benwiggy
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Posts posted by benwiggy
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The .458 Release Notes say "PDF Import: Improved Font Substitution suggestions when opening PDFs etc". Build .420 also claimed fixes to PDF Import.
What changes have been made? A few quick tests shows Publisher still cannot usefully import PDFs containing font data at all.
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What are the "PDF Import fixes for specific files" listed in the Release Notes? I'm still seeing the usual problems of text moving, wrong glyphs, etc. Should I be seeing anything different?
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Calibri is a Microsoft font and comes with Office. The version on that linked site is quite an old version.
Bauhaus 93 is a specific version made by URW. The ones in the wfonts.com link look like crude imitations that aren't very accurate.
Do make sure that you are legally entitled to download these fonts for free.
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49 minutes ago, Alfred said:
Both editability and accuracy require the apps to be capable of interpreting embedded fonts, which they can’t do yet.
Editability seems to be what Affinity has gone for from day 1. PDFs in Publisher are treated as some kind of interchange format, in which the text can be fully editable, even if it's in the wrong font/glyph/position. Hence the "Favour editable text over fidelity" option. (Sadly, unchecking the box doesn't guarantee fidelity.) But this behaviour is identical in Designer, and even Photo.
While there are circumstances when this might be useful, it's a curious architectural decision to prioritize over the more 'normal' needs of accurately rasterizing; accurately placing; and accurately rendering for vector editing.
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10 hours ago, walt.farrell said:
They have said that you must have the matching fonts installed. If you have them, the PDF works.
That doesn't work either. Even with the correct fonts installed, PDF imports don't use the correct ligatures and OpenType variants. Text objects also move.
I'm going to offer you the compromise wording of "PDF import guaranteed for small minority of specially prepared PDFs!".
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1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:
Technically, PDF import is supported, but there are aspects of that support that need to be improved.
Did you read the other thread? A member of staff says the actual words "We don't currently support PDFs with embedded fonts". You can of course object and suggest that they support all aspects of PDF import except for that one, which just needs improvement, if you wish. But it's a pretty pointless distinction.
I've done the simplest of tests with PDFs from a range of creators, including Adobe, and they've come up a complete mess in Affinity. And only in Affinity. The characters may be understood, but the glyphs used in the PDF are not used.
Currently any PDF with text cannot be relied upon to appear correctly in Affinity Suite. I eagerly await the day when this is no longer the case, but it needs stating now.
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On 6/30/2019 at 2:42 PM, walt.farrell said:
I'm not sure what you mean about PDF import being unsupported. It certainly is supported: you can either Open a PDF document or you can Place (import) it.
No it isn't. Read this thread. Currently, an imported PDF cannot be trusted to display any of the correct glyphs if it uses ligatures or OpenType variants. Some text elements can move, too. The entire Affinity Suite cannot rasterize a PDF; import for editing; or place on a page correctly.
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20 hours ago, Alfred said:
It does rather, doesn’t it! It looks to me as though it’s the same ligatures issue that has been raised in other threads: each occurrence of Ë should be a ti ligature. It should be possible to correct the error by selecting the text and turning off the ‘Standard Ligatures’ feature and/or the ‘Discretionary Ligatures’ feature via the Typography panel.
The other threads about ligatures are about PDF import, (which is unsupported), not export.
I'd humbly suggest that turning off all ligatures may not be desirable or viable in all circumstances. -
And every other font display correctly? It works for me. Can you show a screenshot?
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On 6/26/2019 at 10:41 AM, FilipK said:
Anything new about this issue? When I try to import pdf to AD 1.7 on windows it destroy the layout of text.
No. Unlike other vector artwork packages, Designer doesn't open PDFs accurately for editing, outlining fonts if necessary; and Publisher doesn't accurately import placed PDFs, like other layout apps. Instead, both apps give you entirely editable text that's roughly in the right position but not necessarily with the correct glyph. Or font.
You'll have to either outline the fonts (Acrobat DC has a Preflight profile to do this) before importing, or convert to another format. EPS or SVG will retain the vector data (though there's no guarantee of complete fidelity). You could convert the PDF into a bitmap image to preserve the content for placing, but you'd lose the ability to edit elements. (NB: Affinity Photo won't rasterize a PDF to bitmap correctly, either.) -
Is this the OpenType Sonata Std version? Adobe have moved the glyphs to the Unicode music symbols range (and the Private Use Area), not the alphanumerics used by necessity in the old PostScript font. Eg. U+E000 onwards and U+1D100 onwards.
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LS database is also responsible for generating the "OpenWith..." menu. Some problem there.
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19 hours ago, midsummer said:
As I've said elsewhere on the forum, InDesign's first version was merely promising too – it couldn't really be used for anything much, if I recall correctly. It wasn't until the first big update that it became a proper alternative for real projects.
I was invited to a pre-release showcase of InDesign, and remember being blown away by what they said it could do, compared to XPress 3.3. Text layers, improved typography, transparency handling, native PDF export -- so many things that would improve our workflow. (Foreign hyphenation at no extra cost!) I can't remember if the release lived up to it on day 1, though.
19 hours ago, MikeW said:They are using the same maker's library (PDFLib) that they used for the Plus line of software.
If they already have a PDF rendering library to use, I can't understand why implementing it is such a 'complex problem'. But of course code is never straightforward.
Affinity seems to import EPS and SVG vector files perfectly, outlining the fonts automatically at import. For my needs, that's a workable solution, though not for everyone.
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Sounds like you need to rebuild your launch services database.
https://eclecticlight.co/2017/08/11/launch-services-database-problems-correcting-and-rebuilding/
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2 minutes ago, MickRose said:
I'm pretty sure that eps files don't use fonts, only curves, so eps files should be expected to place correctly. But you'd probably lose transparency info etc.
EPS is just PostScript, so yes, they can contain fonts. But admittedly, there would be some lossage of stuff like transparency. SVG also seems to import accurately. Or you can outline the fonts in the PDF. Any one of these options may be an acceptable workaround depending on circumstances.
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13 hours ago, Alfred said:
the developers obviously know how to do it!
I've just tested creating good-old-fashioned EPS files, and these work perfectly! (Though the text gets outlined.)
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3 hours ago, JeremyTankard said:
OK. So options are;
1. How can I place the PDF document as 'Linked document' and not as 'Embedded document' (this may work?)
2. Save original as rasterised page images (greatly inflate the file size)
3. Use InDesignSadly, Affinity does have a major problem with importing PDFs, and anything with fonts just can't be trusted to display correctly.
You can Outline the fonts in the PDF before importing. Alternatively, I've just discovered that EPS files seem to work perfectly, which is crazy.There are several threads about it (see this one); and the company has acknowledged the problem and that they hope to improve things.
PS. Love your work!
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3 hours ago, MEB said:
We are aware this is an important/fundamental feature and as Callum pointed out it will be added in an upcoming update/version however due to its complexity it's something that will require some time and testing to be implemented correctly. Importing a PDF as a placed 'image' also requires embedded fonts support to render the text properly.
MEB, Thanks for your comments.
I know that a developer fairy dies whenever someone says "surely it must be easy to implement X", but ... rendering a PDF with embedded fonts on a display is hardly a novel challenge. I've got apps using at least five different rendering engines on my Mac right now, three of which are cross-platform.
However, you obviously know the details, so I can only wait with patience. I'm sure the implementation will be amazing when it comes. -
11 minutes ago, abfdesign said:
I have just been converting all PDF's sent to me with embedded fonts to high res JPEG using Apple Preview. So far so good. And if fonts are converted to curves, I open PDF in Affinity Designer and save it as artwork instead rather than use PDF (not trying to sound too anti Adobe, but...)
Yes, but any extra step is extra time and one more thing to go wrong. Conversion to JPEG has the potential to lose image data, alter information about colorspaces and overprinting, and remove metadata which might be crucial to workflow.
Affinity Designer handles PDFs in the same way, so outlining fonts to curves works in both Designer and Publisher. But again, outlining may well introduce errors. -
On 6/20/2019 at 3:28 PM, Callum said:
We don't currently support embedded fonts within PDFs however this is something we would like to do in the future!
Callum, I think many users would be interested in the reasoning behind Affinity's approach to importing PDFs, and reassurance that making them more accurate is a priority. Every other DTP and page layout app can reliably import a PDF as a placed 'image' - e.g. quarter-page adverts from different clients, logos, watermarks, etc.
I admire Affinity's approach in trying to make imported PDFs as 'editable' as possible, but this is at the considerable expense of fidelity (even with "Favour editable text over fidelity" UNchecked).
Vector artwork editors like Illustrator can open PDF pages, display the contents accurately (outlining some glyphs if necessary), and still allow them to be edited. As things stand, any PDF must be entirely outlined before importing into Affinity, to guarantee fidelity.
I'm a massive fan of the Affinity Suite, but this is a major obstacle to full adoption.
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See my thread here (and several others) about this. Unlike other DTP and vector artwork software, Affinity does not support importing PDFs with embedded fonts (i.e. any PDF with text). The correct glyphs will not be used, and some text elements will move.
You will need to Outline the fonts (ie. convert them to vector graphics, instead of text). You can do this in Acrobat DC's Preflight panel. Or in Illustrator you can do each page.
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Unsurprisingly, this has come up before, and according to this thread, PDFs with embedded fonts are not supported.
That essentially means "all PDFs that you're likely to encounter in the wild" can't be used.
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There are two points here:
Firstly, I'm seeing errors in placed PDFs even when I have all the necessary fonts installed.
Secondly, PDFs can be placed correctly in InDesign, Illustrator, XPress, Apple Pages, MS Word, etc etc, even if the correct fonts are not installed on your system.
Affinity's ability to turn PDFs into editable content is welcome, but the ability to place a PDF on a page as an 'image', accurately, is paramount to a DTP app.
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Here are some simple examples of the problem.
1.Example1.pdf PDF file from Indesign CS6, PrePress settings. The PDF contains standard ligatures, Old Style figures, and a Swash capital.
Affinity Publisher does not display the ligatures, but uses the glyphs of the individual component letters. It does not display the non-lining figures, and it does not display the Swash capital.
2. Example2.pdf PDF file from Dorico (music notation software, using the Qt framework)
Affinity Publisher displays the 'fi' ligature as a Question mark symbol. It also moves one of the "FI" text elements to a random position.
The problem occurs whether the PDF file is placed onto a page, or Opened directly. It occurs in Publisher and Design.
The PDFs display correctly in InDesign, Illustrator, Apple's Pages, MS Word. Acrobat reports no Syntax errors or problems with the PDFs in Preflight.In fact, the problem even occurs with PDFs made in Affinity Publisher!
Unfortunately, this means Affinity Publisher cannot be relied upon to display PDFs containing text correctly, and all PDFs have to be outlined before use.
PDF Import still as bad
in [ARCHIVE] Publisher beta on macOS threads
Posted
I'm not asking to illegally extract fonts for my own use!
Currently, Affinity does not even display PDFs correctly when I DO have the fonts installed.
Yes, we need pass-through PDF for placing PDFs in Publisher: but we also need accurate Rasterisation to bitmap in Photo; and accurate vector editing in Designer (either with system fonts, replacements, or outlines). These things work perfectly in plenty of other apps, but not in Affinity.