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Agama · 05-01-2013, 07:32 AM

Man Eating Duck wrote:

Don't ever adjust line-height. Leave it at default. Readers will render a sensible default, many can override it if desired, but a silly value here can make it difficult to hit the correct value if you adjust the view.

dgatwood wrote:

This one, I disagree with. Here's why. Setting line height can make certain things possible. For example, drop caps. If you don't set the line height, it becomes highly dependent on the font, which means that changes to your font result in severe formatting breakage.

Also, for some fonts, the calculated line height ends up being less than 1.2, and if you don't force it up to 1.2 either by redesigning the font or by setting line-height, you'll end up with different layout in different readers. (Oops.)

So instead of saying "don't set it", I would say that if you are going to set the line height, never set it to less than 1.2 (many readers will ignore it if you do) or more than about 1.5.

+1

I have also found it necessary to use a line-height of 1.4 for books with a lot of superscripting, otherwise readers render variable line spacing depending on whether a line has any superscripts or not and this uneveness looks a bit messy.

05-01-2013, 07:32 AM	#29
Agama Guru Posts: 776 Karma: 2751519 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: UK Device: PW2, Nexus7	Man Eating Duck wrote: Don't ever adjust line-height. Leave it at default. Readers will render a sensible default, many can override it if desired, but a silly value here can make it difficult to hit the correct value if you adjust the view. dgatwood wrote: This one, I disagree with. Here's why. Setting line height can make certain things possible. For example, drop caps. If you don't set the line height, it becomes highly dependent on the font, which means that changes to your font result in severe formatting breakage. Also, for some fonts, the calculated line height ends up being less than 1.2, and if you don't force it up to 1.2 either by redesigning the font or by setting line-height, you'll end up with different layout in different readers. (Oops.) So instead of saying "don't set it", I would say that if you are going to set the line height, never set it to less than 1.2 (many readers will ignore it if you do) or more than about 1.5. +1 I have also found it necessary to use a line-height of 1.4 for books with a lot of superscripting, otherwise readers render variable line spacing depending on whether a line has any superscripts or not and this uneveness looks a bit messy. Last edited by Agama; 05-01-2013 at 07:35 AM.