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Affinity Designer/Publisher/Photo Beta 2.5.0 (2415) When opening a document which uses fonts Affinity Designer tries to load the fonts to display them. The fonts may be missing (deactivated), in that case macOS implicitly sends a font request to external applications, such that font managers can automatically provide the missing fonts if they're available. This works correctly for static fonts and variable fonts that use one of the named presets. For example when using the variable RobotoFlex-Regular in a document (without changing any variable parameters) Affinity will correctly request RobotoFlex-Regular on reopen. If any of the parameters of a variable font is changed, such that it doesn't match with any of the named instances, then the Affinity apps do not send a font request. This means that font managers do not have the opportunity to auto activate the missing variable fonts. For example: Activate variable Roboto Flex in a font manager Open a blank document in Affinity Designer 2.5.0 Add a text block and use Roboto Flex Adjust the weight axis to 415 (this doesn't match with any named instance) Save and close the document Deactivate the variable Roboto Flex in a font manager Reopen the document => Font is missing (expected), but also no font request is sent so the font cannot be auto activated by macOS It's a bit hard to verify/reproduce this, as the font request happens behind the scenes in macOS and you need a font manager to capture this request. Font requests are typically sent automatically when a font is loaded using an NSFontDescriptor. For example loading a font using a descriptor with a font name NSFontDescriptor(fontAttributes: [ .name: "RobotoFlex-Regular" ]) will look for any available font with that name. It seems like Affinity loads a font differently when axes are adjusted. (Note that this only applies to missing, deactivated fonts. Activated fonts are correctly loaded on document reopen.) If any additional information is needed I'm happy to help.

Hi Updating Character Style Panel using Variable Font Slider Axis I added 3 character styles (DM SANS) with the character panel. Then changed the weight values using the variable slider. This updates the Character Font in the Character Panel. But I don't seem to be able to update the character from the Context Menu (Quick update!). The icon and dropdown have registered a change (+) and Highlight but when clicked is ignored

When can we get this functionality on our iPads? I really looking forward for the day Serif implement Move Data Entry (Move/Duplicate) to iPad. Although I have an descent Mac, iPad Pro brings me more flexibility and joy… Serif, when? Can’t understand why both Variable Fonts and QR-codes and Line Width Tool was brought to iPad before (Move/Duplicate)?

It would be possible with GREP styles (which imho aren't available in Affinity yet). – Alternatively and less precise with a workaround by combining Initial Words + Drop Caps, which limits your pattern to a certain number of characters (for drop caps) and would require an extra, hidden (invisible, no-width) character as initial "End-Characater" if you require the use of two ':' in your pattern. Below a V1 example without an end char / ignoring the ':'. initial words & dropcaps.m4v Accordingly this workaround also fails regarding two different fonts AND colours:

Hi @Dezzallier welcome to the forum, great that you joined. As for your question. Publishers often ask to convert fonts to curves if they request files in graphics program formats such as Illustrator (.ai files) or Indesign (.indd files). Why are they doing this? Because the fonts used are not saved in these files, which may result in missing fonts and replacing them with other, basic ones. When sending a file in PDF format, there is no need to convert fonts to curves because all fonts can be embedded in this format, but many publishers ask you to convert them anyway. For this reason, it would be best if you asked the publisher you want to print from what their requirements are when it comes to preparing the file for printing to avoid misunderstandings and frustration on both sides. Personally, I send files for printing with fonts converted to curves because that's what my publisher wants. I hope this cleared up your doubts a bit. Regards.

The names of Chinese fonts that can be displayed in the font list are only displayed in Chinese pinyin. This will greatly affect the efficiency of font selection. 2.5中文字体.mp4

Honk font - may be issues with the font, and with Affinity variable support. First, the font is a variable COLRv1 font - never going to work 100% correctly without COLR v1 support. But, I think it should be able to fallback to monochrome. It appears the shadow is a variable component - so that could be the Affinity issue which need to be addressed. There is another variable font in the GF approval pipeline right now which I think also uses variable components (a lot) called Bitcount. Repo with the fonts is here: https://github.com/petrvanblokland/TYPETR-Bitcount Demo site is here: https://bitcount.typenetwork.com/ So it would be helpful if someone tested those and reported back here. Thanks. Gotta go for now. Have fun!

Geologica font - may be issues with the font, and with Affinity variable support. The Required Variation Alternates code does not seem to work right. Note: the Stylistic Set 01 (ss01) is an alternative way of accessing the glyphs. It is not connected in any way to the variable font features. There are two triggers for the required alternates to be On. Cursive (CRSV) from 0.5 to 1 Weight (wght) from 566.65039 to 900 And these could be together or separate. I could not get the triggers to work as I expected in a font editor The characters affected are mostly latn, some cryl, and a couple locl. Those are in the first lookup. The second lookup only has the colonsign character - and it appears to be broken. lookup SingleSubstitution1 includes latn - aáăắặằẳẵâấậầẩẫȁäạàảȃāąåǻãæǽgğǧĝģġª cyrl - аӑӓӕ loclMKD - ѓ loclSRB - пт lookup SingleSubstitution2 includes just the colonsign - ₡ The rvrn code looks like this: # # Feature variations # conditionset ConditionSet1 { CRSV 0.5 1; wght 566.65039 900; } ConditionSet1; variation rvrn ConditionSet1 { # Required Variation Alternates lookup SingleSubstitution1; lookup SingleSubstitution2; } rvrn; conditionset ConditionSet2 { wght 566.65039 900; } ConditionSet2; variation rvrn ConditionSet2 { # Required Variation Alternates lookup SingleSubstitution2; } rvrn; conditionset ConditionSet3 { CRSV 0.5 1; } ConditionSet3; variation rvrn ConditionSet3 { # Required Variation Alternates lookup SingleSubstitution1; } rvrn; Based on that it should act differently than what I saw in the editors - and on Samsa. I do not have access to the v2 betas (now that they require activation) so I cannot test myself. But I hope this is helpful so you know what is supposed to happen.

There should be a switch to display all axes, and be able to use them. The majority of the time the other axes are not being controlled via another axis. All of the axes may be used in the named instances. But quite often that is not the case (usually the case). Google Fonts (GF) allows a very limited set of named instances in the variable fonts. Most of the time there are no instances at all for Optical Size. I have seen two users in this forum making static fonts from variable fonts (because variable was not supported yet) - and they used axis settings which would be hidden now. So even though variable fonts are now supported - they cannot set the variable fonts the same way. Let knowledgeable advanced users do advanced stuff. They are not Canva users who need to be prevented from making a mistake. Hiding all the axes is silly. Note: you can test all variable axes with the Samsa Variable Font Inspector Development was funded by Google Fonts. They use it themselves. https://lorp.github.io/samsa/src/samsa-gui.html

Hi I think so Win 10 anyway but I cannot test Win 11. It is possible that the issue/s seen are related to the axis support applied to Affinity apps. If you stick to the registered Axis definitions (like weight height slant optical size) + a few others; then obscure ones like these (https://v-fonts.com/tags/C5) would not be visible \ supported () ...or go to v-fonts.com and search the tags for unusual axes. You can see an extreme example here: https://github.com/googlefonts/decovar have a read through this here

I can confirm the Cursive variable does not work on Win11 for Recursive. By the way I wonder why Affinity allows input between 0 and 1 since the user should only be able to access either 0 or 0.5 (stands for 'auto') or 1 for this specific font, as shown on its demo website (https://www.recursive.design/) :

OK, I see that but I would not considering that to mean there are 13 axes "advertised" in the sense of being exposed to direct manipulation in every app that supports variable fonts.

Thanks but I get a nearly empty window for that URL on my Mac in Safari. Except for a few tiny icons that do not seem to have anything to do with any particular font, this is what I see: I just noticed that the URL immediately redirects to https://fonts.google.com for me. No idea why.

As ‘promoted’ and available to experiment with on Google Fonts and other variable font Apps, only five of the variables are made available by the font designer as per @Ash’s notes at the start of this thread…

@StuartRc, are you still not seeing all the sliders in some of the fonts that others like myself are seeing? If so, any idea why? Could it be related to the OS version? Also, can a few Windows users confirm seeing the same bug with the Cursive slider for Geologica or Recursive in Win10 & Win11?

Here: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto+Flex/tester

My font of choice is Roboto Flex and for my design, the only variable attributes I wish to include are 'ascender height' and 'descender depth' which both look very reasonable when used sensibly, by no means ugly (at least for my design) but the font designer, despite having taken the time to include these options doesn't make these variations available (despite other fonts/font designers doing so)... If the 'danger' is that the font designer doesn't want a user choosing an ugly combination and then telling people they used "font x" which has the font designer's name on it, why would they even create that as an option in the first place?

That is a good question. maybe the variable options are non standard. or bespoke from a developer. Depends on which ones are priority. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXxI0fLtQyE&t=4s

Ash wrote this in the first post: "Why would a designer do this? Well, a variable font might adjust an axis internally based on your choices for other axes that you can directly adjust. For example, observe how counter widths change when the weight axis is adjusted in the animation above."

This is where I'm a little confused... Yes, e.g., on Google Fonts (other variable font websites are available) differing numbers of axes for variable fonts are marketed/promoted but I'm slightly unsure how one determines which axes the font designer has actually specified should be hidden... Why does Roboto Flex advertise 13 variables but only choose to make five available? I'm sure I'm likely missing the obvious but interested to know...

First of all, WOW! There are 63 styles listed for me in APub beta for this font. But more to the point, all 5 variables show up for me in the variations popup, & all except Cursive have a noticeable effect, so the bug seems to be with the Cursive variable.

There is another font with similar Variable axes =Recursive I just installed it but also only showing 2 of the 5 variable options (https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Recursive) I only see MONO and CASL

The other one listed at https://fonts.google.com/variablefonts is Recursive.

I wasn't sure if that is what you meant so thanks for the clarification. Anybody know of another free variable font with a Cursive variation we could test with? This might tell us if it is something particular to Geologica or what....

Yep could be 😀...I can see the 'a' change using the checkbox on Typography panel but very little else....! I tried adding characters from the glyph panel but that had no effect. Still there are 2 variable options missing on the font...pity I like the font!