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I suspect that the answer to this question is no but maybe there is some clever way to achieve what I am after.

I have a piece of text set within a paragraph but using a different font and font size purely for that text. Is there anyway to reduce the line spacing, purely for the selected text, to try to keep the overall paragraph line spacing even?

I do not believe so, but mine is not the most authoritative answer you could hope for.

--Craig

Line spacing is a property of the whole paragraph, never individual lines. And I'm sorry to say that I don't have any clever solutions either. Theoretically one could use fixed line spacing, but you will notice that the line of text with the different font may appear "off". This is because larger text has a lower baseline, which shifts all the other text upward. I would argue this is a mis-feature in Apple's text layout engine, but we've no workaround for this.

Fixed line height is ESSENTIAL for scientific word processing, where use of sub- and superscripts is common, along with mixing of symbol font for Greek characters and another font. I am surprised that you lay the blame for not supporting this on Apple's text layout engine: Word supports this feature (although I abominate using Word), and the last release of Word Perfect for Mac (V. 3.5.4, a ten year old program) also supports it.
I am currently relying on Word Perfect 3.5.4 for 98% of my word processing needs, but it is operating on borrowed time: unusable on Intel Macs.
Please, please add fixed line height as a supported feature. Otherwise I am going to have to get an Intel Mac and use Word Perfect for Windows using Parallels, and switch between Mac and Windows environments for word processing vs. other needs. Everything I have seen of Nisus Writer is exemplary, save for non-support for fixed line height.

David S.

DavidS wrote:I am surprised that you lay the blame for not supporting this on Apple's text layout engine: Word supports this feature (although I abominate using Word), and the last release of Word Perfect for Mac (V. 3.5.4, a ten year old program) also supports it.

Micro$oft Wierd and Word Perfect, both use their own text engines; NWE, uses Apple's text engine. Apple's text engine does not support fixed line height, so either (a) you are asking Nisus to completely rewrite NWE for this reason, or (b) you should address your problem to Apple.
Was it Roosevelt who said "You can deceive some of the people all of the time ..."; rewrite that as "You can satisfy some ..." and you have the situation for Nisus and all other software developers, unless you want to produce a bloated monster like Wierd, in which case everybody moans about it anyway.
In any case, I would have thought that if you produce scientific text, you would be best off working with some flavour of TeX/LaTex.
Mark

xiamenese wrote: Micro$oft Wierd and Word Perfect, both use their own text engines; NWE, uses Apple's text engine. Apple's text engine does not support fixed line height, so either (a) you are asking Nisus to completely rewrite NWE for this reason, or (b) you should address your problem to Apple.

I though Nisus had modified Apple's text engine and that the time taken to do it was one of the reasons NWE took so long. Presumably line height was not one of the mods.

We use a heavily modified version of Apple's text layout engine, and that core engine does support fixed line spacing. This feature is available and working in Nisus Writer Express.

However, if you apply a subscript in text with fixed line height the text will appear slightly off. Specifically the line where the subscripted text resides will have its baseline lowered to accommodate lowest point of the subscript. This slightly raises the other text on the same line.

I too am distressed by the inability of NWE to space lines regularly when two different fonts are used. I frequently need to insert Japanese or Chinese script into text which is otherwise in the roman alphabet; and I do not wish to use the roman fonts that come with Hiragino Mincho, Song or other non-Western fonts. For one thing, they do not have all the diacritics I need; and effectively I have been reduced to using the Times system font, which appears to have everything (and, unlike Gentium, has boldface too). Prof. Richard Bowring pointed out some time ago that Mellel allows one to specify the size of a secondary font. Why cannot Nisus do the same? I have stuck with NWE partly because when used with the Times system font it will automatically convert kanji to Hiragino Mincho, and because when I transfer my files to Mellel much of the formatting is lost (including italics).

There is truly a crying need for a Word Processor (other than MS Weird) which can handle subscripts, superscripts, and symbol font without affecting line spacing. Suggesting use of Tex/LaTex is absurd: it makes MS Weird look user friendly. If Nisus Writer cannot implement this, the only realistic solution (as my computers age) is to switch to an Intel Mac and do my Word Processing, thanks to Parallels and Windows, in PC Word Perfect. This is a pretty drastic step.
I am an academic, and Macs are still very popular indeed among academics, more so than the rest of the world. I argue that Nisus Writer is overlooking an important market segment in not being able, or willing, to fix this line height issue!

If you need to continue using WordPerfect on an Intel Mac, you can run it in OS 9 emulation using SheepShaver. There is extensive discussion of this on the WordPerfect Mac discussion list.

I still use WordPerfect for many features that I'm looking forward to seeing in Nisus Writer Pro.