Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 62594
Improve 'Drop Caps' functionality for fixed line spacings
Last modified: 2013-08-07 14:38:26 UTC
Drop Caps should work for any spacing. Try setting a paragraph with 18pt fixed spacing, with a drop capital for 2-3 lines. It appears deformed and disproportionally high. Change paragraph spacing to 1.5 or double spacing. See?
To me it looks quite o.k. Could you please attach a small document to show the problem? Thank you very much!
Created attachment 34473 [details] example of bad drop caps
Created attachment 34474 [details] the competition
Tested with OOo 2.0.1, WinXP. It took me some time to see what the problem might be. I have attached a comparison based on boardquake's test documents, with layout differences marked. When setting DropCaps, the User specifies the number of text lines this should 'drop' across. In the test documents this is set to 2 lines. However, the height of the drop caps font, doesn't account for the paragraph line spacing. Using MS Word for comparison, the height of the DropCaps is adjusted so that it always spans the two text lines with a constant spacing (marked red). However, for OOo the spacing (red) varies because the DropCaps height is not adjusted. ->'boardquake', have I understood the problem correctly? If so, you might want to modify the Issue summary to something more clear, e.g. : "Drop Caps formatting is not adjusted for variable line heights" Regards, Andrew.
Created attachment 34487 [details] Screen capture of possible formatting problem with DropCaps
You nailed it. I don't know how to change the summary, so you're welcome to do it. Perhaps is should be "fixed" with double quotes, because that's the ooo term; to me it's "leading" (the typographic term). The problem is that we still think in terms of single-1.5-double spacing, which are computer-standard, but are simply bad text-setting. Show me a professionally-designed book or publication set in those spacing settings.
Updated issue summary. From Typography 101 (off Google): "Leading" is the typographic term that describes vertical spacing between lines; the word originates from when the space between lines was filled with lead slugs of specific sizes that controlled the vertical spacing. This term has been adopted throughout the industry as a way to describe the distance, in points from baseline to baseline, of rows of type characters.
Yes, now I can see the problem. The drop caps look a little larger when used in fixed line spacing. It looks that Writer also evaluates the spacing for the first line of a paragraph. The attached document shows well the difference.