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Font metrics can cause your situation.
Just like in the days of hand-set cold type, letters fit inside a "slug" that contains the space between letters. So the space "ahead" of the edge of the first letter allows room between characters. That way letters literally don't crash together. The space ahead is proportional to the character size, not a given distance in mm terms. So as the character size gets longer, so does the distance from the left edge, as shown in exaggerated form at 400% display view percentage in the illustration below:
As I understand your post, you've already discovered that InDesign's typographic tools like paragraph alignment and custom kerning have no effect on the first character, and can't fix that space difference between bigger and smaller type sizes. And while I am exaggerating the distance above, if you're doing precise typography and see that, that difference appears to be meters wide.
By my experience, the fastest way to fix this is to align it myself.
- Drop a horizontal ruler guide right at the top of caps of your first line of text. If absolutely needed, also drag a vertical ruler guide at the exact far-left edge of the first character of your text. For the purposes of this exercise, we're just going to eyeball it from the left edge of the column.
- Get your Black Arrow/Selection tool, and drag the bottom of your text frame up to the horizontal guide at the top of your text, as shown below:
- Click on the red "+" sign at the right of your now smaller text frame to pick up the hidden text. Line it up to the horizontal guide and the start of your column, and click to place the text on your page once again. If you're working in millimeters, you have now created two linked text frames you can now move with micron-level numerical control.
- Blowing up my illustration even further to 1200%, I was able to select the larger Helvetica Hed text frame and press the left-pointing arrow key on my keyboard twice, then round down to the tenth of a millimeter to move the display type .65 mm to the left. Just to check, I dragged a vertical rule to the left of the two "H" letters and see I lined it up perfectly at that 1200% zoom.
As long as I don't add an extra line to the display type, or change my type sizes, the type thread flows perfectly and I shouldn't have to adjust this again. It's a pain, but if you absolutely must have that perfect alignment, this is a way to absolutely, perfectly, ensure that you get the result you want.
Or, because I work with publications and can't often take this much effort, I could simply give my text a first-line indent and an extra return or so space from the display type to obscure evidence of the typographic crime.
Both strategies will work.
Hope this helps,
Randy
Vielen Dank Euch allen -. die genannten Fakten sind mir bekannt. Ich bin nur erstaunt, dass man dieses "Problem" nie angegangen ist. ES wäre sicher machbar, denn die Vektorinformationen je ZEichen sind zugänglich, so auch der Abstand zwischen linkem Rand Zeichen und und dem effektiven "Erscheinen" des Zeichens. Wäre so ein erstes Zeichen am linken Rand, könnte eine Art optischer Korrektur des Textabschnittes (mittels zusätzlicher Option in diesem Bedienfeld) erfolgen, indem dieser Abstand ignoriert würde...
Aber dsa wird wohl nicht werden... also bleiben wir beim Handwerk...
Thanks to all of you again!
Urs
@Urs Stadelmann schreibt: "Kann man so etwas in ID lösen, "? "
Hallo Urs,
vermutlich fällt mein Vorschlag unter "ohne dabei grad weiss ich nicht was zu machen? ", aber Du könntest ein Leerzeichen VOR dem ersten Zeichen des Titeltextes einfügen und dann mit einer negativen Unterschneidung das gewünschte Ergebnis erzielen. Hier im ausgewählten Textrahmen sitzt die Einfügemarke zwischen dem Leerzeichen und dem folgenden "T":
Noch 'ne Möglichkeit mit viel Arbeitsaufwand:
Du erstellst Dir einen eigenen Font mit beispielsweise dem Skript IndyFont, das ausschließlich Glyphen ohne (oder für Deinen Zweck angepasstes) linkes "Sidebearing" enthält. Dieser Font wird dann per GREP-Stil dem Absatz zugewiesen.
Zu IndyFont von Jongware und Marc Autret geht's hier:
https://indiscripts.com/category/projects/IndyFont
Gruss,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )
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