Indesign: Can you integrate the x-height in the ‘show baseline grid‘-option?
Dear all,
We all know that it is nice to have pictures aligned with the x-height of text in stead of the baseline, I am sure that we all do it intuitively, but does Indesign CS2 support this in the ‘Grid‘-options? Or are there plug-ins available?
Cheers, –RTFRT–
23.Oct.2006 11.05am
i would love to know this as well. thus far the only option i know is optical alignment which is annoying...
23.Oct.2006 11.34am
If I follow you:
You could always set up your stylesheet for the text to be set below the baseline.
23.Oct.2006 11.55am
It’s not much work to set this up manually. On the master page I put guidelines on every baseline, make a copy and shift them to the x-height. I put this on a separate layer so I can turn it on and off whenever I want. Takes less than a minute.
Ralf
23.Oct.2006 12.00pm
If you set your text frame options to have the first baseline aligned by x-height, and snap text frames to the document grid, it’s simply a matter of matching the increments of the document grid to your leading.
23.Oct.2006 3.00pm
Cheers Ralph. I forgot there were layers in Indesign. =)
indeed a very handy solution when there is no software answer.
thank you.
–RTFRT–
(thanks for all the posts)
29.Oct.2006 3.59am
This could be easily build in. The value for the x-height is in the font data, along with the values for the caps height, ascender height and descender length.
table OS/2 {
TypoAscender xxx;
TypoDescender -xxx;
Panose x x x x x x x x x x;
XHeight xxx;
CapHeight xxx;
FSType x;
} OS/2;
I see lots of other interesting possibilities. When paring or comparing different fonts, one could have their x-heights aligned, i.e. scale them so that their respective x-heights fit a given absolute value, e.g. 10 pts. One would also have the option to do the same for the caps heights, descenders/ascenders.
This feature would allow for at least a better standard for font sizes. As we know, the point size (corps) tells nothing about the perceived optical size of a font. Design briefings that state a required point size, but allow to choose a typeface at wish, are inadequate. A prerequired absolute x-height value would be better instead.
I suggest to at least implement a x-height box into the type panel, next to the size box: if one changes either of the values, the other is recalculated, so that one could see immediately what absolute size equals the x-height of a certain value. If caps, ascender/descender height could be implemented this would be nice too.