LiebeFonts

Dear Affinity,
I am happy to see my LiebeHeide font popping up as a reference for OpenType-SVG so often in this thread.
Please let me know if I can be of any help. I am happy to provide test files, try to find workarounds, tweaking the tables, … in order to get the font displayed in Affinity products.
Despides me being a big fan of Affinity, I also get a lot of request from customers, that would love to use my LiebeHeide font in your apps. So I am more than willing to support you in this mission! 🚀
(drop me a line ich@liebefonts.com)

@Dave Harris and @Pauls: 
Ulrike (@LiebeFonts), the type-designer of “LiebeHeide”, is offering support on this issue. Just in case you missed that thread. 🙂

Dear Affinity,
I am happy to see my LiebeHeide font popping up as a reference for OpenType-SVG so often in this thread.
Please let me know if I can be of any help. I am happy to provide test files, try to find workarounds, tweaking the tables, … in order to get the font displayed in Affinity products.
Despides me being a big fan of Affinity, I also get a lot of request from customers, that would love to use my LiebeHeide font in your apps. So I am more than willing to support you in this mission! 🚀
(drop me a line ich@liebefonts.com)

Dear Affinity,
I am happy to see my LiebeHeide font popping up as a reference for OpenType-SVG so often in this thread.
Please let me know if I can be of any help. I am happy to provide test files, try to find workarounds, tweaking the tables, … in order to get the font displayed in Affinity products.
Despides me being a big fan of Affinity, I also get a lot of request from customers, that would love to use my LiebeHeide font in your apps. So I am more than willing to support you in this mission! 🚀
(drop me a line ich@liebefonts.com)

Dear Affinity,
I am happy to see my LiebeHeide font popping up as a reference for OpenType-SVG so often in this thread.
Please let me know if I can be of any help. I am happy to provide test files, try to find workarounds, tweaking the tables, … in order to get the font displayed in Affinity products.
Despides me being a big fan of Affinity, I also get a lot of request from customers, that would love to use my LiebeHeide font in your apps. So I am more than willing to support you in this mission! 🚀
(drop me a line ich@liebefonts.com)

Dear Affinity,
I am happy to see my LiebeHeide font popping up as a reference for OpenType-SVG so often in this thread.
Please let me know if I can be of any help. I am happy to provide test files, try to find workarounds, tweaking the tables, … in order to get the font displayed in Affinity products.
Despides me being a big fan of Affinity, I also get a lot of request from customers, that would love to use my LiebeHeide font in your apps. So I am more than willing to support you in this mission! 🚀
(drop me a line ich@liebefonts.com)

Wow. Lots of questions - for most of which I have no specific answers.
There are multiple pieces of the puzzle which all have to fit together in each OS, each application, and each library for it to "work."
And I say "work" in quotes because just having something appear on the page does not mean it all actually works 100%.
For example, in your PDF the LiebeHeide is a series of images, and the Color Fonts is a series of shapes.
There is no text at all.
So there is no search, and there is no spellcheck, and there is no cut-and-paste, and there is no text import.
Is that "color font support?"
So what is happening?
Support has to be available at each point - the OS, the shaping engine, the text engine, the PDF library, etc.
So for your PDF example - MacOS supports the font type, Word on Mac is probably using its shaper and text engine, and output is via the Quartz PDF library. BUT the PDF library is only getting what the text engine is sending - images and shapes.
So it "works" kinda sorta.
To work 100% it should also have a text layer.
That is possible, but obviously not happening.
So the Apple half-solution looks like something vs. nothing.
IMO it is just a hack.
And pretending to embed the fonts is just dumb.
Contrast that with LO on Windows.
Windows does not support those font types.
The Windows DirectWrite text engine does not support those font types.
LibreOffice does not support those font types, because the Harfbuzz shaper does not support them, and it needs DirectWrite.
And probably its old PDFlib version does not support them.
So it is not going to happen any time soon.
So Affinity can use some of the pieces available on the MacOS.
And Affinity can use some of the pieces available on Windows.
And Affinity would have to make its shaper support those font types, and then feed the PDF library what it needs.
The 3rd-party PDF library may need to be updated to support more than just dumping images and shapes as "text."
Still having actual text can be done.
For example, some of the old documents on Archive.org which have been OCR'ed have an invisible text layer over the original image.
They use a special font which has no visible outlines.
So you can search the text, highlight the text, bookmark the text, copy the text, etc.
Something like this would need to be done with some of the various color formats to have actual 100% text support.
Keep in mind that the shaping engine needs to be expanded every time a new font format is added (which includes new tables).
Each color font format needs extensive programming to support its particular features.
Adding one color format would be a lot of work (done right, not just dumping images and shapes).
Multiple color font formats would multiply that work.
I would like to see SVG-in-OpenType first.
So to summarize - all of the pieces have to be available in each situation.
OS support, shaper support, text engine support, PDF library support, application support.
In each of your questions/examples above you have a different combination of these factors.
They all have to be available, and all have to come together, or "no color font support."
 

(...)

Well, I remember with PagePlus that requests were sought for PagePlus X3 and OpenType support was suggested. PagePlus X3 arrived, yet no OpenType support. However, when PagePlus X5 arrived, OpenType support was included, very thoroughly done.
So, it might be that behind the scenes, with commercial confidentiality, that colour fonts are being implemented.
Maybe, maybe not. Support for the idea from customers may help it get done sooner rather than later, but we do not know.
I hope that if/when it is done that it will be possible to export in colour to PDF. That may need the Affinity software to extract layer information from the font file and produce the PDF using a stack of monochrome layers, maybe making some internal fonts for the purpose. Quite a big ask, but then Serif does have some very talented programmers on the staff.
William
 

I would love to see this!
 

Hello everyone
Just wanted to add to the voices, please can support to colour-svg fonts be included in Affinity (for Windows but also in all other platforms). I'm finding my workflow includes them more and more, and by principle I don't want to go back to Photoshop

Probably only works in LibreOffice on the Mac.
Does not work on LibreOffice on Windows; did not test but it probably also does not work in LO on Linux.
Did you try to print or Export to PDF?
This is an SBIX font and Harfbuzz in the past did not support or even read the sbix table inside a font.
That may have changed. Dunno.
Test the Export to PDF and see what happens.
This font also includes an SVG table - which appears to only hold copies of the bitmaps, no vectors.
Do not know how many apps can actually see or use this SVG table.
The Source Code Pro fonts from Adobe recently included an experimental SVG table with colored glyphs as a test.
This broke the fonts in too many applications so they took it back out.
SBIX fonts do include vector outlines which you cannot see or use.
The outlines are used for spacing, kerning, etc. - because the character images are just basically a box.
Because these invisible vector outlines reside in the tables where the real outlines usually reside, there can be no vector fallback.
I guess we actually found another use for SBIX fonts.
So now they are good for two things - color emojis and fake handwriting.
Both of which can be, and are, done by Color-SVG fonts.

Hi William!
Thank your for your link. But it's not working for me. 😪
The Color-Font I want to use ("LiebeHeide") is not using SVG-Files inside. The designer uses PNG-Files, to make use of the ballpoint-look. Using bitmaps in a font-file is totally fine.
While Affinity is generally not supporting color-fonts at this time, other programs do... So please, Affinity, help!
 

Hello Affinity, 
we're in 2021 now. 🙂 
Take a look at this great color-font: https://liebefonts.com/fonts/liebeheide
 

⁹
That means it is an Apple SBIX color font which contains bitmaps of various sizes for each glyph, and it also means there is no fallback vector outline to display because of how that type of color font works.

That isn’t what it says on the website.
There’s a separate note clarifying that it’s only supported by Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps, not Creative Suite, but since it’s supplied as an OTF file it’s reasonable to expect that it will work in monochrome in the Affinity apps.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.
If you search the forums you'll find many requests for color font support, but it's not something that's currently available.
Serif generally does not comment on potential future features, and therefore we have no idea if or when the Affinity applications might support this.

Dear Affinity Team,
the Font LiebeHeide "bitmap color font" <https://creativemarket.com/LiebeFonts/5352626-Color-Font-LiebeHeide> only works in Adobe's Creative Cloud apps.
So I would like to know if it is possible to "wish" for this as a feature in an update from Publisher?
Thanks for a reply
PatrickB

You're welcome, Frank.
I'm afraid I don't remember if there's been a commitment by Serif or not to include color font support in a later version or not. There's at least two longish threads on the subject that I haven't read in quite a while so a "commitment statement" may have been made.
That said, it will likely be some time before it happens. I also have that font--I haven't found the right project for it specifically but have used a couple of other color fonts in jobs. With no means of altering the colors easily, they are not something I even bring to a client's attention as an option.
Best regards, Mike

Hi, I just purchased a handwiting font "LiebeHeide" by LiebeFonts and it looks like that it isn't working (it is invisible, no color)  in Publisher. The font uses contextual alternates to get a more realistic outcome.
Do you know if this is a common problem, is there any hack I can make it work?
 

Can you please check this in the latest beta (458)

Yasss!
Works as expected now.
Thanks, @Pauls!

Yasss!
Works as expected now.
Thanks, @Pauls!

must be in a good mood today

Or unhappy, depending on your POV!