I’ve been looking all through the manual trying to find how to do this. Being new to font making/editing, I probably don’t know the proper terminology to look for. I’ve combined several fonts to make a special one for a project I’m working on for a few friends and after typing a line of text, once I hit return, subsequent lines are too close to the first one vertically and they wind up overlapping by a few points.
I have not been able to figure out how to set this spacing. Fortunately the CAD program I am using for the project has a vertical spacing setting that I can use temporarily, but I’d like to learn to do it right so I don’t have to do this in the future.
Any help from you experts would be greatly appreciated.
Jim Sheldon
Have you calculated the metrics on the Font Properties, Metrics tab? This will usually adjust the line-spacing to a suitable value. You can increase the line gap if you want to increase the default line-spacing for your font.
Thanks for your help again Bhikkhu. The main reason I didn’t find this when looking and searching the manual is that I discovered early that the original typographer’s term for line spacing was/is “LEADING” (pronounced LEDDING, not LEEDING) that came from the days of the Linotype machine when the Linotype operators added a character’s height of “lead” under each line of type.
Some years back I worked with a newspaper owner/editor to change his type-setting systems from Linotype machines over to a completely computerized system and I did learn quite a bit of the terms back then. I was in my 50’s then and am 82 now so have forgotten much as I hadn’t used any of that knowledge up until just a couple of weeks ago.
Jim Sheldon
That was the exact information I needed Bhikkhu. One minor thing, I was used to working in “Points” of type on the US systems, but evidently that isn’t the case here. I actually had to set all the line gaps at 1400 to get the spacing I needed, but it came out looking exactly as I wanted it to. I’ll experiment with it further and do some more research now that I know where to look.
Thanks a million,
Jim Sheldon
The units are funits, which depend on the funits per em setting for the font.
The default for new fonts is 2048 funits per em.
For my fonts, I generally design them to have 12point default line-spacing for 10 point text.
Typo Ascender (1912) + Typo Descender (546) = 2458
2458/2048 = 1.2001953125
Thumbs up on that! I applied the above information and it’s working very well in the “Lightburn” program that I use to run my Laser Engraver. I was able to make the name badges I need to take with me to our radio club meeting in the morning. Next project, a completely new font that I CAN call my own, 