Extreme line spacing when Noto CJK fonts with vertical text

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What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. New document with a CJK text
2. Text orientation changed to vertical right-to-left

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
The space between the lines should stay the same as in horizontal orientation 
(or similar). Instead it is more than 3 times larger.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
Windows 7 64-bit, MS Word 2007, Apache OpenOffice 4.1.0, LibreOffice 4.2.5.2, 
Noto CJK fonts (Japanese, Chinese S&T, Korean, all weights)

Please provide any additional information below.
Changing line spacing to fixed with some arbitrary value brings the lines 
together. In MS Word however this makes lines of text disappear one after 
another. Attached is a screenshot from MS Word with single line height and some 
of the text highlighted.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by pio.tala...@gmail.com on 28 Jul 2014 at 11:57

Attachments:

• notocjkvertical.png

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Original comment by stua...@google.com on 30 Jul 2014 at 4:50

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[deleted comment]

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triage to Jungshik to test on Windows.

Original comment by xian...@google.com on 12 Apr 2015 at 6:36

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I've just tried the latest RC of Noto Sans CJK in Libre Office 4.4.0.3 on 
Windows 7. It still has this issue. 

I haven't tried it in MS Word yet. 

Ken, have you found that this had been fixed in MS Office? 

Original comment by jungs...@google.com on 14 Apr 2015 at 6:50

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FYI: In Libre Office on Windows : Format - Page lets you change the text 
direction. 

Original comment by jungs...@google.com on 14 Apr 2015 at 7:04

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Attached is the screenshot of Libre Office on Windows 7. 

Original comment by jungs...@google.com on 14 Apr 2015 at 7:10

Attachments:

• [Screenshot from 2015-04-14 12:08:55.png](https://storage.googleapis.com/google-code-attachments/noto/issue-98/comment-6/Screenshot from 2015-04-14 12:08:55.png)

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I will try MS Word (OS X) on Saturday.

Original comment by ken.lu...@gmail.com on 16 Apr 2015 at 1:27

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MS Word (2011) on OS X doesn't have this issue. If the Version 1.002 fonts (in 
testing, and about to be released) still exhibit this issue, it is clearly an 
MS Word (Windows) issue.

Original comment by ken.lu...@gmail.com on 18 Apr 2015 at 1:43

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I should also note that the MS Word clones tend to be very good at replicating 
MS Word behavior, warts and all. Given that MS Word is arguably quite old, I 
suggest trying newer versions, especially because MS Word 2011 for OS X 
(Macintosh) doesn't exhibit this issue (although MS Word on Windows and OS X 
have a different code base). I am still not convinced that this is a font 
issue, but rather I am convinced that the Noto Sans CJK (and Source Han Sans) 
fonts merely exposed a poorly-made heuristic, or poor assumption, on the part 
of Microsoft, which is no doubt related to the glyphs for the excessively wide 
(U+2E3A and U+2E3B) or tall (vertical versions of U+2E3A and U+2E3B, along with 
U+3031 and U+3032) characters.

Original comment by ken.lu...@gmail.com on 18 Apr 2015 at 12:45

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We tested this with MS Word 2010 and 2013 on Windows, both of which still 
exhibit this extreme line-spacing issue in vertical writing. When tested with 
the preview build MS Word 2016, the issue has been fixed. The attached 
screenshot shows Meiryo on the left of the dotted vertical line, and Source Han 
Sans (aka Noto Sans CJK) on the right side of it. I think that we can safely 
declare that the fonts are okay, and that this is an application issue that no 
doubt involves the (mis)use of the font bounding box for line-layout purposes, 
which is a Very Bad Idea™ from a typographic point of view.

Original comment by ken.lu...@gmail.com on 22 Apr 2015 at 8:46

Attachments:

• msword_vertical_fixed.png