Leading, Re: Inline formatting model document

This letter should pref-  |  At 00:56 15.01.00 -0800
erably not be read with   |  Erik van der Poel wrote: 
proportional fonts.       |                            
                          |  
A NOTE ON HALFLEADING     |  2. HALFLEADING
                          |
This column uses default  |  The spec should clearly
CSS values, same padding, |  state that the half-leading
margin around a block and |  is added to the top and  
the same amount of lead-  |  bottom of the font-size. 
ing above and below the   | (I would like to remove
line. Typographically a   |  the term "when set solid"
ratio of 8:5:3 has been   |  from the spec, since it's
used, with the whitespace |  not appropriate in the digi-
above a block higher than |  tal font world. Similarly,
the space below (right).  |  leading and half-leading 
                          |  are not very appropriate.
CASE: PAGEMAKER           |  Since the terms padding and 
                          |  margin are already used for
Pagemaker uses the simple |  other purposes, how about
rule that set 2/3 of the  |  calling it line spacing or 
leading above the line    |  font spacing? Or vertical  
and 1/3 below. This rule  |  spacing, to avoid confusion 
works reasonably well     |  with letter-spacing.)
with Western typography,  +-----------------------------
I don't know how relevant it is to other scripts.

I guess this has been discussed before, and there is no
major harm done. How the leading is calculated is only 
relevant when calculating borders or when two different 
blocks meet, as with the subheads simulated above. It 
can be compensating by adding padding-top and negative
padding-bottom, but calculating the right values makes
writing style sheets needlessly complex. We'll probably
be stuck with a "Netscape layout" with every heading an 
appendix to the previous paragraph for a long time to come.



Jonny Axelsson, Net asset
Metastasis design, Norway

Received on Sunday, 16 January 2000 09:24:19 UTC