Word uses hard coded line height for Helvetica, Times, Baskerville, and Old Face TamilSangamMN???

Dave Crossland
Dave Crossland Posts: 1,431
edited October 2018 in Font Technology
Today I learned something interesting about Microsoft Word; for most fonts, Word uses the vertical metrics in the font file, but for some, Word has its own "hard coded" line height values for (at least) the following families:
  • Helvetica
  • Times, Baskerville Old Face, and TamilSangamMN (which all have the same vertical metrics)
I say 'at least' because there's probably more families, just a guess on my part though...

Does anyone know if there is anything unique about those 4 families that necessitated hardcoded line height values?
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Comments

  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,227
    Is it possible that at some point in time these families were updated and the vertical metrics changed? In which case, Word might have hard-coded the old line height to preserve backwards compatibility and avoid document reflow?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,896
    Typical Mac user, trying to leave horse compatibility behind the instant they get this crazy “engine” thing going! Sheesh....
  • Georg Seifert
    Georg Seifert Posts: 674
    @Mark Simonson has a point. Microsoft could preserve compatibility and still be a bit more forward looking. E.g., thy could enable kerning and OpenType features for new documents. That would not cause any reflow. 

    And when they where really concerned about reflow, making the document frame not dependent on the current printer driver. So people need the same version of the printer driver to get the same result. 
  • Adam Jagosz
    Adam Jagosz Posts: 689
    Georg Seifert said:
    And when they where really concerned about reflow, making the document frame not dependent on the current printer driver. So people need the same version of the printer driver to get the same result. 
    Could you expand on that?
  • Georg Seifert
    Georg Seifert Posts: 674
    Make a document that really fills the page by reducing the margins to the minimum. When you then change the printer driver, chances are very high that those minimum margins cause a reflow. 

    Or when the one driver stores the page size in inches and other in centimeters. Those rounding errors can produce some reflow, too. 

    All of the above is just what I think is causing this so there might be totally different reasons. 

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