Participant

Question

How to fix baseline of Graphite Std Narrow font?

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
December 30, 2013
3 replies
1279 views

I bought this font recently from Adobe. The text is top-justified in a text box (in my CAD program and in Pages on a Mac). I need it to be center-justified vertically.

I'm using a MacBook Pro with OS 10.8.5.

Any tips or suggestions?

Thank you,

Doug

This topic has been closed for replies.

bjmnroy

Participant

I know this is a pretty old thread as of now, but you are correct about there being something broken with the Graphite font on Mac.

I have the same font in Windows, and when I load a drawing done in Windows (where everything is aligned correctly) onto the Mac side, the baseline of everything in Graphite is off. It may be a Mac OS thing rather than the font itself, but there definitely IS something wrong with this font (at least on Mac).

Dov Isaacs

Legend

The fix you are looking for is not with the font itself, but with how you are defining your “text boxes” or perhaps your styles in these programs.

First, there is nothing in a font that would enable text formatted with that font to automatically vertically center-justify. I suspect that you are looking for “more space” between the top of the text and the top of the text box.

The amount of space from the top of such a text box to the baseline of the text depends on how the program in question does its layout and the metrics information in the font.

For some programs such as InDesign, you can specify exactly how the distance from the top of a text box (or frame) to the baseline is determined – cap height, X-height, leading, ascent, or a fixed amount of space. Both X-height and cap height are metrics of each individual font which may differ significantly from font to font based upon the design of the glyphs.

Other programs either use a fixed amount of space based on text point size, leading, or the size of the bounding box of the largest character of the font. The latter situation is how Microsoft Office applications appear to work. Graphite Std Narrow may not have any “large characters” that would artificially increase the space above the top line of text and that may account for the differences you see using this particular font.

Your CAD program probably does not have any fine control over first baseline placement in a text box. You may need to move and/or adjust the size of the text box to meet your layout needs. Apple's Pages application may have some controls that your enable you to set the distance from the top of a text box / frame to the first baseline. There is no simple adjustment you can make to the font itself.

- Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

D

dougitectAuthor

Participant

Thank you for taking the time for the thorough reply.

My CAD program has a label tool which has text and an arrow combined. When using this font the arrow on the side is not vertically centered on the associated text. (Other fonts I've used with this label tool don't do this.) Hence my problem.

What suprises me is that Graphite Std Narrow has "metrics information" that is different than other fonts I use. Is there a version of this font that isn't "top justified"?

Dov Isaacs

Legend

The reason that Graphite Std Narrow has metrics information that is “different” from that of other fonts you are currently using is because this font is in fact different.

I opened both Graphite Std Narrow and Arial in a professional font editor program to look at what the differences actually are.

(1) Graphite Std Narrow has a relatively small set of glyphs (character definitions) - 261 - compared to Arial which has a complement of 3417 glyphs, many of which are much “larger” and “taller” than those of Graphite Std Narrow.

(2) In terms of the actual font metrics within these two fonts, they differ tremendously and reflect the differences in the maximum dimensions of glyphs within the fonts.

Arial:

Ascender 0.728, X-Height 0.518,
Bounding Box (-0.664, -0.324, 2, 1.006)

Graphite Std Narrow:

Ascender 0.63, X-Height 0.41,
Bounding Box (-0.127, -0.250, 0.764, 0.865)

Depending upon how the underlying layout engine of an application interprets these metrics, you will get significantly different spacing as you change fonts. As I indicated in my original response, the more sophisticated / professional layout programs give you a bit more control over how text is spaced, both interline and from the top of a frame / text box to the baseline.

Conceivably, you could buy a copy of a professional font editor and modify a font's global metric information to force the font in question to “properly” align in your particular document with your application. On the other hand, you will possibly mess up the font in terms of use of that font with other applications and documents. This approach is obviously very strongly discouraged! (It is also very expensive and for many non-Adobe fonts, may violate the end user license agreement for the font!)

Alternatively, if you really want or need to use this font or fonts with similar metrics characteristics (I've checked – Graphite Std Narrow is not the only font with metrics that would yield the results you are seeing), you will accordingly adjust your layout or the style options of your program(s) to accommodate the font.

Again, there is nothing wrong with the Graphite Std Narrow font, but like many, many other fonts, it differs in characteristics from the fonts you are more accustomed to using in these particular applications.

Good luck!

- Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

Jeffrey_A_Wright

Community Manager

Moving this discussion to the Adobe Type forum.

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