lynzrand

This goes especially for Publisher but as well Photo and Designer.
I would like to have Indic/Asian font support - so far there isn't any (The text is distorted).  One staff member on the forums mentioned this font support once Publisher comes out but I don't see it.  If you can make it in a better way then Photoshop which is a pain to configure to use it that would be great!

Hi lynzrand,

Thanks for letting us know - this is a crash we're aware off and is with development to be fixed.

+1 for vector fill

Hi @lynzrand! Would you be able to try this again on the most recent beta? Hopefully, a local proxy config should work now. Thanks

I feel like I am beating a proverbial dead horse by adding my voice to this thread, but it nonetheless seems worthwhile to add my perspective to the other voices who have chimed in here.
My background is that I have nearly three decades of experience dealing with CJK character sets, CJK encodings, CJK text layout, and CJK font development, with a very strong focus on the Unicode and Japanese aspects of those fields. I worked at Adobe for 28+ years.
I should also state that I bought a license for Affinity Publisher late last year, but I generally do not use it mainly due to the lack of this very fundamental feature. In addition to supporting the appropriate OpenType features, in particular vert (Vertical Alternates), vertical text frames need to be added. There was also mention of supporting ruby, which is also referred to as furigana. While this feature is certainly used in horizontal layout, with the 50% glyphs floating above the characters they annotate, there are special considerations for vertical layout in terms of their placement relative to the characters they annotate.
My daily-use layout app is Adobe InDesign, and have mine set up to expose full Japanese (and CJK) functionality. I am fortunate to have a lifetime Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, but decided to give Affinity Publisher a fair shake, which I did.
While my entire book, CJKV Information Processing Second Edition, would certainly be helpful, Chapter 7, Typography, in particular would be the most helpful for the Affinity Publisher developers. Please find attached the PDF for Chapter 7 for your reading pleasure. While the book was published almost 12 years ago, its content is still completely relevant today.
I suggest considering a Baby Steps™ approach, such as to start by adding support for 1) vertical text frames; 2) the OpenType 'vert' feature; 3) respecting the metrics in the OpenType vmtx (Vertical Metrics Table) table; and 4) the 90-degree clockwise rotation of Western text in vertical text layout. Also, be sure to study UAX #50, Unicode Vertical Text Layout.
Adobe InDesign, with its full Japanese functionality exposed, is the most sophisticated Japanese text layout app on the planet, meaning that it represents an extremely high bar. Still, it is not without its flaws. When I typeset my book over 12 years ago, using Adobe InDesign CS3-J, I faced many issues. While I was able to resolve or work around all of the issues, I felt compelled to write a two-page White Paper that detailed the issues I faced. Interestingly, although it is 12 years later, many of the issues have not yet been resolved. Of course, I am using Adobe InDesign 2020, and will have access to the 2021 version in a little over a month from now.
cjkvip2e-07.pdf

Japanese and other Asian language punctuation problems are something that we would aim to fix, and is hopefully achievable in 1.x (as I understand it).
Right to left language support is something that will require a lot more work than this fix,

Running the current affinity designer 1.8.3, When I try to edit the vector brush settings in Affinity designer on Windows 10, the application freezes and I have to force quit. I've tried restarting the machine, new empty file to work from, etc... What  should I do?
Update: installed the Windows update and it seems to be working now...It still freezes at times every now and then but then recovers and I can keep moving forward.

It works! Tried firing it up three times on my machine withoud hitting any issue. Will try once again after restart.

It works! Tried firing it up three times on my machine withoud hitting any issue. Will try once again after restart.

I encountered the same issue with my beta installation. Affinity Designer Beta crashes after showing window frame and before showing any button or text (fig.1).
The non-beta version does not crash. The beta version seldom (1 in about 20--50 tries) successfully starts up, but has its font list scrambled up, having the font rendering different from the font name showed in list (fig. 2).
Wild guess: the hashing algorithm of font entries is inconsistent between listing and rendering modules. In most cases it results in fetching the value from an empty bin from the hashmap, which results in an exception; but in rare cases (if the seeds are right) the desired result is in the same bin as expected, so it does not crash and has its font list scrambled up.
Another wild guess: it's related to different representation of strings between the OS and the app

^ Fig. 1 - The state of Affinity Designer Beta before crash

^ Fig. 2 - The font list scrambling up. Notice neither of the rendered text are showing the right font.
System information:
Affinity Designer Beta 1.8.0.532
Windows 10 Insiders Preview 2004 Build 19551
I have the files mentioned above zipped, and can upload them if you need them.
---
Update:
Checked the event data, it seems there's a bad pointer or something like that while accessing fonts.

RE: 1.8 crashes - temporary fix
I won't bore you with the details as to how I arrived at this partial/temporary resolution of the issue.
By going to AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\Settings  and changing the file called Fonts.xml to Fonts. xml.backup before running the program, I was able to open the program. All the functionality appears to be present except that using the Artistic Text Tool feature does not function properly. If I select a particular font, the program selects something completely different, although the listing of my fonts appears to be complete. I tried this multiple times with the same result.
The reason why I have called this a "temporary fix" is because it does not resolve the issue, not even partially, since restarting results in the same crash. The program automatically created a new Fonts.xml file which apparently is the file that is causing the failure of the program to open. Of course, before opening the program again and deleting the Fonts.xml file but leaving the previous Fonts.xml.backup file in place, you can again open the program.
Perhaps users with fewer fonts may have more success in using the Artistic Text Tool feature, but, in any event, the developers need to address the "crash" issue.

I too
also have a problem in AD after updating to version 1.8,  when I start to use my pen to draw I have a lag of about a fraction of a sec after the pen has drawn a line etc this has left me unable to use Afinity designer and photo! Where do I go on from here?

I agree - I'm waiting for the developers to get back to me about changes they possibly made in 1.8. When I get a response, I will reply back ASAP. I'm sorry that you're having this issue - I can only suggest that you go back to 1.7.3 if you need to use the app in the meantime. 

I updated from previous Beta version and cannot get program to open, gets to the first screen and crashes. Rolled back to previous version everything okay. Reinstall latest update (3rd time) and same problem.
Win 10

I had exactly the same problem yesterday. Setting an A6 Artboard plus 3mm bleed was for nothing. I cannot move pictures visible into the bleed and exporting it to PDF X4 doesn´t show the bleed at all. So the workaround was to add the 3mm bleed to document size 148x105mm becomes 151x111mm and placing helplines 6mm instead of 3mm safety distance. 
Do I something wrong?

Maybe these documents from W3C can help Affinity's developers know what they need to implement:
Requirements for Chinese Text Layout https://w3c.github.io/clreq/ Requirements for Japanese Text Layout https://w3c.github.io/jlreq/ Not all features are that eagerly needed, but at least the key and most demanding features for Eastern Asian typesetting like positioning of punctuation marks (JP, CN) and vertical text (JP, CN) should be implemented with high priority. They are the core of typesetting, and with even only the first feature (punctuation mark positioning) we can build designs with much more ease.
 
Copied from my thread:
 

Maybe these documents from W3C can help Affinity's developers know what they need to implement:
Requirements for Chinese Text Layout https://w3c.github.io/clreq/ Requirements for Japanese Text Layout https://w3c.github.io/jlreq/ Not all features are that eagerly needed, but at least the key and most demanding features for Eastern Asian typesetting like positioning of punctuation marks (JP, CN) and vertical text (JP, CN) should be implemented with high priority. They are the core of typesetting, and with even only the first feature (punctuation mark positioning) we can build designs with much more ease.
 
Copied from my thread:
 

Maybe these documents from W3C can help Affinity's developers know what they need to implement:
Requirements for Chinese Text Layout https://w3c.github.io/clreq/ Requirements for Japanese Text Layout https://w3c.github.io/jlreq/ Not all features are that eagerly needed, but at least the key and most demanding features for Eastern Asian typesetting like positioning of punctuation marks (JP, CN) and vertical text (JP, CN) should be implemented with high priority. They are the core of typesetting, and with even only the first feature (punctuation mark positioning) we can build designs with much more ease.
 
Copied from my thread:
 

Try changing the position of the second artboard.

You can see from this picture that the grid does not move with the second artboard.


But when I change the position of the artboard, the snapping grid moves with it. It might be a mistake in the codebase where the origin of the "displayed" grid is related to the global origin instead of the artboard origin.

I'm a designer in China, and Affinity products are gaining popularity here because of its low price and easy-to-use tools. It would be even nicer if we can get better typesetting results for CJK text, such as dealing with CJK punctuations properly (avoid line start and end while placing punctuations (标点避头尾), as well as aligning CJK characters in grids due to their block-y nature, see example 1), and having true up-to-down, right-to-left vertical text (instead of rotating text and/or squeezing multiline text, see example 2).
Surely I know this is going to be a tough work to figure out all the rules when typesetting CJK text and implementing them, but it would pay back greatly by gaining even more users in eastern Asia (I suppose).
 
Examples:
1.

A paragraph of Chinese text in Affinity Publisher. Notice the square closing quotation mark (up) and full-width comma (down) are not directly after their contents.

The same paragraph in Adobe InDesign. The line feed points and punctuation glyph widths are modified to fit the punctuations in line.
2.

A paragraph of vertical text in Adobe InDesign.

The current workaround to create vertical text in Affinity softwares. Notice the misplaced punctuations and latin letters.
 
To be clear, I'm using Adobe InDesign only for comparison. I'm not saying that it's perfect. In fact, it's the inconsistency of shortcuts and gestures among Adobe softwares that drew me to the Affinity family. Affinity softwares are fantasic, but it can be more fantastic if we get these features.
 
The source of text used in examples above, and also a great reference for Chinese typesetting:
https://thetype.com/2017/11/13290/ The greatest myth in Chinese typesetting: hanging punctuation - Type is Beautiful (Chinese webpage)

Yes I understand that but unless I mention this, no one in Serif will notice that some people need this.
Since most of Japanese don't speak English so they won't request it here.
I'm posting this on behalf of them.

I also want this function.
99% of Japanese comics and novels are right-handed.
 

The problem is that Affinity don't realize that full language support is the most necessary thing for a program to be successful. they thinking "first let's upgrade the program with nice and big features that will compete Adobe, and then we will start to think about language support". but people gets upset when they see that the program doesn't really supports their language needs  

Serif said schedule of implementation is unknown though it's necessary in East Asia and I really want it.
Waiting for it for 5 years.
You can find many topics about vertical text in this forum.

I'm a designer in China, and Affinity products are gaining popularity here because of its low price and easy-to-use tools. It would be even nicer if we can get better typesetting results for CJK text, such as dealing with CJK punctuations properly (avoid line start and end while placing punctuations (标点避头尾), as well as aligning CJK characters in grids due to their block-y nature, see example 1), and having true up-to-down, right-to-left vertical text (instead of rotating text and/or squeezing multiline text, see example 2).
Surely I know this is going to be a tough work to figure out all the rules when typesetting CJK text and implementing them, but it would pay back greatly by gaining even more users in eastern Asia (I suppose).
 
Examples:
1.

A paragraph of Chinese text in Affinity Publisher. Notice the square closing quotation mark (up) and full-width comma (down) are not directly after their contents.

The same paragraph in Adobe InDesign. The line feed points and punctuation glyph widths are modified to fit the punctuations in line.
2.

A paragraph of vertical text in Adobe InDesign.

The current workaround to create vertical text in Affinity softwares. Notice the misplaced punctuations and latin letters.
 
To be clear, I'm using Adobe InDesign only for comparison. I'm not saying that it's perfect. In fact, it's the inconsistency of shortcuts and gestures among Adobe softwares that drew me to the Affinity family. Affinity softwares are fantasic, but it can be more fantastic if we get these features.
 
The source of text used in examples above, and also a great reference for Chinese typesetting:
https://thetype.com/2017/11/13290/ The greatest myth in Chinese typesetting: hanging punctuation - Type is Beautiful (Chinese webpage)