[Solved] Reduce paragraph spacing affected by font family

[jack6th]

Font family will affect actual paragraph spacing.
With the same font size Palatino Linotype will have more actual paragraph spacing than Arial.
With the same font size Noto Serif CJK SC will have much more actual paragraph spacing than Simsun.
How to reduce such paragraph spacing?

[RoryOF]

On the paragraph style in use, on the Indents and Spacing tab, adjust the Line Spacing setting to tighten the inter-line space. If you want the letters tighter together (horizontally), use Character /Position and change the Spacing setting.

But any of these settings can leave a text difficult to read - you are changing the default the font designer used. Make only the minimal adjustments.

[jack6th]

Adjusting the Line Spacing change only the lines separated by line feed (Shift+Enter), not the lines separated by paragraph mark (Enter).
It seems there is no easy way to find and replace all the paragraph mark with line feed in OpenOffice.

[RoryOF]

One should very rarely need to use Shift-Enter. Best not to use it until you really need to.

Changing the line spacing setting as in my earlier post will change the interline spacing of all lines of a paragraph. Paragraphs terminated with a paragraph mark have a space above and/or below them defined by, on the paragraph style in use Indents and Spacing tab, "Spacing Above paragraph" and "Spacing below paragraph" setting; if these are set to 0, there should be no added space between paragraphs. The spacing below the paragraph may be influenced (to a very minor extent) by the line spacing in use for that paragraph, but this should not be so great a gap as to be a matter of concern.

It may be that you are using OpenOffice as a typewriter, pressing Enter at the end of each line. In a your text, just type; OpenOffice will wrap text to the next line when needed; you should press Enter only to mark the end of a paragraph.

You may find
Writer for students (several languages)
helpful on the best method of use of OpenOffice.

[jack6th]

"Spacing Above paragraph" and "Spacing below paragraph" cannot set negative number. So it can only increase the paragraph spacing not decrease it.
I do not create a new file. I will change the paragraph spacing of the file downloaded from web. The lines in the file are separated by paragraph mark.
So I need a way to reduce such paragraph spacing not line spacing in a paragraph.

[RoryOF]

If each line is terminated by a paragraph mark, one can remove these by a simple Find and Replace.

Find $ Replace <space>, drop More Options and select Regular Expressions, Press Replace all.

<space> represents a single space character which you should use wherever I show <space>

That will turn all single line paragraphs into continuous text. All that text should now have the line spacing as outline in earlier posting.

This process will amalgamate all text, so you may need to manually separate correct paragraphing.

If the correct paragraphs are marked by a single paragraph mark (blank line) there is a better way:

Find ^$ Replace %%%% drop More Options and select Regular Expressions, Press Replace all.
Find $ Replace <Space> drop More Options and select Regular Expressions, Press Replace all.
Find %%%% Replace \n drop More Options and select Regular Expressions, Press Replace all.

[Bill]

I do not create a new file. I will change the paragraph spacing of the file downloaded from web. The lines in the file are separated by paragraph mark.

The AltSearch extension has a batch process which might help if each line is terminated by a paragraph mark and paragraphs are separated by empty paragraphs.

Using AltSearch, select the text then open AltSearch. On AltSearch, click "Batch>>". On the Batch manager, select "Join paragraphs non separated by empty paragraphs", then click "Execute".

[jack6th]

The file does not have empty line separated by paragraph mark. But all the lines are end with paragraph mark.

　　　AAAAAAAAAA¶
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB¶
CCCCCCCC¶

I do not want to join the lines. I want to keep all the line separators but replace paragraph mark with line feed so that I can reduce the line spacing.

[Bill]

I want to keep all the line separators but replace paragraph mark with line feed...

AltSearch can also do that or you could paste the text in a text editor and make the replacements there.

[RoryOF]

Replacing _all_ paragraph marks with line feeds is dangerous, as line feeds count in OpenOffice as an ordinary character, and you run the risk, especially in a book-length project, of ending up with what OpenOffice sees as gigantic paragraphs. OO does not like paragraphs greater than 64KB and may prevent text entry if it has these.

How you might do what you require: change the paragraph style as follows. Select Indents and Spacing tab on the style in use. Change line spacing to "Fixed" and choose a value such as 0.40 cm (the exact value will depend on what you consider legible). If you don't like a result, press Ctrl Z to undo it, and choose another value.
The sample file here is 12 pt Times New Roman, fixed line spacing of 0.40 cm.

TightText.odt

(11.54 KiB) Downloaded 144 times

[jack6th]

Change line spacing to "Fixed" ...

It works. It is what I want.
I think the 'Line spacing' choices are confused.
'Fixed' adjust paragraph spacing and line spacing.
'Proportional' adjust only lines in a paragraph.
All the choices should adjust paragraph spacing and line spacing.

I want to keep all the line separators but replace paragraph mark with line feed...

AltSearch can also do that or you could paste the text in a text editor and make the replacements there.

AltSearch can replace all the paragraph marks with line feeds. But later I find it will cause to lost alignment. I think it is the problem of the line feeds not AltSearch.

　　　AAAAAAAAAA¶
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB¶
CCCCCCCC¶

If the first line is center alignment after replacing paragraph marks with line feeds the rest lines will automatically center alignment.

　　　AAAAAAAAAA\n
　BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB\n
　　　　CCCCCCCC\n

If I choose 2nd and 3rd lines to left alignment the first line will automatically left alignment.

[RoryOF]

I think the 'Line spacing' choices are confused.
'Fixed' adjust paragraph spacing and line spacing.
'Proportional' adjust only lines in a paragraph.
All the choices should adjust paragraph spacing and line spacing.

They do; the line spacing adjustment spaces each line from the next line by the amount specified. The last line of a paragraph is so spaced, as you can see from this screenshot

[jack6th]

If Proportional is set less than 100% the paragraph spacing will not be set by this proportional value.

Attachment setting:
Font family: Noto Serif CJK SC
Font size: 15
Line spacing: Proportional 50%

[jack6th]

I did not suggeste Palatino Linotype as a font with different spacing.
I said different font family may looks having different paragraph spacing.
Yes the font designer has spent a lot of time making it look right.
But sometimes user want to adjust paragraph or line spacing not only for looking beautiful.
Adjusting the paragraph spacing should be done by word processor not by changing font itself.
Perhaps I can change the font height using FontForge.
But in different situations I have to create different fonts with different height.
I don't think it is the right way.

By the way, before RoryOF suggesting the Fix choice of line spacing I tried anther word processor named Calligra. On windows it is slower than OpenOffice and it lacks some features of OpenOffice. But about the line spacing and paragraph spacing it does what I want.

[RoryOF]

My preferred method of doing this is to download a text file of a book, mark all "genuine" paragraphs which are often, in text files, indicated by a blank paragraph (a paragraph mark with no other content), replacing these with a placeholder, then remove all other paragraph marks (which are really indicating line endings), replacing them with a space, then convert my genuine paragraph marker placeholders back to a paragraph mark. I then select all text, change it to Text Body style, find Chapter headings and titles and apply suitable heading styles.

By adjustment of the Text Body master style I can select Font, line spacing, Paragraph formatting; similarly for the various Chapter heading styles. Depending on the text this can be done in minutes - I was able to reformat War and Peace (550,000 words) in about ten minutes. I admit that I did not pick out for special formatting the French content, but I expect I could do so in about 30 minutes.

[jack6th]

Your method is a good idea. If I format a book or document from plain text I will try this method.
Actually I was reformatting a Chinese document which was already formatted.
I want to replace two particular font family with other font family, decrease the font size, reduce the line spacing and keep the paragraph spacing same as the line spacing.
Avoid changing anything else like alignment, other font family, etc. as much as possible.
I demo the Proportional problem use the text of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland download from http://www.gutenberg.org.
I am glad your suggestion solved my problem.
The forum is useful.