the canvas, below & to the right of the 8 edge handles.

In Preferences > User Interface there is an option to show text in points. If unchecked, text size will be shown in document units, whatever that is set to; if checked it will always display size in points.

There are many other options that affect text formatting. Hopefully, other users more familiar with them than I will add their comments here.

[Catshill]

It has taken me some time to get my head round this as well.

Differences between...

Selecting a text frame vs selecting text

Making changes to paragraphs vs character styles

Getting my head round style handling (character and paragraph) and creating my own styles as well as adding text frames to assets really helped me jump to the next level. Still a way to go though.