YES I often do sale designs (requiring the same design in 15-20 different size & formats for social media, google ads, web banners, and EDM's) and the brand's font has a terrible baseline shift, ie, when you resize the text frame to auto-fit a type element, without adding a significant baseline shift, you need a text box waaaay bigger than the actual type area, and the font won't be vertically centred so aligning it with other sub headings or sale design elements is annoying.

Now of course I could outline the font and design that way but if the client makes text changes that's annoying if it's already outlined, and a lot of extra work.

For example, I'd love to be able to tell InDesign to tweak the baseline shift proportionally for my text when I resize a heading - like it does for stroke/outline (I usually use command + shift + click & drag corner but sometimes use object > scale menu).

I end up having to go in and painstakingly ensure the font is centred vertically with the correct baseline shift for scaled type in every format just so I can use the align tools and use auto-spacing between elements, it drive me bonkers! But if I want things to align perfectly it's the only way.

Do you know anything about this idea? This feature would save many hours of work and allow to create alternative designs in a simple way. What should be done to include it in future versions?

A more broadly useful implementation would be to allow the designer to specify font size, leading, paragraph spacing, etc., in styles to be based on a defined em. There are any number of values (text wrap space around an object, text frame inset, gutter width, margins, and, yes, baselines, just to give a few examples) that would be better expressed as a fraction or multiple of an em than an absolutely point size. This is already thoroughly implemented in the HTML specification, and would presumably make conversion from InDesign to HTML/ePub simpler to code (and to script).

The biggest need I have in this area is with leading. If you type, say, 120% in the leading box, it will give you 120% of the Auto setting. But it converts it to a static number. When you increase the font size, instead of the leading increasing and staying at 120% of the Auto amount of the larger font size, it stays at a static number. Just making it so you can set leading to a dynamic percentage of Auto would be a huge improvement.

My current workaround is to CTRL-SHIFT corner point drag a text box to change the font-size and the leading proportionality. I then have to update my paragraph styles to reflect the new font and leading sizes. But I see other designers constantly changing font size manually and their leading on different sized titles does not stay proportional.

With all that said, a more complex system of standardized measurement would certainly be beneficial for advanced users. Looking at the em system in CSS would make sense. That way anything like leading, space before/after, paragraph borders etc could all be based on the font-size itself.

See LibreOffice:
You can change the child styles in a style hierarchy using relative sizes (i.e., defining default style's text size size to a value (like 10 pt), and children size as 120% instead of 12 pt) allows you to proportionally change all text sizes at once by modifying default style's size.

Hey, very good idea! I’ve also added a small addition in this request:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/36935467-speed-up-baseline-setup

I hope this will be implemented soon.

Please make this a dream a reality... We beg you!

Any news on this feature? Could we see a dynamic baseline unit in 2019? 😍

Guys, Robert Oleś answered your questions in february. Whats about developing this idea?
It wpuld be huge improvement in documents layouting. Documents of every kind.

Is this feature still in the information gathering stage? Any word from the devs on if this will be moved into the development backlog?

This would be a game changing addition to InDesign!

I see this feature as equivalent to CSS's "em" attribute. How I imagine it working is:

At document creation, we have the option of enabling a base unit for the document. Upon turning that option on and entering a number (say 10pt), that number serve as the base unit for the entire document. This unit can later be referenced by the letter "B" or something.

Then, in paragraph styles, character styles, object styles-- wherever there's an option to enter a measurement-- we can put in something like "2*B" or ".5*B" and InDesign will automatically calculate the relevant size in inches, points, picas, whatever.

If we later decide that we want to change the base unit for the document we can do so via document setup, and everything in the document that uses the base unit as a measure would scale accordingly. So, for example:

Base unit is 10pt. In the Body paragraph style, the font size is set as "1B (10pt)". The H1 paragraph style is set as "3B (30pt)." The 2 Column Text Frame object style has its gutter width set to "1.5B (15pt)".

I later decide I want the base unit to be 9pt. After I make this change, the the body paragraph style automatically changes its font size to 9pt, the H1 style changes its font size to 27pt, and the 2 Column Text Frame object changes its gutter width to 13.5pt.

(That said, for me it would be ideal if the calculation happens internally, while the measurement field continues showing the 2*B or .5*B or whatever it is we entered-- that way we can keep track of what multipliers we're using. Something similar to what happens with layout scaling, where the original font size is displayed adjacent to the new font size is shown in parentheses, could work.)

All together this feature would save me an ENORMOUS amount of time that I currently waste having to tweak measurements when I decide to change the font size or leading of a document. Relative sizes would make it so much easier to test changes to type and layout on the fly.

>>1. The way this request is described its majorly about figuring out how to change the various text attributes in a single step rather than having to change multiple styles to make that happen. It would helpful if you can mention which all attributes you all would want to be dependent on the baseline (space before/after, size, leading any other).

ad. 1 All vertical spaces in paragraph style should be dependent on the baseline.
(a) Space Before, Space After, Paragraph Rules and Border offset too.

>>2. Which kind of documents (magazines, brochures, books etc.) do you see this to be more important for you.

ad. 2 Long documents with many of paragraph styles, mainly books, and magazines, catalogs, etc. EPUB and especially CSS is very important too.

3. Wouldn’t a similar method (not sure if we could base it on baseline though!!) for changing the layout also help, if you could define the sizes of objects in relation to the page size. Do you think extending this feature to the layout also makes sense.

Ad 3. For me the most important variable in a typography is the x-height of the body text. Practically if it is a base of every layout everyone will be able to perfectly define all vertical spaces, e.g.: leading, and other vertical spaces.
Publications which use Helvetica needs more space then publications set up using Arno. But the whole vertical adjustments depends of x-height of the font. That is all.

All other horizontal spaces could be dependent of body size, or leading. And if we based on x-height we will be able to generate perfect Web pages and epubs too.

This is really a good idea and must to include in InDesign, will really save huge time while typesetting.

Hi Javed, I’m glad about you interest in this suggestion! Here are my initial thoughts to your questions:

1. That’s correct. It could indeed also be used beyond text attributes. Other things that come to mind are Margins, Gutters, Text Wrap and object width / height ... In theory it could be applied almost anywhere.
2. I think this method is applicable to any text-based document; books, magazines and brochures in general.
3. It would be interesting to be able to define object sizes in relation to the page size as well, but it’s something different than this specific suggestion.
4. I think that’s difficult, because this really is something behind the scenes, but this forum post illustrates the concept applied to some text attributes: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2302709

Besides that this is a brilliant idea:
This feature should take care of the text frame options baseline, too. E.g. if the baseline grid in document pref is set to 12 pt and a text frame has it's own activated baseline grid of 8 pt, »1 b« should be based on the 8 pt. If the text frame has no active baseline grid of it's own, it should user the document wide grid of 12 pt.

Brilliant idea.

great idea. I hate using the baseline grid at the moment this would make it so much more pratical.

splendid idea…

GOOD IDEA, TO BE ABLE TO USE FIT TO BASELINE GRID

Oh yes please!