I have created a font that required an especially high Ascender and an especially low Descender (2335 & -1441) in order to allow for long strokes in a script style, handwritten greek.
When using this font, it is compatible within a document insomuch as to say that it can be used normally with other fonts, etc. The problem I have encountered is that the Ascender and Descender of a font, such as Times New Roman (1825 & -443), makes for slimmer verticle line spacing. When using the new font in the same line, it ruins the verticle line spacing continuity and makes the text look horrible (meaning the text itself in spacing, not the font). It’s as though one line in the middle of the paragraph is set at 1.5 line spacing, if you understand my meaning.
What I want to know, if someone has the answer, is if there is a way to leave the Ascender and Descender alone to preserve the letter forms, but to allow the characters to sit within an 1825 / -443 limit and overlap the lines above and/or below where necessary, as one might often see in real handwriting?
The line gap (Format, Metrics, Calculate) in the font cannot be any less than zero. The only way is to use fixed line spacing in your word-processor because what you want to do, in effect, is use a 15 point font at 12 point line-spacing.
If you manually set the ascender/descender to 1825 and -443 in Font Creator, then try Test Font (F5) you can see what will happen in your word-processor.
I have created a font that required an especially high Ascender and an especially low Descender (2335 & -1441) in order to allow for long strokes in a script style, handwritten greek.
The thing which concerns me here is that the Ascender is more than 2048.
I do not know the answer to your question about overlapping, but I am wondering if you might find a copy of my Chronicle font useful to look at, as I tried to produce the effect of characters with long ascenders and descenders.
I have a script font called Chuzzlewit script with long ascenders and descenders.
4096 funits/em
3812 Ascender
-1397 Descender
116 Line Gap
Total 5325
This is much more than 4096, but it doesn’t matter. It just means that if you use 10 point text at single line spacing the leading will be 13 points instead of 12 points, which would be more usual for an ordinary text font.
Line Gap = (2048 x Default Leading/100)-(Ascender-Descender)
116 = (4096*130/100)-(3812+1397)
116=(5325)-(5209)
I calculated the line gap to give a round figure for Default Leading.
If you calculate the metrics the line gap will be zero, as it cannot be less than that. If you set this 10 point font at 10 point fixed line-spacing it will result in some ascenders colliding with (i.e. intersecting) some descenders. The top of the A, for example, would collide with the descenders of f,g,p, and y. If set at 12 point leading, it would be fine.
Default Leading.png
What you are describing is sort of what I want. The appearance of the text has long strokes. It is only because of the long strokes that the font ascender and descender is as high as it is. The body proper of each character is on the approximate size of a times roman or palatino font. I don’t care if one of the strokes overlaps a letter below it. That’s actually what I want it to do.
The fixed line width in the word processor did as suggested. It just cut off the top and bottom of the letters in question with the long strokes. I want it to not cut off but still fit in the shorter verticle space with an overlap above and below, while simultaneously retaining the font size consistent with the surrounding text of other font types.
After trying a couple of word-processors, (Wordpad and Open Office) I concluded that the only solution is to use DTP software.
Serif Page Plus SE is free and very powerful. I had no problems using Page Plus 9 or 10. I could set the line-spacing as tight as I wished without any clipping. Page Plus SE is basically PP9 without the PDF and HTML output options.
If you find the text clips at the edges of a text frame, just increase the frame margins.
I suspect that PageMaker, Quark Express, or InDesign will handle this equally well if you happen to have those programs.
WordPerfect will also handle fixed line-spacing without clipping.