line spacing

[LeonTheFirst]

Hello!
Can I adjust the line spacing in Novelwriter, perhaps to 1.5?
I find the app fascinating, but I can't work with this narrow line spacing.
Regards!
Leon

[vkbo]

Unfortunately, that's not possible. For some reason the Qt library ignores the line height setting for plain text edit boxes, and that is what novelWriter uses. See #654. Until they change that, there isn't really a solution to this. Your only option for now is to find a font with more vertical space.

[LeonTheFirst]

That's a real shame, because this feature is very, very important; otherwise, all professional tools like Final Draft, Scrivener, and Bibisco wouldn't offer it. I don't even know of a regular text editor that doesn't offer it.
Please let me know when you've implemented it.
Best regards!
Leon

[LeonTheFirst]

That's a real shame, because this feature is very, very important; otherwise, all professional tools like Final Draft, Scrivener, and Bibisco wouldn't offer it. I don't even know of a regular text editor that doesn't offer it.
Please let me know when you've implemented it.
Best regards!
Leon

[LeonTheFirst]

Vi, Vim, Nano, Emacs? Really? You're asking me about editors from the Stone Age?
The other way around makes more sense: Why don't they have it?
Why do current editors offer it?
Why are so many people asking for it?
Example: Final Draft, THE standard editor for screenplays in Hollywood. 1.5 isn't an option; it's a MANDATORY. Other scripts won't be accepted.
Another example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/65esan/is_it_possible_to_set_line_height_in_kate_to_be/
This is just ONE of MANY!

[HeyMyian]

Maybe these people don't know what they're missing, or they're not using these programs for hour-long prose-writing sessions. There is a big difference in eye comfort between these two screenshots. The font is "Atkinson Hyperlegible" with default line height, and modified by me with +50% line height. If you don't feel this way that's fine (@xahodo), but I don't think we need to discuss the necesssity of adjusting line height in a writing program.

I used https://github.com/source-foundry/font-line to modify the font files, and https://github.com/chrissimpkins/fontname.py to modify the font family name so the default font is not overwritten.

An easy alternative for writing in the Latin alphabet is to use fonts created for other writing systems where the symbols can be much higher and lower than the Latin letters, e.g. Devanagari or Arabic, resulting in increased line height. The fonts still contain all Latin letters. Google Fonts has a nice collection of these: Devanagari, Arabic (select the "grid" layout in the top right to view the example text as paragraphs where line height is visible).

Atkinson Hyperlegible normal:

Atkinson Hyperlegible "50% line spacing":

[LeonTheFirst]

Wow, that looks damn good!

[vkbo]

I have several plain text editors for text on my computer. None of them have a line height setting

Sorry, but that's not true: Notepad++, Sublime Text...

How can you claim it is not true? You don't know what I have installed on my PC.

The other way around makes more sense: Why don't they have it? Why do current editors offer it? Why are so many people asking for it? Example: Final Draft, THE standard editor for screenplays in Hollywood. 1.5 isn't an option; it's a MANDATORY. Other scripts won't be accepted.

It is required by style guides for the final manuscripts, sure. novelWriter supports that too, so that's irrelevant here. You can set whatever line height you want for the manuscript itself, along a host of other settings related to manuscript style guides.

Anyway, I'm not sure why you keep arguing. This is the second discussion you start on this topic, and last time you were quite rude about it too. There is a very specific reason why it isn't currently supported, and that is that the underlying layout engine, which I do not control, ignores the line height setting even if I set it in the novelWriter code. The layout is hard coded to separate lines by the height (ascent+descent) of the font. No amount of arguments on this project will change that, but feel free to go to the Qt forum and argue with them.

I don't think anyone disagrees that line height is a useful feature. I certainly don't, so you can save your efforts trying to convince me. There is a fairly long history of testing implementations for it in #654, and I've directed you to read there several times. The only option is to convert the editor to a rich text editor, but that comes with a host of problems on its own that need to be fixed first. If they are solved, novelWriter can make the switch and the line height parameter can be set.

In the mean time, subscribe to the #654 issue thread and you'll be notified on any changes.

Since the layout engine reads ascent+descent of the font, you can either pick a font with a larger leading value, or do like @HeyMyian did, modify a font. Personally, I use high legibility fonts, which tend to have better spacing in general.

[LeonTheFirst]

If I come across as rude here, I'm VERY sorry, because that's not my intention. You may have heard of problems that arise between two native speakers; I speak German and let Google translate everything.
However, since you speak perfect English and still act like a wild boar here, I'll just attribute this to your true character.
I don't need your app; I use the expensive market leaders.
Please excuse me for trying to support (still) free unknowns as a professional writer. It will never happen again!