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It only appears to work on the Mac because the macOS font picker displays the variable font pre-defined styles (instances), even though you cannot actually use them. Try making a test doc with all those listed styles. Will not work. What is supposed to happen when variable fonts are not supported is the application is supposed to display the default master. The default master in the Audi Type Variable font is the Normal master. So that is what is displayed on Windows.

You may have had both the static fonts and the variable fonts installed - which is really going to confuse things and perhaps result in the odd font menu order you had. Google Fonts requires that the instances in the variable fonts (Regular, Bold, etc.) be named exactly the same as the static fonts. That way if you are looking at a web page using Open Sans (which is going to be the variable font) and you have the static fonts installed locally, your browser will use the local fonts and there will be no web font download needed (so it is faster and less traffic). The downside is that you cannot have both installed locally because of the name conflicts. Some designers make a separate VF font, such as Open Sans VF, and because the family name is different you can install both without conflicts.

I guess I did not make my point very well. To me the process is nearly the same. And what ends up in the PDF is exactly the same. The main point is there is nothing preventing using variable fonts for creating PDFs. So to me that means they work now. The differences are in the font handling in the application, not the PDF. So to get back to the original request, Affinity applications could support variable fonts now if they add that ability, and there is nothing about PDFs which would prevent that. OK. Climbing down off my soapbox now. 🙂

Welcome to the forums @Ben Coe You can uninstall Windows updates via Settings / Updates & Security / View update history / Uninstall updates. The Affinity applications cannot use, or can only partially use, certain fonts because of various reasons – variable fonts, coloured fonts, old fonts, broken fonts, etc. If you cannot see the font in your application font list then you cannot use that font, at least in the form it is on your machine (and you can’t force it to). You can search the web for <fontname> alternative (change <fontname> to the name of your font) to see if you can find up-to-date TTF and OTF versions of those fonts.

From the appearance of the font list within the Affinity application, my guess is that you have installed Variable fonts. Affinity does not support them. You need to install the Static version of the fonts, not the Variable, if Cooper Hewitt supplies one.

How is that any different from what @Old Bruce demonstrated? Different fonts have different proportions of width to height and it can vary by character. In order for the text to have the same bounding box it will frequently need to be stretched in one direction or the other. This opens up an entire range of possible interpretations of what you are asking for: Should the height be fit, the width, or both? If both, then the text needs to be stretched; if one or the other, then this is not a simple checkbox on/off state but you would need an interface to select which way the fit should occur. Should the fit consider ascenders and descenders so that it is a simple match of the bounding box, or should it simply fit the x-height above a matched baseline and allow the ascenders and descenders to ride around that? Should the match be for the entire string, or should each character be matched individually in order to maintain the spacing of the characters of the text (as there can be differences in how characters compare to each other and this could throw off alignment of the characters to other visual elements of the document)? Differences in available ligatures and stylistic alternatives could also come into play... If Serif ever gets around to supporting variable fonts, should the settings for each font axis be adjusted to try to obtain an optimal match between them? ... ...

Variable fonts are not supported by any Affinity apps.

You probably have the Raleway variable font installed. Affinity applications do not support variable fonts. When variable fonts are not supported you get the default master. In Raleway the default master is Light. So when you do the Export to PDF that Light is what you get. Use the static fonts instead.

Thanks. That may indicate that you installed the Variable fonts rather than the Static fonts.

It does not seem to be as much a question of "old" vs. "new" apps, but the level of support for different standards, some legacy (like non-Unicode Windows or Mac encodings), some new (like variable fonts). All browsers on Windows that I tested (Chrome, Firefox, Edge) can render the SVG test file provided (the one created by AI CS6) without problems, as can apps like LibreOffice Draw, VectorStyler, CorelDRAW (after PANOSE font matching and showing all codepages), Xara Designer, and Krita. But Affinity apps are not alone, so e.g. Inkscape and GIMP cannot, nor can Adobe Photoshop CC 2023. And it seems nothing on macOS can render it correctly (except VectorStyler, after manual fontname mapping; UPDATE: Google Chrome can, without any issues while Safari cannot), so having the support and then capability to change to something more universal (even if just converting to curves, but having correct rendering) and up-to-date is a useful and important feature.

Still no variable fonts? This is crazy. The variable font is just sat there staring at me and I'm having to diick-around with strokes to try and create the effect I need.... It makes Designer feel like a really poor cousin to Illustrator.

Technically wrong as in the days of metal type each size was individually tailored and adjusted for the size - also known as optical correction - which static fonts do not do but is an option with variable fonts.

To test it, I saved a page in the latest version of Illustrator to PDF. The page contained several variable fonts in various configurations of weight and width axis settings. It worked fine. Furthermore, I opened the PDF in Illustrator and the variable fonts were still there, still useable and hadn't been converted to outlines.

It's not quite that simple, though. They need something that works on Mac and iPad and Windows. Even if they had a layout engine that handles Variable fonts, the PDF format does not support Variable fonts. Essentially, any app creating a PDF needs to create a static version of the subset of characters used in the PDF, and embed that newly created static font subset into the PDF.

Variable fonts don't work yet (PS & TT flavored). In MS Word I can choose from endless named instances, in Publisher all styles are named Regular and look the same.

Some other users have reported similar results. I think it is because of the Mac being able to display the SBIX font, but the APub and/or the PDF library not supporting it. The Mac font picker will display SBIX fonts, SVG fonts, variable fonts, etc. but they are not supported in APub (which confuses users). But can you print it or Export-to-PDF? If you can, that is more confusing. Why is the .notdef box appearing sometimes? There have been multiple posts regarding the LiebeHeide SBIX font not working in APub. So I have assumed SBIX is simply not working. If you are interested, I can send you the font to test (view, print, export to PDF, PNG, etc). I would certainly like to know (and others too) and have no way to test SBIX fonts. Also have Scrapbook Custom which is also SBIX/OTF. There is also an SBIX version of the free Bungee fonts (which I will attach below). Like to get Mac user test results on that font too if anyone wants to test. Yes, but I am not sure exactly what that means - "most emoji" It would be nice to know exactly which emoji fonts work on which platform. On Windows the default emoji font is Segoe UI Emoji, which is a COLR color font. And we can see from tests that other COLR color fonts also work (but not 100%). On the Mac the default emoji font is Apple Color Emoji, which is an SBIX color font. So what I would like to know is ... are other SBIX fonts also working? From the other posts about the LiebeHeide SBIX font it appears it is not working. LiebeHeide is also an OTF/SBIX not a TTF/SBIX (like Apple Color Emoji), and it also has an SVG back-up in it - so are those structural differences an issue? Or has something changed with some update and it works now? Bungee Color fonts for testing The free Bungee Color fonts include COLR, SBIX, and SVG versions in TTF format. You can get the originals from GitHub: https://github.com/djrrb/Bungee/releases/tag/1.1.0 I have renamed them so you can install all three at the same time (name conflicts in originals). BungeeColor.renamed.zip

Congratulations, the static fonts are downloaded with the variable fonts but are in the static sub-directory.

Hello, It seems that Affinity recognises the Instances in a variable font. That is good. Also the contours of these instances are looking okay! The problems is with the advance width of the glyphs. These stay the same though-out all the instances. That is wrong. The advance width can also be variable and need to be addressed. Hope it helps! Thom

It's kinda sad how the discussion went from "we want something that's getting popular" in 2020 to "why do you actually need it?" and "do you want it that bad? take a look at an app hat turns your variable font into a static font". Affinity sofware ain't getting any updates related to variable fonts, the users themselves seems to prefer questioning other users about the need for those fonts instead of making this discussion a whole request for Serif to move forward on implementing variable fonts. Sad. Really sad.

The short version - the font info required is simply not there in the PDF, so supporting variable fonts is not going to help. The font info required is in the AI file, which cannot be accessed, and/or it is encrypted in the PDF, which cannot be accessed. So supporting variable fonts is not going to help (in this case).

My point in asking the question above was that the Affinity applications do not, today, support HTML or ebook (which is a form of HTML) output. And the uses you've mentioned (which I've highlighted above) seem to be in HTML/ebook contexts. Until that is supported by the Affinity applications, whenever that may be, the only use for variable fonts for Affinity users is in exporting to raster formats, or to vector formats (EPS, SVG, PDF) that also do not support variable fonts. And therefore even in the vector formats the user would have to choose to convert the fonts to curves (losing editable/translatable text) or the Affinity applications would need to turn into font generators and produce subsets of the variable fonts in a fixed-font format for embedding in the PDF files. That sounds very complex for an implementation, and I doubt it would happen.

Hi and welcome to the forum. I believe these are variable fonts and Affinity doesn't support variable fonts at this time. You'd need to track down the conventional version of this font family.

Affinity doesn't support variable, just static. Variable fonts come as a single file, or a handful of files. With a static font, you'll have one for regular, one for italic, one for bold, one for bold italic, etc.

For a short time I was tempted to purchase the upgrade from 1.x to 2.1. but having seen all those complaints about very very basic features being broken or still missing completely: nope, sorry. I am not asking for AI-stuff but basics like variable fonts support or an option to set the color of every guide - perhaps even an algorithm that automatically finds a color that differs from all/most colors the guide crosses on the screen..? Actually I am not asking for any new features but having the UI completely redesigned to meet state of the art usability requirements. But as it seems, the Brits will prefer to add some more "nobody asked for"-filters. sad story.

I can confirm that using variable fonts doesn't work, I had problems with my kerning in designer and publisher too. Using the not variable version of the font and everything is normal now! I'm on Mac Ventura and Affinity Publisher 2.0.3 right now