Paragraph spacing breaks if you mix text styles in a single text block.
Ideally this would function in such a way as to take on the paragraph spacing per style instead of assuming everything in a given text block wants to use the same paragraph spacing.
If the paragraph spacing was inherited by selected items, the same way the rest of the text style is, it would make quick single text block styling possible…
Right now you have to create individual text blocks every time the style changes and then merge them with an autolayout, then if you want different spacing you end up with a bunch of embedded autolayouts, which works, but it’s messy.
I was so sure I was doing something wrong (“this couldn’t possibly be Figma!”) and thought it would involve a quick search in the community. Now I just hope this is not too far down the roadmap/fixit list…?
Our team tried to reproduce and the only workaround they found was by removing any bullet points from the text layer, then re-adding them manually with keyboard shortcut (Mac: option + 8 , Windows: ctrl + Shift + L ), pressing space and allowing Figma to automatically add the list style and hitting undo. Then, you should be able to add spacing as normal without it affecting the type settings.
It seems that the error occurs if bullets are in the same text box as other text with text styles applied. So if you remove all text styles in the text box, it should work.
@dvaliao Unfortunately this isn’t a bullet list specific issue. The real issue is that paragraph spacing does not work if multiple Text styles are used in the same text box. This makes the feature somewhat useless, as paragraph spacing is primarily used by designers to separate headers from body text.
The team confirmed that this is currently an expected behavior. A limitation of our implementation of text is that you can only set one paragraph style for an entire text node. In other words, you cannot have multiple paragraphs in one text node that each have different spacing.
Because of this, only the “overall” paragraph spacing of the node matters. If you set an override of a paragraph style within a text object, we simply don’t support changing the paragraph spacing at this time.
Given the feedback above, clearly, this is an issue that should be changed in the future. We’ve updated this topic to a feature request, so our team can continue to collect feedback and use Votes to see how it’s affecting the community.
Thanks @dvaliao, from a developers perspective I totally get it. They’re not fans of rich text boxes (multiple styles in one). From a designers perspective it really limits paragraph spacing’s full potential and imo its primary function.
Great that @dvaliao has merged other similar posts into this one. (thanks)
I think that with all the power that “Dev mode” is getting and the potential to conform Figma to HTML, it will be a great upgrade to change the single <p> node to a <div> and have the normal h1, <p>, <li> etc children inside with their respective format, which, probably, will resolve this.
Maybe we can start adding “classes” to elements and format them. Which is super intuitive and powerful.
And as a developer & designer I can say it’s a great way to unite the two.
I don’t know if there is a topic about what I’m suggesting but, if there is, please let me know to vote there too.