One of the things I like love about Agenda is all the thought that went into the design and formatting. Looks so neat. I would like to make one suggestion, if I may:
Would you consider adding some padding/spacing before and after lines formatted as Headings?
It looks a bit awkward, especially when I have a heading followed by a bulleted list.
The heading is glued to the first bullet and the space between each bullet is much larger.
See the picture:
I can see what mean. It would be nice in that case to have more space there.
The heading actually does have extra space before it. I think what might be happening here is that a list actually has less spacing. You’ll notice that normal text does get a nice spacing, but the list gets less.
I think we made this choice because otherwise list items were ending up too far separated.
We’ll take this a long. It is a bit difficult to change things like this, because people get used to them, and get very angry if they suddenly change.
Note that there are settings for line spacing. Perhaps you can find a happy medium.
Thanks for getting back. Yes, I did play around with the line spacing options.
Indeed, the spacing of the headings is perfect before blocks of text (irrespective of the line spacing chosen). But when the first item after a heading is a list item, then the space between the heading and first list item is reduced – which ends up looking odd bc. the spacing between list items is generally larger (esp. checklists).
And I agree, those spaces shouldn’t be larger – when you write “otherwise list items were ending up too far separated” I assume that means that lists are formatted such that the spacing between items is controlled by space after (and there is no or minimal space before each list paragraph)? But wouldn’t it still be possible to add some minimum space parameter after headings without changing the list spacing at all? (Which shouldn’t affect spacing between heading and a normal paragraph, if that is controlled by space before paragraph, as long as the space is treated as minimum space and not added – I’m thinking about how this would work in Pages or Word, so perhaps I’m not understanding how this works here …)
Yes, we could certainly mess with the space after a heading, but then you would probably have to reduce the space before a normal paragraph etc. It becomes a bag of worms.
It’s also something we wouldn’t take lightly, because there are thousands of people using the app who have their notes laid out in a certain way. Even a small change can cause a lot of irritation.
We’ll take it along, but it is the sort of change that we can’t easily make. We’ll think about the options. Thanks for the feedback!
I currently have 7 headers in the template that I use every day. In the last line of each is a tag designating its header for search purposes. I started this setup with the tag on the first line. The attached image tells me that there are a limited number of “offenders” that cause the issue. That makes me ask if the first line content could determine the headers spacing?
Yes, I think that point was made, ie, that the headers have extra space before them, but probably not after them. So whether there is space will depend on whether the first line you type has some space above or not (body text does; lists don’t).
I agree 100% with the original post. This has long bugged me as well. I think what is needed is a setting for “Space After Heading,” in addition to the Line Spacing setting. If you implemented this you could set the Default to how it currently is so no one’s notes would be messed up, but then if they wanted it to be larger they could change it.
Line spacing and space after are different settings.
The way this works in word processors like Pages is that if you have a Header style that says 10 pts after, and your Body text style is set to 5 pts space above, then the first line of Body text after the header is 10 pts and the rest are 5 pts. Conversely if the line after for the Header style was set to 3 pts, and the Body style is set for 5 pts above, then the first line of body text after the Header would be 5 pts. The bigger space requirement for the 2 different styles always wins when 2 styles are next to each other. Study Pages for how they do it, they do it very well.
I realize you don’t want infinitely customizable styles like in Pages, so just adding the ability to adjust the space after (and perhaps before also) for Headers would be a nice compromise I think.
We’ll consider how we can fix it. Perhaps a setting, but it seems very specific.
Not sure word processors work the way you think. I am pretty sure it adds up the spacing. The space under the heading, and the space above the next paragraph get added together.
In any case, that is the way the text system in Apple’s operating system works, and I think it is the basis of all Apple’s apps (eg Pages).
No matter, it is clear what people want. We will see what we can do.
FWIW, I’m by no means an expert on word processing software, but I’m confident that neither in Pages nor in Word are spaces before and after a given style added together. Generally, it seems the space parameters are simply instructions to leave “at least” as much space as specified. So if a Heading style requires 4pt after, but a Paragraph style that might follow requires 6pt before, then what you’ll see is 6pt (not 10).
For styles like lists, quotes, etc. it can get tricky whether to use spaces before or after. Like if I want 2pt between each list item but then before and after the entire list you want 4pt, then I’m always confused how I should do it right – whether to use the before or after settings of regular paragraphs or both … it always gives me a headache and I usually end up manually adjusting some individual sections.
In the case of Agenda, at least from the behavior that we’re observing, it seems that what is happening is that most styles use a before setting to add space: Headings specify zero space after them. Lists don’t specify any space before – the spacing between list items may end up larger because of the graphic element (which would also explain why checklists have slightly more space than bulleted lists, since the checks are simply bigger) or there is some space added after – I’m not sure. Paragraphs, on the other hand, specify space before. This is why a Heading followed by a Paragraph looks fine – it takes the space specified by the paragraph. But a Heading followed by a List looks bad, since the List doesn’t force any space before it. Just my 5 cents …
Thanks for looking into it – and generally for being so responsive here
I can’t speak for the text system across Apple’s OS’s but for Pages it definitely does not add the spacing. This is easily demonstrated by setting up a Heading with 15 pts AFTER paragraph setting and Body text with 10 pts BEFORE. You can adjust the Body text value for spacing before and it does not move at all until you reach 15 pts (the min value for space after the Heading). And, when you reduce the spacing on the Body text down it moves until you get to 15 and then moves no more because the value for the Header spacing is greater. If these values were added then every single adjustment would cause the text to move, but it does not. I have made a small screen recording to demonstrate (sorry for the low quality, it had to be under 4 MB to attach here):
Just tested Pages, and indeed, seems to take the maximum.
In any case, it is not really related to the text system, because the text system doesn’t have a concept of styles like heading etc. That is something the app builds in.
We could certainly build our system so the it takes the maximum of the two spacings. Maybe that would have been the best choice, but it is complicated now that it is working as it does, and people have adjusted.
Thanks for the feedback. We’ll take it along and consider if we can improve this somehow down the track.
