Leading

Leading (the space vertically between lines of text - name comes from the physical piece of lead that used to be used in mechanical printing process to separate lines of text, rhymes with sledding)

How leading works: When you put leading on a line of a paragraph it affects the distance between the present line and the one above.

In the example below the leading changes between each of the different parts of the same paragraph so that the entire paragraph is centred vertically.

In the above example if you were to typeset the paragraph in PDF Lib Blocks using the paragraph function it would look something like this:

<leading=9.8>

Name<nextline>

Title<nextline>

Personal Title<nextline>

Company Name  <nextline leading=14>

12345 Steet Name Ave,<nextline leading=9.8>

Suite 12345 A,<nextline>

Montreal, PQ XXX XXX <leading>

Tel: 514-000-0000 ext.2222<nextline leading=14>

Cell: 514-000-0000<nextline leading=9.8>

E-mail: name@company.ca

Notice that the leading is put on the line where company name is written.  Because leading affects the current line in relation to the previous line it will cause Company Name to be distanced to the top of the previous sentence  (Personal Title) by 14 pt.

If for example Company <leading=9.8> Name  <nextline leading=14> or< leading=9.8> Company Name  <nextline leading=14> Only the very last leading measurement will be used.

Always have that in mind when placing your leadings in relation to the <nextline>

The problem:  The problem with variable documents is that you are unsure which variables will be used when filling out a form. In our example above the company name is static so putting a fixed leading of 14 in that paragraph is certainly going to come out ok. AS well if all the information is entered then still everything is going to look ok.

However, what if there is no Telephone number? The leading associated with the telephone number will apply to the next sentence (the next phone number entered) causing it to have no extra spacing between the last line of the address and the telephone number lines.

Use this pdf Leading_Template_bad.pdf. When typing all the information everything looks correct. When omitting the telephone number there is no space separating the address from the numbers. Because the next lines are hidden in the postfix the next telephone number being used will only use the last leading that it finds.

The paragraph once processed will look like this:

<avoidbreak>Name<fontname=Helvetica encoding=winansi><nextline>

Personal Assistance<nextline>

Title 2<nextline>

<leading=14><fontname=Helvetica-Bold encoding=winansi>Company Name<fontname=Helvetica encoding=winansi><nextline>

<leading=9.8>123 Main Street<nextline>

Suite 300<nextline>

Toronto, ON M2J 7T5<nextline>

<leading=14><leading=9.8>Toll Free: 416-333-3333<nextline>

Cell: 456-999-5555<nextline>

E-mail: email@email.com<nextline>

www.CompanyWebsite.com

Notice the Toll Free Line. Generally the Telephone number would be between leading 14 and leading 9.8 with a nextline postfixed to it. Since it is omitted the Toll Free Block uses the last leading supplied which is 9.8.

±Good To Know: If your preview is not looking right and you want to know how your coding is getting processed. Then order product. Go to production, to that order and job. Click on the "edit customer data" button. See image below.

Look for your paragraph block and edit it. You will see all the information that the user entered along with all the nextlines and extra parameters that you typeset into it.

What Not to Do: In our experience if you put the leading=14 hidden within the Telephone Block using a postfix with the nextline then you will have other similar issues if telephone is not used it will still not have the extra spacing between lines.

Solution: This is what we know:

The numbers paragraph uses a leading of 9.8.

Regardless of how many numbers are used or not there always needs to be extra space following the address paragraph.

Therefore, since we know that the numbers paragraph uses a leading of 9.8 and that is a constant then the key is to force the numbers paragraph to always use 9.8 starting from the Telephone block and below. To force the extra space after the address field we will use the following command: <leading=4.2>   <nextline><leading=9.8> {Telephone}{Toll Free}...

14-9.8 = 4.2. We will force a small space of 4.2 right after the address.  Then for the rest of the paragraph we will go back to 9.8 so no matter which phone numbers are used 9.8 will always be in effect.

It is important to know that after using the leading of 4.2 you MUST add some spaces before the nextline. If you do not then nothing will happen because the leading is always attached to a character. Remember from above that the leading is the distance from the top of the character to the top of the character of the previous sentence. If there is no character the leading will not take effect.

The proper code will be as follows:

<avoidbreak>{Name} <fontname=Helvetica encoding=winansi><nextline>

{Title 1}

{Title 2}

<leading=14><fontname=Helvetica-Bold encoding=winansi> Company Name

<fontname=Helvetica encoding=winansi><nextline><leading=9.8>{Address 1}

{Address 2}

{City}<nextline><leading=4.2>   <nextline><leading=9.8>

{Telephone}

{Toll Free}

{Cell}

{Fax}

{E-mail}

www.CompanyWebsite.com 

And will look like this Leading Sample.pdf.