Option to Specify Line Height as a Multiple of Font Size

[cpsauer]

Small usability tweak request:
It'd be really nice to be able to specify editor line height as a multiple of font size.

Pitch for why it's worth considering:

• It'd be more consistent with the other line height settings in VSCode. (markdown.preview.lineHeight and terminal.integrated.lineHeight are both multipliers--only editor.lineHeight is absolute).
• It would also unbreak dynamically resizing code on the fly, which is often important while communicating, like in teaching.
• Seems like lots of people change this setting, since VSCode's spacing default is significantly bigger than most editors and people like seeing lots of code on the page. And this leads to confusion because most line spacing settings are a multiplier, in VSCode and elsewhere.

Being able to (optionally) specify the value in ems would solve the problem, while remaining backwards compatible. To give concrete examples, "15" could remain a valid value (implicitly in pixels), but 1.25em could also be a valid value that would rescale properly if the text size were changed.

Thank you for your consideration--and a truly excellent piece of software!

[vscode-triage-bot]

This feature request is now a candidate for our backlog. The community has 60 days to upvote the issue. If it receives 20 upvotes we will move it to our backlog. If not, we will close it. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[vscode-triage-bot]

This feature request has not yet received the 20 community upvotes it takes to make to our backlog. 10 days to go. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[cpsauer]

Good folk of #33968 (@smtnsk, @yume-chan, @luangong), if you still believe in VSCode line height being expressible as a ratio, is there any chance we could get your upvote here to get it over the finish line?

I think we've got a clean, backwards compatible way to do it, and just a few more days to get those last few votes.

(commenting here and tagging bc #33968 is locked)

[cpsauer]

One other really great idea from @appetite-j in #105888: Just autodetect and do the right thing for whichever the user enters. If line height is less than 4, assume it's a multiple of font size, otherwise assume it's an absolute size in pixels.

[usernamehw]

It might not be a perfect solution, but this feature can still be implemented using the existing setting:

"editor.fontSize": 10,

"editor.lineHeight": 0,//  14px   |   Default - relative to fontSize 1.35
"editor.lineHeight": 2,//  20px   |   > 0 <= 3 - Relative to fontSize (too small to be a viable absolute)  
"editor.lineHeight": 25,// 25px   |   > 3 - Absolute value

[vscode-triage-bot]

🙂 This feature request received a sufficient number of community upvotes and we moved it to our backlog. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!