Irregular line spacing with superscript text

Bloom
1

Does anyone know an easy fix for the irregular spacing that is occuring in my Bloom book when we use super-scripted numbers for numbering scripture verses?

Screenshot_20240813_142355_Adobe Acrobat
Screenshot_20240813_142355_Adobe Acrobat1080×1310 97.9 KB

2

Unfortunately, that is the default way that web browsers (which are used to display Bloom books) will display superscripts.

A workaround is to increase the line-spacing setting in Bloom such that all lines will be spaced with the increased spacing, not just the ones with superscripts.

image

:exclamation:Advanced/technical option:
Otherwise, you can use custom css to remove the extra line height which the browser is adding to the superscript by adding this to your customCollectionStyles.css or customBookStyles.css file:

sup { line-height: 0; }

If you do that, you may still want to slightly increase the line height of all the text using Bloom, as the superscript numbers may appear too close to the line above.

3

Thanks so much for your reply! I just want to make sure I’m understanding correctly. The screen shot I shared was of the PDF of the book. Does you response regarding web browsers still apply? If not, I’m understanding that the only solution would be to increase the line spacing on all the pages? Thanks!

4

Yes, the response regarding web browser still applies because the PDF is generated from the underlying web browser (.htm) file.

5

Great to know! Can you explain where in the program I would change the css? And would I just be changing it for this specific book?

Thanks so much!

6

Hey Jenny. I would refer you to Bloom Help topic “Editing stylesheets overview”.

But before embarking on using custom css, I would recommend trying out the workaround which Andrew mentioned to see if that solves the problem.

7

Thank you! I have tried increasing the line spacing, but some of the pages have more text than others, so it didn’t work very well.

I will check out the “Editing stylesheets overview” help!

8

Thank you! The CSS solution worked perfectly! I’m a bit of a visual perfectionist when it comes to formatting and so I’m super excited about how good the pages look now :blush:

9

What are the pros and cons of us just having that CSS rule built into Bloom?

10

Would that mean Bloom would just automatically adjust the line spacing (to be equal for all lines) if there are irregular characters or superscript font?

11

What are the pros and cons of us just having that CSS rule built into Bloom?

Definitely not an exhaustive list, but a couple thoughts:

  • Pro: It is definitely better than the default the browser gives you which is probably not what anyone wants.
  • Con: With the default line spacing, it can make the super/sub scripts be too close to the text in the adjacent lines.

Further thoughts:
There are quite a few “solutions” to this problem out there on the internet. We might want to evaluate the pros/cons of what I have suggested here vs. some other approaches. Though, the one I have proposed here is definitely the simplest css.
A couple other suggestions out there:

12

Am I correct that the superscript numbers are being produced with the sup HTML element? If so, why not use the super-scripted numbers already in the font (it looks like you are using Andika in this example, which has the needed characters) at codepoints such as U+00B9, U+00B2, U+2074, etc. Then the super-scripted numbers are just characters, like all the rest of the text, and I would not think that the line spacing would change. The line spacing specified in the font, if Bloom uses that, should be high (and low) enough for this situation (many stacking diacritics might exceed the line spacing in the font, in which case the line spacing would need to be adjusted in the application). I am curious what irregular characters means, and if those characters might need additional line spacing.