Too much space on bottom of each glyph

[chuck-stein]

I'd like to use this font in my Android app, but unfortunately each glyph has too much vertical space, particularly on the bottom. This means the text does not appear vertically centered within a UI component, even when it is, like so:

I can artificially shift the baseline, but then there is just too much vertical space in general, and the UI components appear too tall and stretched out, instead of wrapping the text more closely.

This is how the UI components should be sized, with a different font that doesn't have this extra vertical space:

I noticed the issue is visible by comparing the glyphs in each box on Google Fonts between Manjara and other fonts.

Manjara:

Another font (Lato):

Would love to have a fix if possible, so I can use this in my app, thanks!

[santhoshtr]

Hi,
You are right about this odd vertical spacing. As you may know, Manjari is primarily a typeface designed for Malayalam script. This script require vertical stacking for ligatures. This means, the descender cannot be minimum, but enough to accommodate 2-3 levels of vertical stacking of letters. As a result the whole vertical space ratios are odd for a Latin typeface. Latin glyphs were added after Malayalam glyphs to make the typeface complete and useful in Malayalam+Latin content scenario.

Above image compares the type metrics of Manjari and Lato. As you can see Manjari has bigger Descend values

But, to my surprise, Manjari attracted Latin users as well and I often get positive feedback about Manjari from such users.

I have not figured out a way to address this. I am hesitant sacrifice any of the design decisions I took for Malayalam(my mother tongue) to accommodate Latin script metrics.

[chuck-stein]

Ah, I see. Thank you for the explanation, and let me know if there are ever any updates!