Consistent Line Spacing in Customized Titles

Question

I find when I produce titles I get line spacing that depends on whether I have a hanging character ie qypg which dip below the usual base line vs wertuioasdfhklzxcvbnm which don't. This is particularly visible when I use lines or super large fonts i.e. on a main title page.

Is there a way to make a consistent spacing that doesn't add the specified spacing at the bottom of a character?

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{siunitx}
\usepackage{microtype,textcomp,textgreek,mathspec}
\usepackage{xpatch}  % can exclude etoolbox. xpatch loads it anyway, since egreg (xpatch author) extends etoolbox

\makeatletter
%http://zoonek.free.fr/LaTeX/LaTeX_samples_chapter/0.html

\def\thickhrulefill{\leavevmode \leaders \hrule height 1ex \hfill \kern \z@}

\def\@makechapterhead#1{%
    {\parindent \z@ \centering \reset@font
        \thickhrulefill\quad
        \@chapapp{} \thechapter
        \quad \thickhrulefill
        \par\nobreak
        \vspace*{6\p@}%
        \interlinepenalty\@M
        \hrule
        \vspace*{6\p@}%
        \Large \bfseries #1\par\nobreak
        \par
        \vspace*{6\p@}%
        \interlinepenalty\@M
        \hrule
        \vskip 20\p@
    }}
    \def\@makeschapterhead#1{%
        {\parindent \z@ \centering \reset@font
            \thickhrulefill
            \par\nobreak
            \vspace*{6\p@}%
            \interlinepenalty\@M
            \hrule
            \vspace*{6\p@}%
            \Large \bfseries #1\par\nobreak
            \par
            \vspace*{6\p@}%
            \interlinepenalty\@M
            \hrule
            \vskip 20\p@
        }}

\makeatother

\begin{document}
    \chapter{A title with a hanging character}

    Please note and compare to the next chapter, the relative line spacing between the Chapter title and the lower hline placement.  

    \chapter{All above line characters}

    This line doesn't have enough space after it, I believe this is because of the characters that dip below the regular virtual alignment line

\end{document}

You should not be loading that mix of packages. If you are using Lua/XeTeX, then you should not be using textgreek or textcomp. If you are using (pdf)TeX, then you should not try to load mathspec. — cfr, Jul 12 '15 at 01:33
@cfr Uh-oh. I think I will open a new question citing your comment here to give a better forum for a detailed answer. I use XeTeX but prefer to avoid inserting symbols and special characters as my text container can't save them, and these packages have been crucial to me and using non-math-mode greek text that doesn't show up in math mode type italics. The only problem I ever had was with \textgamma but I wasn't convinced this was a symptom of a larger problem. — EngBIRD, Jul 12 '15 at 02:44

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

Use \strut:

enter image description here

The code:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{siunitx}
\usepackage{microtype,textcomp,textgreek,mathspec}
\usepackage{xpatch}  % can exclude etoolbox. xpatch loads it anyway, since egreg (xpatch author) extends etoolbox

\makeatletter
%http://zoonek.free.fr/LaTeX/LaTeX_samples_chapter/0.html

\def\thickhrulefill{\leavevmode \leaders \hrule height 1ex \hfill \kern \z@}

\def\@makechapterhead#1{%
    {\parindent \z@ \centering \reset@font
        \thickhrulefill\quad
        \@chapapp{} \thechapter
        \quad \thickhrulefill
        \par\nobreak
        \vspace*{6\p@}%
        \interlinepenalty\@M
        \hrule
        \vspace*{6\p@}%
        \Large \bfseries \strut#1\strut\par\nobreak
        \par
        \vspace*{6\p@}%
        \interlinepenalty\@M
        \hrule
        \vskip 20\p@
    }}
    \def\@makeschapterhead#1{%
        {\parindent \z@ \centering \reset@font
            \thickhrulefill
            \par\nobreak
            \vspace*{6\p@}%
            \interlinepenalty\@M
            \hrule
            \vspace*{6\p@}%
            \Large \bfseries \strut#1\strut\par\nobreak
            \par
            \vspace*{6\p@}%
            \interlinepenalty\@M
            \hrule
            \vskip 20\p@
        }}

\makeatother

\begin{document}
    \chapter{A title with a hanging character}

    Please note and compare to the next chapter, the relative line spacing between the Chapter title and the lower hline placement.  

    \chapter{All above line characters}

    This line doesn't have enough space after it, I believe this is because of the characters that dip below the regular virtual alignment line

\end{document}

If, on the other side, you'd like to have zero depth, you can place the tiles in a \smashed (with b option) \parbox:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{siunitx}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{microtype,textcomp,textgreek,mathspec}
\usepackage{xpatch}  % can exclude etoolbox. xpatch loads it anyway, since egreg (xpatch author) extends etoolbox

\makeatletter
%http://zoonek.free.fr/LaTeX/LaTeX_samples_chapter/0.html

\def\thickhrulefill{\leavevmode \leaders \hrule height 1ex \hfill \kern \z@}

\def\@makechapterhead#1{%
    {\parindent \z@ \centering \reset@font
        \thickhrulefill\quad
        \@chapapp{} \thechapter
        \quad \thickhrulefill
        \par\nobreak
        \vspace*{6\p@}%
        \interlinepenalty\@M
        \hrule
        \vspace*{6\p@}%
        \Large\bfseries\smash[b]{\parbox{\textwidth}{\centering#1}}\par\nobreak
        \par
        \vspace*{6\p@}%
        \interlinepenalty\@M
        \hrule
        \vskip 20\p@
    }}
    \def\@makeschapterhead#1{%
        {\parindent \z@ \centering \reset@font
            \thickhrulefill
            \par\nobreak
            \vspace*{6\p@}%
            \interlinepenalty\@M
            \hrule
            \vspace*{6\p@}%
            \Large\bfseries\smash[b]{\parbox{\textwidth}{\centering#1}}\par\nobreak
            \par
            \vspace*{6\p@}%
            \interlinepenalty\@M
            \hrule
            \vskip 20\p@
        }}

\makeatother

\begin{document}
    \chapter{A title with a hanging character}

    Please note and compare to the next chapter, the relative line spacing between the Chapter title and the lower hline placement.  

    \chapter{All above line characters}

    This line doesn't have enough space after it, I believe this is because of the characters that dip below the regular virtual alignment line

\end{document}

The result:

enter image description here

Personally, I'd suggest you the first option, with some adjustment to the bottom rule, possibly.

Remarks

A \strut is basically a zero width rule whose total height (height+depth) equals \baselineskip. The definitions in the kernel:
```
\newbox\strutbox
\def\strut{\relax\ifmmode\copy\strutbox\else\unhcopy\strutbox\fi}

\setbox\strutbox\hbox{%
  \vrule\@height.7\baselineskip
  \@depth.3\baselineskip
  \@width\z@}
```
so if you find that a standard \strut is not enough for your purposes, you could easily define your own variant of \strut.
See cfr's comment regarding some of the packages loaded.

You beat me to the \strut answer by ten seconds! You want to add a sentence or two about how the OP might go about creating his/her own struts in case the vertical spacing provided by \strut isn't optimal for his/her purposes. — Mico, Jul 12 '15 at 01:38
Could you perhaps comment why using packages setspace and parskip break the symmetry surrounding the strut in your solution? If necessary I can open up a new question or update this original question. I originally worked around this by using two different point sizes, but that's not the most elegant solution, so I would like to fix this properly, even if that means I shouldn't be using these packages. — EngBIRD, Oct 12 '15 at 02:55
@EngBIRD I think the best approach here would be for you to open a new question. — Gonzalo Medina, Oct 12 '15 at 03:02

Consistent Line Spacing in Customized Titles

1 Answers1

Remarks

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