Text Box

[TonyC]

I am having trouble getting text to center where I need. The text seems to have a "text box" and the only way I can get the text to center is converting to curves which removes the "box".

Is there a way to remove the text box or a way to make text centered in the text box so I can center the text on the art board without converting to curves?

This is when using Illustrator.

 

[Rick]

When you type out your text, do you drag a text box?
By software default, there is a bounding box, I prefer not to have it on... do have you bounding box on?

If it's a text box, it's an easy fix, copy your text… deselect, then paste... the only issue after that is the bounding box.

 

[TonyC]

I think

I believe it is a bounding box. Is there a way to turn it off?

 

[Rick]

I believe it is a bounding box. Is there a way to turn it off?

go to "VIEW" and click "HIDE BOUNDING BOX"

Another thing, is the tracking wide, or do you have the text grouped with anything else? or is it masked with anything? That could also threw it off

 

[Bobby H]

Adobe Illustrator is not able to vertically center editable text accurately. It would need to be able to align lettering based on its cap letter height in order to do the alignment correctly. Adobe Illustrator has never been able to do this and CorelDRAW can only do it within some serious limitations (typeface choice, letter choice).

In Illustrator you have to convert the text to outlines, up-group and/or release the compound of the text string and do a couple more steps in order to align the box and text properly.

Hiding the bounding box does not work. The alignment is still referenced to the bounding box around the letter regardless whether it is visible or not. If you're manually sizing letters, like making a Helvetica letter "H" 2 inches tall to later add some text to it the bounding box will be sized at 2" but the letter inside will be smaller.

I'm not sure if there is any rhyme or reason in how Illustrator sizes the bounding box around type objects that are not area type objects. I don't even know why the box is needed. The bounding box does not correspond to the size of a typeface's own built in font units box. For example, if I open Gotham Bold in Font Lab Studio 5, I can see its glyphs are designed in a 1000 unit tall box, ascender is 800, descender is -200, caps height is 700 and x-height is 536. If I make a 1" letter set in Gotham in Adobe Illustrator I might expect to get a letter that is .7" tall when converted to outlines. But I get a letter .6013" tall instead.

What is really needed is this: Adobe Illustrator must incorporate options to size, position and align type according to cap letter height. Sign making applications like Flexi can do this. Why not Illustrator? The program could read the built in info of any installed fonts and get that cap height data. I think CorelDRAW should be able to do this as well. I've made requests for this feature repeatedly at Adobe's Illustrator forum over the years and have also made the request at Corel's forums too. It doesn't seem like anyone in charge is listening.

 

[TonyC]

Thanks for the replies.

I have found exactly what Bobby describes. I do not like converting to curves as I lose the font and makes later adjustments a pain.

What I have started doing is simply making a box the height of my text or paragraph and centering it. Then I manually align the text to the box.

 

[Bobby H]

I attached an image which I also shared in a similar discussion at the Adobe Illustrator feature request forum at Adobe's web site:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1709269
I invite any forum users here who care about this design limitation to speak their minds in Adobe's forum. Maybe if there is enough "noise" made about this issue Adobe might respond positively.

It's impossible to vertically center editable mixed case text to a box or any other object in Adobe Illustrator (or even CorelDRAW for that matter). Cap height sizing and alignment is required to make any of that possible.

The sample image attached was created originally in CorelDRAW. In that application I had to start out with just one blocky capital letter (like "E") where the letter's bottom and top align perfectly with the font's base line and cap height line. Once the alignment was done I could type out the rest of the text. This approach falls apart if I choose a typeface in which none of the letters fit perfectly along the baseline and cap height line. That goes for all script typefaces, virtually all serif "text" typefaces and many decorative display faces.

Sizing and aligning according to a font's built in cap height value is not perfect. For example the common Palatino Linotype font found in any modern version of Windows has cap letters that fall short of the cap height line. That typeface was built 2048 units tall, has a cap height line at 1499, but the very top of a cap "E" is 1411 above the baseline. Nevertheless, an option to size, position and align type according to a font's cap height values would provide a much easier and much more consistent approach than what's available to designers now.

 

[myront]

Up-channeling this issue for corel

I too have struggled with this over the years in Corel. I don't know why users insist on using "paragraph text" -(bounding box) as opposed to "artistic text"- no bounding box.
Also the "text size" setting has never been in direct correlation to the "true height" as most of us see it. True height being a capital letter if caps are used and height of a character that doesn't have a descender in the case of all lowercase letters. I.e. set text to 1in and neither lowercase nor uppercase are anywhere near that. In Corel I type out what i need then use the "smart fill tool" to fill a capital letter and then size the result up or down accordingly then note the scale and set my text to the same scale. Sounds complicated in written form but I made macro to do it with a couple of clicks.
I'm going to up-channel the matter to Corel. Illustrator?...don't care for it.

 

[Bobby H]

"CAS"-type sign making applications have been able to size lettering according to cap letter height for well over 20 years. I started out in sign making using an MS-DOS based version of CASmate and CorelDRAW 3.0 running in Windows for Workgroups 3.11. Even way back then CASmate allowed me to select a string of lettering, enter a value such as 2" and the cap letters would indeed really be 2" tall. This was regardless if the lettering was mixed case with letters like "g" dangling parts below the base line. A cap letter "O" with parts going below the baseline and above the cap height line wouldn't throw off the measurement either (like it will in CorelDRAW).

Given the fact ancient computer systems have been able to set letter sizes according to a font's built-in cap height value, it should not be very difficult at all for either Adobe or Corel to incorporate this feature into their applications. It should not be resource intensive at all.

The last time I made this feature request in the CorelDRAW user forums I was met with all manner of ignorant & heated sounding responses. To them type could only be set in points and picas and conform only to a baseline grid for something printed on paper. They couldn't wrap their heads around the idea that type may have to work differently in other mediums.

If I'm putting together a door graphics design and the customer wants his store hours set in letters 1" tall, that customer will never be receptive to any print layout related excuses for why the letters are only 5/8" tall. That's basically what Adobe Illustrator will give you if you set some editable text at 1" tall. You're stuck taking extra steps, which include converting the text to outlines, in order to scale it to the correct size. If you have to change something (which is common with store hour door graphics) you'll have even more steps in the revision, rather than being able to simply select the lettering and type in a new number. Pretty stupid situation.

The same problem occurs in other areas. Type has to align properly in web page buttons and other user interface elements. Same goes for certain kinds of logo designs. I do a lot of work with LED-based "jumbotron" style signs. Type looks better if you size the capitals to match the pixel grid, but none of the design applications out there (not even Photoshop) will allow you to make a 10 pixel tall capital letter truly 10 pixels tall.

 

[shoresigns]

Easy solution for Illustrator: just use an area text box and resize it to match the cap height. Then you can centre it vertically in one click with the centering tool. It will even ignore your descenders!

Note: Make sure there's a gap between your baseline and the bottom of the bounding box that matches the gap between the top of your capital letters and the top of the bounding box.

 

[Bobby H]

That's not a solution to the problem. Illustrator users cannot manually re-size an area type box to accurately match the cap height of a letter. The box might be fairly close in size, but it will not be exact. And it always has to be just a tad bit bigger than the capital letter otherwise the lettering will disappear. The only way to get the box identical in size with the cap letter height of the lettering is with numerical input for both the lettering and area type box, which puts us back to square one on the huge, glaring feature Adobe Illustrator is lacking.