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Agreed, along with variable fonts, and this has been brought up many times in the past. For something like this particular example you can use a normal font and make the text a mask for a picture (in this case of a flag) behind the text, but it would obviously be more convenient to use a pre-rigged font like that, and other examples of color fonts may not be quite so easy to mimic in that manner.

Why? For the same reason it doesn't handle Variable fonts, probably.

This post covers the main bug fixes that are included in 2.4.0. The fixes are organised by operating system. (A) Bug fixes which affected all platforms Rounded rectangle and standard rectangle share corner settings [AF-1628] Purple Coloration in some raw files [AF-1593] & [AF-1571] Malformed names of ICC profiles embedded in PDF-X exports [AF-1883] Failing to open .ARW file from ILCE-7M4 (A7-IV) [AF-1670] Layer Effects, 3D Effect: setting Fill Opacity to 0% doesn't turn the fill transparent [AF-1668] ASE palette file fails to import correctly, no name or colours Exporting to PDF fails when document contains a BMP with transparency [AF-751] Users TGA file opens with the wrong colours [AF-547] SVG crashing app when Opening/Placing [AF-286] Changing Language of text and updating Text Style does not remove red squiggly spellcheck lines under text in a separate frame until reopening file [AF-50] (B) Bug fixes which affected Desktop (Windows and macOS) Bounding Box shows incorrectly on a resized picture frame when using 'Lock Children' [AF-1757] TGA Export and Import is inverting a single pixel value [AF-478] Incorrect name ligature type [AF-1680] Crash when trying to export book (with lock files present for chapters) Outline FX, Fill Style > Contour: changing the Gradient Mid Point does nothing in Affinity Photo [AF-1636] Some PDF files not opening Variable text field in running header does not export to PDF [AF-1583] Crash when right-clicking a misspelt word after navigating to the spelling mistake through Preflight [AF-1489] [User File] Placing DXF file crashes Windows, creates a 0x0 size object on macOS [AF-1488] File exports with error if rasterising nothing with tagging enabled Layer States - long state names cause the UI to get pushed off Data Merge can no longer parse JSON files [AF-1429] Find and Replace panel - Fields tags remain untranslated [AF-1396] Edit Wrap Outline remains enabled when switching to the Move Tool, then back to the Node Tool without deselecting the object [AF-1344] Running headers incorrectly imported in Designer [AF-1320] Edit in Publisher errors and file closes after exporting a Password Protected PDF in Export Persona Users Docx file, Bullet points not importing [AF-1269] Scrolling Pixabay can result in a "Connection failed" message Transform Origin with multiple objects on a multipage document causes the origin point to jump around the page when moved Redraw issue in Develop persona when undoing Red eye removal tool Redraw issue in Develop persona when undoing blemish removal tool with clarity set [AF-1140] It's possible to set Show in Both Panels for character text styles [AF-740] Exporting to PDF with Endnotes set to End of Book correctly Hyperlink from note number in story text to Endnote, but not from Endnote back to note in story text [AF-709] Updating Linked resource in-app does not visually update linked file, remains as 'OK' in resource manager with no option to update Large TIFF file opens with half the design cut off and a transparent canvas [AF-630] [User File] Exporting to PDF does not complete, locks up app. Embedded PDF in file appears to be missing all data [AF-624] Overlay Paintbrush crash when holding shift after undoing Overlay Gradient Creating artboard in embedded document breaks both the embedded and parent file [AF-549] Unable to select child objects inside Open Curves with no fill [AF-464] Custom filler text is applied to all categories of English filler text [AF-372] Enable Transform Origin for 2 node line objects are offset from the object on multi-page spreads [AF-352] (C) Bugs fixed which specifically affected Windows Floating windows resize automatically incorrectly, switching between active documents continuously zooms out from canvas [AF-2005] Crash on close of application after opening a package Opening FIT/FITS files directly causes an app crash [AF-507] Manually changing the % scaling of a placed resource results in unexpected values [AF-388] Adjustment windows pop up behind floated documents instead of above [AF-335] Find and Replace Recent dropdown only displays one character from the search term [AF-1944] MS Store build crashes if when running second app if first instance is in a 'licence' screen Changing Stroke values from Context Toolbar without force committing does not apply the values until the dialog is next opened Anchor list now uses grey text, which makes entries appear disabled [AF-1685] Copy and pasting Artboard with Frame Text into Publisher converts to Artistic Text and changes text size Export Persona 'Export Options' Studio Preset list is incorrectly Centre Aligned Character Panel - 'Outline' numerical value does not update when adjusting the slider [AF-1640] Right clicking inside a text frame will trigger an app crash if the document window is floated [AF-1604] Custom filler text entrybox is too small on Windows Can't edit colours in second document palette [AF-1545] Dragging a Layer whilst auto-scrolling the Layers Studio then releasing the selection can cause the layer to be moved to a random location in the layers stack [AF-1537] States Panel: Scope label isn't level with the dropdown text Layer States: Filling the 'Layer name is' field can push the UI out the panel ALT + F4 does not close the app if a studio panel/window is actively selected [AF-1485] Locating missing resource on file load incorrectly reports them as missing in pre-flight check [AF-1471] Layer states: Toggle buttons in Light UI could do with more contrast Layer States: Hovering near a toggle button makes it change appearance States Panel: Scope is white in Light UI mode and hard to read [AF-1452] Layer States: Clicking around the Regular expressions padlock causes a scroll Add Pages from File- Page number value cannot be specified [AF-1438] Customer cannot see custom Curves Adjustments after updating to 2.3.0 [AF-1430] ASE Palettes do not import as Spot colours [AF-1428] File > New Batch Job > Add defaults Explorer to use 'Affinity Files' extensions only [AF-1426] Scrolling Mouse Wheel in New Document dialog increases value based on UI decimal settings unexpectedly Customise tools list is incorrectly labelled [AF-1421] Edit Brush icon in Brushes Studio does not function .Afbook files cannot be exported with bleed included [AF-1349] Single clicking (not dragging) a Quick Shape label will make an entry appear in the History Panel Adjusting Spiral Tool's angle sliders with 6 decimal places seems off Styles Panel: Remove Category should be Delete Category [AF-1299] My Add-ons Font filter doesn't show any results on Windows [AF-1296] Certain custom date formulas from XLSX are not importing correctly into fields [AF-1284] Crash dragging a table fixed Text Frame Panel: Stroke: None is clipped in German Renaming Nested Anchors Moves them [AF-1278] Book chapters open as read only after being printed Keyboard input should be ignored when floating dialogs are open [AF-1224] Hyperlink panel clips descenders in text Closing app with Book & Chapter documents open simultaneously prompts twice for Book Selection Brush Tool Mode icon remains on Subtract, even though the tool has reset to Add [AF-1062] Recent dialog- Pinned documents are automatically unpinned when opened [AF-951] Preflight Profile Editor cannot be resized on Windows Embedded PSD cannot be Collected or Linked, after Linking all other resources in 2 files, zooming in the document causes a hard crash [AF-722] User file - app hard crashes when undoing unit change Crash when switching between PSD export options The Font search box can expand to fill the width of the context toolbar when typing [AF-56] (D) Bugs fixed which specifically affected macOS Floating and redocking a document creates an empty floating window which cannot be closed [AF-1499] Last renamed style name is not saved, Style returns to default name on restart Text using PostScript Type 1 outline fonts are being converted to curves when exporting to PDF [AF-1387] Full screen app then close and reopen causes UI to appear behind OS menu bar and dock [AF-315] 'Normalise Breaks on copy plain text' setting does not stick on app restart [AF-1684] Layer FX- Bevel/Emboss default blend modes display the incorrect blend mode [AF-1381] Drag-dropping a masked child layer out to the parent stack without releasing the mouse button causes a crash [AF-977] Saving a file with a PSD/SVG embedded automatically switches the policy to linked when re-opening the file [AF-1416] Unable to Copy and Paste Artboard layers into Publisher Inserting a Figure Space results in a 0 being inserted [AF-1656] Find and Replace: Searching for Character Style when Scope is set to Story or Selection [AF-1609] Renaming Anchors without pressing enter after renaming can cause edited anchors to revert to old name [AF-1544] States Panel: Text labels are not clickable on macOS Crash when clicking Sync Before after enabling Noise Reduction [AF-1419] Dragging document to 2nd monitor prevents you from closing it and can display graphical issues [AF-1417] MAC Affinity Photo crashes if the windows is closed before developing a RAW file [AF-1408] Exporting to PDF from Book panel fails to generate preview Error message appears after cancelling an IAP Affinity Store linked content in My Add-ons doesn't have a white heading on macOS [AF-1297] Text doesn't reflow when adding/removing items in a group Text frame ruler flickers when adjusting the text indent on multi-column frames which span >1 page [AF-1251] Shift click not working in hyperlink panel on Mac [AF-1212] Metal Compute: Proc Tex Cell Noise functions not working [AF-1197] Place Image Panel doesn't show when drag drop multiple images while holding Option [AF-1004] Sonoma - Popup Control: Delay in Showing the Popup Updating a global colour applied to objects across multiple chapters fails to update the objects when synchronising [AF-656] Move cmd+K (Find in Layers Panel) from Misc to Layer in Shortcuts Layer States: Text labels clipped using Large Font UI Size [AF-141] Should we add an ellipsis when we purposely truncate text? (E) Bugs fixed which specifically affected iPad Adjustment Interface and Image placement menu flicker when iPad is held/Positioned at certain angles [AF-1306] Changing Resize settings breaks UI or crashes app [AF-912] Files containing SVGs crash on open [AF-1413] iPad Keyboard will show, or dialogs will close based on the angle of the iPad (seemingly accelerometer controlled?) [AF-1599] Creating/opening a file or navigating to Settings crashes app with relation to "Affinity::CloudServices::Content" [AF-612] When Find bar is left open, selecting different text and then the Find command again doesn't refresh the Find bar When editing a text style, first option in the right pane overlaps iPadOS's status bar Selecting Import Styles on the Text panel crashes the app The Edit menu's Paste commands are unexpectedly unavailable 2.2 & 2.3 files containing embedded SVGs show as missing linked resource when opened Next Style is not being applied Behaviour when placing two or more text files via drag and drop is different than Document menu > Place Affinity Windows applications include the fixes in lists (A)+(B)+(C) (A) Bugs fixes affecting All Apps + (B) Bug fixes affecting desktop Apps + (C) those fixes affecting Windows Affinity macOS applications include the fixes in lists (A)+(B)+(D) (A) Bugs fixes affecting All Apps + (B) Bug fixes affecting desktop Apps + (D) Bug fixes affecting macOS Affinity iPad applications include the fixes in list (A)+(E) (A) Bugs fixes affecting All Apps + (E) Bug fixes affecting iPads. These list are just the highlights of the many (~200) fixes made during the recent 2.4.0 beta cycle, which are listed in full in this post . If you have reported a bug and it is not yet fixed, please do not report it again. More fixes will be made in the forthcoming 2.5 beta cycle.

This functionality is becoming increasingly important for brand consistency. Some on the web widely used Google Font variants with original, classic style are only accessible as variable fonts.

Beautiful font. Hope we'll get support for the variable fonts as soon as possible.

Like most here, I agree. +1 vote from me. I’ve seen so many variable fonts I want to buy licensing for but thankfully I checked if Affinity supports them or not before proceeding with the purchase. Variable font support needs to be there on both desktop and mobile platforms. It’s not like it’s an unavailable tool that I can find workarounds for. The use of these fonts can help in making our careers. For example, I find it quite unfortunate that I can’t use this beautiful variable font in any of my projects: https://www.nikolastype.com/fonts/solare/

You have a number of Variable fonts installed, I think. That probably does not account for startup problems, but they aren't supported in the Affinity applications and won't work properly in them. Compare the Style listings for Calibri and Nitalove, for example. There are others like Nitalove that show multiples of the same Style. I'm not sure how to explain what Cascadia Mono shows, unless this means you have multiple copies of the font installed. Again, I would not expect that to cause startup problems, but could cause issues working with the font in the Affinity applications: Sitka also looks odd, to me. And several others. I'm also seeing multiple sets of listings for some of these fonts (including Cascadia Mono, Sitka, and Segoe UI Variable), and I don't know how to explain that.

Hi @Christopher808 and welcome to the forums. Can it be that Apple changed the font from static to variable in Sonoma? The Affinity programmes can't use variable fonts. And it seems to me that this has changed.

Affinity is a great program; you have done a fantastic job. I believe it is largely because they have listened to users. Please add the ability to handle variable fonts; it is an immediate necessity!

This font family was changed to variable with Windows 11. If you have access to a Windows 10 system, these fonts are static versions. Included with the Windows 10 Pan-European Supplemental Fonts Pack. But it only has 6 styles vs. the 16 style instances in the variable fonts. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/fonts/windows_10_font_list#-pan-european-supplemental-fonts

Thanks for responding, Walt! I looked a bit more into the particular font files, and they indeed are variable. Each file is meant to be a different "instance" of the variable font. I tested it in MS Word just to be sure, and it also breaks there. However, MS Word does render the Black weight of the font correctly, and some other weights incorrectly. Hopefully a future version of Affinity will support variable fonts.

It's not "one feature is unsupported". Variable fonts and Static fonts are quite different in construction. To use that font in Affinity you must uninstall the Variable versions you currently have installed, and install the Static versions instead.

Hi @Komatös, thanks for responding. I'm unfortunately unable to access invidual weights. I'm not interested in variable axes. See available weights here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/neue-haas-grotesk-text-pro When you inspect it through Control Panel > Fonts, it appear that the font files are somehow 'linked' together. It also mentions 'Open Type Variations', which suggests that the type family might indeed be variable https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/otvaroverview Shouldn't the default behaviour be to list individual weights, and not break all functionality because one feature is unsupported?

Hi and welcome to the forum, @yashbutno The Affinity programs do not currently support variable fonts. You have to switch to the static versions of the fonts.

I had a similar problem. I created a layout with Raleway (Google Font). I had downloaded the variable weight font file from Google. Everything displayed correctly in the Affinity Publisher app. When I went to export the PDF, it just showed regular Arial font. I deleted the variable weight font file and downloaded the individual font files from Google and restarted the app. I had to replace the fonts in my file with the new Raleway fonts and boom then it exported fine. It took about an hour of frustration before I figured this out. I hope this helps someone else.

There is a reasonably lengthy thread regarding Variable fonts here:

No, I need to correct myself. When I inspect that CSS file that comes back from Google, it loads up 35 font resources, but I realized that the src is the same URL for all of them, and it is one 46 KB font file that gets loaded. Maybe Google is dynamically providing variable fonts for browsers that support them? Pretty cool.

I really want variable fonts myself, but your example is unfortunate and I am afraid doesn’t help the cause. The font of these posts is Inter, and while it is now available in variable form, this forum software is requesting the static forms from Google: <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Inter:wght@300;400;500;600;700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet"> Edit: the above is mostly true, but it may still be delivered from Google as variable anyway (see next post). I would delete this post, but as some may have already seen it, I need to correct it instead.

Sure anybody won't stop using traditional fonts, but right now, I'm working for several clients that use variable fonts. And I'm forced to use this terrible Illustrator for the task. (I haven't realize how outdated the Illustrator really is until I got used to the Designer )

I think that is a bit of an over reaction saying "I can't even do basic graphic design tasks that involve any text...". While variable fonts are great and a nice addition, there are still hundreds of thousands of fonts to do all sorts of great and wonderful things. I like the idea of variable fonts but rarely ever use them as most font families cover all my needs. I do agree it is something that should be added, it will be the future of fonts for sure, but I don't think there is going to be a big tidal wave and everyone stops using traditional fonts as we use them now, it is just going to take a while as new fonts are created and new standards set.

I downloaded a font family called, "Raleway" from Google Fonts (https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Raleway) When I opened the zip file, it had 2 TTF files - Variable and Italics. I used Variable first and noticed in Affinity, the italics option wasn't there. So I figured, I would have to upload the Italics TTF as well. When I attempted this, it gave me a message that there was already a version in use and if I wanted to replace or keep both. When I used both, it still replaced Variable with Italics in affinity. There was a "?" that also appeared briefly against the font name in Affinity. The README doc seems to say I need only one but I am missing out on the other text styles. How do I fix this so I get the features of both fonts?

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/170391-variable-fonts-support/#comment-977485 @curtf add your vote in this thread if you want variable fonts which is what you want to have better font control.

Hi @BarbaraSki, Thanks for the link... When you download the font from Google Fonts and Unzip the file you 'should' see the following, i.e., both the single 'Variable Font'... along with a folder labelled 'static'... If you've installed the variable font, i.e., just the single .ttf file then you have the variable version installed. If this is the case, if you remove this in your font manager and then install all the static versions of Frank Ruhl Libre and reopen your Publisher file, it should automatically substitute the static versions for the variable version but if it doesn't because of the variable font settings used in your Publisher file you will need to re-apply the static versions accordingly... Once you've done this you should find that exporting your Publisher file to a PDF will display the fonts correctly...

@Hangman Hi thanks for responding so quickly. I'm using Frank Ruhl Libre. https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Frank+Ruhl+Libre Could you please let me know if this is variable? Sorry, I'm still learning, all is kind of new. Do I need to change that font?

Hi @BarbaraSki, Is the font in question static or variable? If the latter this will be because Variable fonts are not supported in Affinity apps so you would need to use a static version for the file to export correctly. Also, note that the PDF spec doesn't support variable fonts... If this is not the case, could you let us know which font is causing the issue for you?