Superscript & subscript size adjustment?

[cursor]

I don't see any way to adjust the relative size of super/sub-scripted text. Is there a way to do this (even globally for my installation of Web Designer)?

[Soquili]

Hi Cursor,

(sounds like a line from the movie TRON)

Create your sub or super script character, then use the Text Tool cursor to select that character. Use the Text Tool and the text Size dropdown list on the Infobar to resize the character. See attached image or an example with the default 13pix text size and another where the subscript character has been increased in size.

[cursor]

Thanks for the reply.

While that might work for a single of text, it is visually unacceptable for a paragrah that sports intermittent footnote references. Consider the sample attached. It uses 13pt Arial, with line space at 130%. If I manually adjust the superscripted footnote reference to [superscript for] 18pt [sized text], then the vertical spacing for any affected lines change. This is visually unacceptable.

Alternatives?

e d i t
I've added a comparison graphic that illustrates the uniform line spacing generated by xWD at 130%, if I don't manually adjust the size of the superscripted text.

[Soquili]

I do not know of a way to set a size for the super and sub script character so it would be used through out a document.

The line spacing is most likely established for the selected font. Any change in the size of a character within the text would change the line spacing of the lines nearest to the change.

[cursor]

In the meantime, I'll have no choice but to stick with xWD's standard sizing ratio (sub/superscript appears to be 50% the size of the base text).

What would be ideal for me (and perhaps for all designers, who knows) is if there were a sub/superscript setting that would allow me to control the ratio and visual relationship. Changing that ratio should not, however, modify the line spacing of the base text.

In the pair of examples above, the superscript on the left would be 50%, while for the right attachment the superscript would be 72%.

Might Xara entertain such a feature addition?

[covoxer]

Yes, we may have to improve this in future.
Meanwhile, you may try to change the settings for super/subscript in the default.css exported by WD. They are exported like this:

sup {font-size:0.5em; vertical-align: 1em;}
sub {font-size:0.5em;}

[cursor]

Thanks for the suggestion. I just ran a mini test. Increasing the ratio of sub/superscript to base text (by any method) still screws up the line spacing. What that will force me to do is to use a larger base font size ... just so the footnote references are reasonably legible. From a design standpoint, I would prefer to not do that.

[covoxer]

Try this:

sup {font-size:0.7em; vertical-align: 0.3em;}

[cursor]

Thanks for that very valuable piece of input, John. Changing the vertical adjustment from 1em to 0.3em did the job. I actually bumped it up ot 0.4em so that top of the superscripted numbers would sit slightly higher.

In the long run, however, I still vote for an user-defined ratio (XX%) between base text and sub/superscript sizes. =)

[covoxer]

Yes, of course. Currently I'm just trying to help you with a workaround for this issue.

One more idea, to avoid editing default.css every time you export your site, you may override this style within the document. To do it, create any placeholder object on the page of interest, send it to the very background (Ctrl+B), to make sure it stays on background, you can create new layer, move it under your main layer and place this object on that layer.
Then enter following code to the placeholder:

<style type="text/css">
sup {font-size:0.8em; vertical-align: 0.4em;}
</style>