Bold word leads to bold underline?

[Vanceone]

So I don't know if this is a bug or not. Running Mojave and Nisus Writer 3.2.2.

If I underline a phrase, sentence, etc. Multiple words underlined. Then I bold one or more words, but not all of those words, it bolds the underline for that line, including the underline under the non-bolded words. . If it's a multi-line underline, only the line with the bolded word gets the bolded underline.

In short, the interaction between bold and underline seems a bit wonky.

Not sure if this is a new bug for version 3.2.2 or just Mojave, but it's interesting to have a three line, underlined heading, and the middle line with a bolder underline than the other two lines.

[adryan]

G'day, Vanceone et al

I also use NWP 3.2.2 with Mojave.

When I underline words and then boldface them, the underline appears exactly the same to me as when it was not boldfaced. In other words, the underlines themselves do not appear boldfaced at all. I tested this with a couple of fonts (Palatino, Helvetica Neue) and also on just a space. I zoomed the page to a high level of magnification and in all cases there was no indication that the underline itself was boldfaced.

I wonder whether the phenomenon you're seeing is font-dependent. In fact, I was a bit surprised that the underlines with the fonts I tried did not appear differently when underlined. I guess I would have expected them to appear thicker. What the situation was with earlier versions of NWP, I can't say: it was never a pressing issue for me.

If you haven't already, I'd suggest relaunching NWP. (I'd done so earlier today anyway when I restarted my whole computer.) At least then we might be comparing apples with apples.

Cheers,
Adrian

[martin]

The thickness of text underlining is controlled by the system (macOS) and the applied font. Different fonts definitely have different underline thicknesses.

That said, I don't see any difference in the underline thickness between bolded text and non-bold text for any of my fonts. I tested perhaps 40-50 fonts. The underline thickness is always consistent, even when a single bold word interrupts a span of underlined text.

The difference you're seeing may be due to macOS Mojave. The system plays a hand in the drawing of underlines and Apple may have changed its behavior at some point. I'm only able to test on Big Sur right now.

[Vanceone]

Well now, that's interesting. Using Helvetica it does not happen, but in Times New Roman it does. I usually use Timees New Roman, so that's why I noticed it, I'm sure.

I checked and it happens on my Big Sur version of Nisus as well. Again, Helvetica and other fonts are not affected.

Not sure why Times New Roman (at 12 and 13 point size, to be exact) is affected.

[martin]

I misunderstood/misread your earlier message and thought you were seeing something like this:

bold.png (17.1 KiB) Viewed 7104 times

The system hasn't done that quirky/buggy underline drawing in a long time.

Now that I understand what you're describing, I see the same behavior on Big Sur. Bolding a single word that's part of an underlined phrase will thicken the underline for the entire phrase, if the bold font face has thicker underlines. This behavior makes decent sense to me, though I suppose it's debatable what's best. I don't know any way to influence this, aside from choosing a different font.

[Vanceone]

The only time it's a problem is when I have a multi-line heading. I don't really care about th the thickness, just that it's consistent. When you have a 3 line heading and the middle line has a thicker underlining than the other two lines it looks off.

But know that I know this is what happens, I can investigate using italics instead of bold if it's a really big issue. Or just bold at least one word in each line, if possible. Just a funky quirk, I suppose.

[johseb]

If you really need/want to use the described formatting you could resort to bolding a few spaces where needed.
The bold spaces will not be noticeable and will cause the underline to get thicker.