Add preference to customize vertical line spacing

[Spongman]

the space between lines is way too large.

here's a comparison of the same block of text in terminal (top-left) and windows 10 command prompt (both bottom and right). the font is 'Lucida Console' in both programs.

the block on the bottom shows that the fonts are the same size (the width is the same).

the block on the right shows that the Terminal rendering is nearly 40% larger (blue arrow) than the Command Prompt rendering. That's 40% less text i can read without scrolling.

at the very least there needs to be an option to change the leading (that scales properly), although i'd recommend making it look like Command Prompt by default.

[mdtauk]

I think the top left line spacing is very readable, and preferable.

As long as the box and block drawing characters line up properly without gaps, then that is good.

---

Now if you are saying there should be an option to adjust the line spacing - again as long as box drawing characters line up properly - then sure add line spacing as an option.

[zadjii-msft]

Thanks for the suggestion! I could have sworn there was already an issue for this, but it looks like it was only ever mentioned as a part of #1790 (and other threads), but never tracked individually. This is now the thread for configurable line height / spacing. Thanks!

[Rican7]

Just wanted to hop in here and mention that while the config/preference would be nice, @Spongman might be seeing the effect of #455 (specifically #2779) happening here, if they're running with any "Display Scaling" in Windows.

[Spongman]

nope, no display scaling going on.

just too much line spacing. you can see it in all the screenshots, too. so it's not just me.

[Rican7]

Ah, ok. Fair.

I just figured it might have something to do with that. But yea, I agree that there's too much line spacing, regardless of display scaling settings.

[Techtonictools]

It is exciting to see MS create a new terminal. Great work, I appreciate it.

+1 for the option to reduce spacing. Not a fan of reading double spaced lines and prefer smaller font too. Much more data can be presented in the given space.

Linux and Mac don't have such wide spacing and large fonts by default.

[Spongman]

Linux and Mac don't have such wide spacing and large fonts by default.

btw: you can use CTRL+<Mouse Wheel> to change the font size.

[markwu]

I prefer taller, actually I want more taller. An option for line height (line spacing) is really good.

[jonhue]

@zadjii-msft is an option to configure the "lineHeight" still something we'd be interested in including? If so, I'd be interested in having a go at implementing this :)

[mdtauk]

@zadjii-msft is an option to configure the "lineHeight" still something we'd be interested in including? If so, I'd be interested in having a go at implementing this :)

Does Windows Terminal draw it's own Box Drawing characters, I know it was proposed #5897 #455

If so, many of these will need to be adjusted to retain seamless lines and borders. But Full Block heights, should probably stay aligned to the text lines.

[Diablo-D3]

Throwing this in here, and I haven't seen anyone else make this argument: getting consistent cell width and height is hard to do across programs (different font engines, different interpretations of width and height, round up or to nearest, etc): just do what every other good terminal does, allow an signed offset to the calculation.

[rewrking]

Bumping to say I was surprised as a user to not find this setting. it seems completely dependent on the font you're using right now.

[DHowett]

Well, good news! We're significantly moving up the timeframe for this feature thanks to the new text rendering engine :)

[lhecker]

I've implemented a version of line height customization in https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/tree/dev/lhecker/3498-line-heights. I'm proposing the following:

1. Instead of just allowing line height adjustments I think we should also allow cell width adjustments.
2. The size adjustment can be specified as /^[+-]?\d+(?:\.\d+)?(?:%|px|pt)?$/, or in other words:
   • Sizes are mostly specified the same way line-height works in CSS. For instance:
     • 1.23 sets the size to 123% of the font size.
     • 123% works identical to 1.23
     • 1.23ch sets the size to 123% of the glyph advance (native width) of the "M" character.
     • 15pt sets the size to exactly 15pt. pt is in 72 DPI, so 15pt equals 20 physical pixels at 100% display scale (= 96 DPI).
     • 15px sets the size to exactly 15px. px is a "CSS pixel" and not physical pixels to avoid ambiguity. It's thus in 96 DPI, so 15px equals 30 physical pixels at 200% display scale.
3. The size adjustment can be specified per profile as:

   {
       "cellSize": {
            "height": "...",
            "width": "..."
       }
   }

I'm not particularly happy about the design of the 3rd point and I'd be happy to hear suggestion how to better specify it. I'm not intending to write a settings UI control for this in an initial PR and only add it in a follow-up PR.

[DHowett]

CSS pixel

Users who want to use a font like Terminus might want to specify a physical pixel size rather than a virtual one. Should we consider another suffix (and borrow from the Android resource language, or something else that offers px and dip?)

[lhecker]

Users who want to use a font like Terminus might want to specify a physical pixel size rather than a virtual one. Should we consider another suffix (and borrow from the Android resource language, or something else that offers px and dip?)

I've thought about this and initially considered to add a physical pixel unit, but then realized: Bitmap fonts like that already require you to enter font sizes in exact pixels and not points, but we don't even allow anything but point sizes (just like most text editors). So basically if you want to use Terminus TTF you already need to know that 18px map to 13.5pt and once you know that you can write this given my proposal:

{
    "cellSize.y": "13.5pt",
    "font":
    {
        "face": "Terminus (TTF) for Windows",
        "size": 13.5
    }
}

[Diablo-D3]

It would be nice being able to specify CSS px (== 100% 96 dpi) along with pt to disallow any ambiguity, not only in cell height/width but also font size in general.

[joakin]

I'm not particularly happy about the design of the 3rd point and I'd be happy to hear suggestion how to better specify it.

A couple of suggestions:

{
    "cellSize": {
        "x": "...",
        "y": "..."
    }
}

I personally think that width and height are more understandable as settings, so, one of these would be nice:

{
    "cellSize": {
        "width": "...",
        "height": "..."
    }
}

{
    "cellSizeWidth": "...",
    "cellSizeHeight": "...",
}

[cool-RR]

New to this thread, and to this project. I just tried to use this feature. I ran the command "Open settings file (JSON)", and in the "defaults" item I've put this:

    "cellSize": {
         "height": "20",
         "width": "20"
    }

I launched Windows Terminal but saw no effect. Am I doing something wrong?

[zadjii-msft]

@cool-RR What version did you try that on? This hasn't shipped in 1.16 or 1.17 - it's only checked in to main to be shipped in 1.18.

[cool-RR]

Ah, I see. Indeed I tried it on 1.16.10261.0. I'm not good at building... Is there a way for me to run the latest main code without having to go through a technical building process, and without affecting the currently-installed version of Windows Terminal on my computer?

[Diablo-D3]

It seems a lot of people want this feature. Any chance of it arriving early in a 0.17-and-a-half release, or are there too many invasive changes to get it to land here?

[alcm-b]

Windows terminal's line spacing is obviously too large when compared to what other command line tools have (user of Putty, XShell, mintty, Gnome terminal here). I'd like to have it either fixed (optimally) or made configurable (acceptable).

[zadjii-msft]

@alcm-b as discussed in literally the last 5 comments, this is already configurable as of version 1.18. Try something like:

"font":
{
    "face": "Consolas",
    "size": 12,
    "cellHeight": ".9"
}

[alcm-b]

@zadjii-msft thanks for pointing that out - it really is there in 1.18 👍

Moving the ticket away from backlog would help near-sighted people like me.

cellHeight = 1.1 looks great:

[khushal123]

cellHeight does not work, tried multiple options. This should be a straight forward setting.

[Gonkers]

cellHeight does not work, tried multiple options. This should be a straight forward setting.

I just came upon this thread, and I found that cellHeight worked for my needs. It does take decimal values.

            "font": {
                "face": "Cascadia Mono",
                "size": 10,
                "weight": "normal",
                "cellHeight": "1.3"
            }

[liuyang12]

I confirm that cellWidth and cellHeight under font are exactly what I want and work perfect for me. Here is a example of Fira Code.

"font": 
{
    "cellWidth": "0.58",
    "cellHeight": "1.15",
    "face": "Fira Code Retina"
},

screenshot of Windows Terminal