Adjust huge spacing around specific fonts

[etsnyman]

Hi there!

I found a font based on Liberation Sans named UnB Pro, and I really liked the look of it, especially the light and black versions. I downloaded it from here: Marca UnB and I attempted to start using it in LibreOffice 3.6.

However, there is a huge amount of line space above the font. If I switch to another font like Liberation or UnB Office (which is just a renamed Liberation) then normal spacing above the characters is restored.

I then tested the same UnB Pro fonts in Scribus (http://www.scribus.net), and suddenly the spacing issue vanished! I can’t seem to figure out why Scribus “corrects” the font “spacing” while L.O. does not.

Is there some way to “force” L.O. to display the fonts in the same way? I have already set the style of the font to superscript with no zoom and negative line spacing, but that did not work.

I would appreciate any help in this regard. Thanks!

I use LibreOffice 3.6.2.2 (Build ID: 360m1(Build:2)) on Ubuntu Linux 12.10.

[oweng]

The font in question is basically and old copy of Liberation Sans scaled to ~50%. The font contains some branding glyphs (for the Universidade de Brasilia) in a non-Unicode range 65668-65673 that are of huge proportion (screenshot). In order to allow the taller logos to fit I imagine the HHead Ascent Offset (line height) magnitude was substantially increased from -153 for Liberation Sans to -1566 (screenshot) in the font in question. LO is treating the font as it should from what I can tell.

[etsnyman]

Dear oweng

Thank you so much for going to the trouble. I know very little about how fonts work, so your information is appreciated.

Unfortunately, I am still unable to use UnB Pro in LibreOffice. Is there any way to force or fix this line spacing, or even to implement some sort of workaround?

[oweng]

Yes, this should not be too difficult. You will need to edit the font with an application like FontForge (which my screenshots show), delete the six oversized glyphs in the range I mention and set the HHead Ascent Offset to something more reasonable i.e., start with -153 and work your way toward something like -75 or so. You then need to export the result to a new OpenType (OFF) font file. You will need to do this for each of the font files - I only examined the Regular weight.

[etsnyman]

Thanks, oweng. I unfortunately know nothing about doing those things, and I have never used or installed FontForge. I will see if I can get someone to help me with that.