Vertical spacing inconsistencies

[Steve Rickaby]

At 12:19 -0500 27/7/07, Peter Gold wrote:

>I'm not aware of bugs in this area (but there could be).
>
>I hope I understand your meaning. If you mean that the inter-paragraph
>space varies for the same consecutive paragraphs formats, depending on
>where they are within a column or text frame,...

Is what I mean, yes...

>... perhaps one or more of these options are turned on: Format > Customize Layout > Customize Text Frame > Balance Columns or Format > Customize Layout > Line Layout > Baseline Synchronization.

Wow, bang on. Although the Left / Right masters are only one column, 'Balance Columns' was enabled.

That's the good news. The bad news is that turning it off didn't fix the bug.

Baseline sync was off, though... and shouldn't affect a one-column layout anyway?

Now here's a thing. If I select Format > Page Layout > Column Layout on a Left or Right master page, FrameMaker says 'This document's Left/Right master pages have an irregular column layout. Using the Column Layout command will remove this layout. Are you sure you want to do this?'. I can't recall having seen this warning before, but it's maybe warning me about custom margins. Updating the entire flow sets margins as mirror images.

I don't think this relates to the problem I'm seeing, though. Allowing this command loose on the master pages moves things around, but it does not fix the vertical leading bug.

>If you mean simply that the spacing between all paragraphs isn't the
>identical, then try this tack:
>
>I'm sure you're aware that FrameMaker space between paragraphs is
>controlled by the larger of space below and space above. That is, it's
>not additive, as in nearly all other publishing and word-processing
>tools.

Yes. However, surely the spacing between all instances of a specific heading and the following para should be the same if they all have the same pair of tags and none of the paras have overrides, though? The fact that this is not working here is a singularity in my FrameMaker universe, and it's making me distinctly unhappy :-(

>The Fixed line spacing truncates any character that exceeds the
>setting's height. This is supposed to keep all lines in the paragraph
>from being pushed out of the leading setting by too-tall characters.

.. on inline graphics.

>The point size and line-height (leading) of the Fruitiger are the same
>("solid"), but the Revival leading is about the standard-amount larger
>than the type's point size.

Ok... but I see the same problem with the original files in which the body font was Times New Roman.

Just checked, and for 9.8 point Revival, 11.8 point is what FrameMaker considers to be single line spacing. That's how it got to be 11.8 points, I guess - it's tracking the font size. If I set the Revival to 10 points, the line spacing goes to 12 points, as you'd expect.

>Depending on the individual type font, point size isn't always what
>you think it is. Different fonts name the point size by referring to a
>dimension of a letter in the font. It's common to use the height of a
>lowercase "x" (x-height), but it's a flexible standard across type
>foundries; sometimes it's a different letter, sometimes it's a
>different dimension (width, rather than height, etc.), and in novel
>font designs, sometimes the reference for point size may be unique to
>that font.
>
>I agree that any fragment or all of this is probably too much for a
>Friday, anywhere in the FrameMaker universe<G>.

Not at all. But I'm not quite sure what you're suggesting I try here. Make the fixed line spacing of the Revival bigger? Smaller? Not fixed?

-- 
Steve