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Some feedback. Is there a way that they can show if a font is variable or static in either the character panel or the font dropdown list? Also, an interesting behavior is that you can have two different fonts, one in the font dropdown list and the other in the context toolbar, which can be different. Because of this issue, I sometimes have difficulty choosing a font. I am curious if that is expected behavior or not.

One of the reasons variable fonts are being adopted for interfaces - the width axis is used to fit varying localized word lenghts into the same field width. Apple System Font variable, Microsoft Segoe UI Variable, Android Roboto Flex variable, etc. And the optical size is automatically adjusted.

Thanks for a detailed view of the problem when unlocking the min/max axes values on Variable Fonts! Make sense… But, in the same time, I’m curious of this results of “mess" - I will take a few favorite fonts and unlock, just for fun… I’m glad that I can run FontCreator on my Macbook Pro M1 - the only font-app I’ve found that can resave font after parameter changes.

Feel free to PM me a copy of the crash report and i can make sure it matches up to mine and @Hangman's I had the other fonts still installed but I've just tried this again from scratch, created a new Font Collection and left Shantell Sans uninstalled and got the crash, so its not related to that font. Guess i was just lucky when it didn't crash before

Yes, for me it still crashes the 2.5 betas, both if I just disable it or if I delete it. I did not test with 2.4. EDIT: I still have 4 other variable fonts installed & enabled: Geologica, Playfair Display, Recursive, & Roboto Flex. Did you test with those 4 enabled?

Probably because some effects don’t work well outside of a particular range of values (in much the same way as some static fonts are unsuitable for use at very small or very large sizes). A font manager deals with font activation. I presume you mean a font editor app. You should be able to tweak pretty much anything in an open source font, but there will usually be good reasons (see above) why the font designer has placed restrictions on the font as originally published.

You find yourself confused because it is inherently confusing! I think it would be wise to avoid having the static and variable versions of a font family installed at the same time, in much the same way as it’s best to avoid having TTF and OTF versions installed concurrently.

One question again when we use Variable Fonts - there’s sometimes an Max/Min on Axes, why? If I want get a lower or higher value on a specific axes, is that also an restriction that can be unlocked by any Font Manager app?

An issue raised in this thread ("Text Style Editor: Category text too Large/Descenders cut off when using Large UI Fonts") has now been reported to the developers by the testing team (Ref: AF-2921). Thank you very much for reporting this issue to us.

I find myself a little confused in having Cormorant (eg) with 'Light' twice in the drop down menu when both forms are installed - only by selecting can I see if a particular Light is actually the variable one, when the 'v' button lights up. Could Affinity perhaps put Light* in the menu (or just * ) to avoid this confusion? I am not a heavyweight professional user but I make leaflets for politics, festivals and so on and don't want to cause them grief! Edit : for advice..... I notice also that some fonts that occur in both forms ( Google Cinzel for instance ) have naming that makes it impossible to have both forms under Windows - installing either asks if the regular form is to be overwritten on install. Is this 'just how it is' and everyone has to live with it? I don't really want to update FontCreator just to change names as designing variable fonts is out of my league.

@Sean P Removing the fonts does the trick for me, thanks!

Now I have solved the "problem" with hidden Axes on Variable Fonts... Downloaded FontCreator in demomode (non restricted), loaded Roboto Flex, uncheck the hidden Axes and then resave the .TTF-file... Can be nice in the future if I/we find several other fonts that is restricted to only a few axes...

I installed FontCreator v.15.x on my MacBook Pro M1 this evening, and, it works well for what I will do in it... Only thing that bugs is the main font preview - but all the rest in the app working well! Can edit fonts etc ect - installed thru CrossOver Mac v.24.x.

Can’t seem to install variable fonts on the iPad?

I was a bit jealous when I saw 'FontGoggles' I was going to write 'Mac' on the front of my PC and see if I could download it! However...There are lots of alternatives | resources https://variablefonts.io/variable-font-resources/

FontGoggles is another variable font testing tool funded by Google Fonts. And they mention using it (in the issues tracker) all the time. Unfortunately (for me) it is macOS-only.

@EmT Howdy, same for me. I tried it with the CTRL method and also reinstalled Designer Beta fresh. Didn't download any DLC stuff then, like fonts etc., still it just won't start. The splash screen gets to the point where it says it's loading fonts, then it disappears. 🙈 Photo and Publisher work fine, tho. (Windows 11, all latest drivers) a4f7f20b-eccc-4e18-9272-81fd4a55a172.dmp

@EmT I have the same issue, just updated the Designer Beta and now it won't start, the process disappears on Windows 10 and I have crash logs. 66e72c5f-808f-4dee-a890-cc3d3e8acc87.dmp341d4451-050c-4a74-b479-142f73e1c5e7.dmp1812fd76-fd1b-440f-8068-2391281ad83e.dmp513beb4b-b99b-483b-8e81-7e82782d9efb.dmp E: Control clicking the App and rebooting did not help. E2: Looks like a .Net runtime issue related to fonts...?

Where are they shown as hidden? Also, what other software are you using that offers all 13 axes? Probably not relevant but I did a quick check in a Rich Text document in TextEdit version 1.15 on my Mac & that app does not support variable fonts at all. Pages.app supports the preset defaults but does not offer any axes for adjustment.

I don't use the release builds, just the beta. And I've reboote three times and suddenly the fonts are the way I had them before. It's still odd, that AFPUB didn't see fonts that were resident and could used by other apps. But for me, issue went away.

Mac. Different fonts, different results. It all looks good to me as that's as it should be.

I'm unsure if this has already been picked up and logged from @R C-R's post in the main Variable Font Support thread here. Selecting a Font Book folder containing Variable Fonts from the All Fonts dropdown in the Character Panel or the All Fonts dropdown in the Font section of the Text Style Editor instantly crashes all three apps... Note 1: The document itself doesn't need to include any variable fonts or indeed any fonts at all... Note 2: Selecting any other Font Book folder without variable fonts doesn't cause the crash... Note 3: This doesn’t happen in the v1 version of the apps… This affects v2.4.2 and the v2.5.0 Beta... Crash Reports Affinity Publisher 2 Beta-2024-04-30-142411.ips Affinity Publisher 2 Affinity Store-2024-04-30-142032.ips

Thanks @Cooperphile Do you have any Affinity/AF Fonts installed?

I'd suggest creating the specific design with border and text that you would like to reuse over and over again as an asset in the Assets panel, with a dummy QR code inside. Then instead of adding a QR code with the tool from the toolbar, you would just drag your asset into your document and edit the placeholder QR code. It wouldn't be slower to use than the QR code tool, but it would avoid complicating the tool with a hundred options for all the different border and text combinations people could possibly want to create. But one thing that might be nice would be an integration with the text variables in Publisher so the target URL of a QR code could be placed somewhere as plain text in a way that it auto updates when the QR code is modified. This is a common use case to cater to peolpe who have trouble scanning a QR code for whatever reason. For example, a "Copy Target URL as Text Variable" context menu command that would then allow to paste it into any text object in the document.

If I understand you correct here, we could buy FontCreator, load our Variable Fonts there, “unlock” the hidden axes and then resave the fontfiles - then we freely could reveal whatever axes we want. Is that correct? FontCreator is 200 bucks, and only Windows… Wonder if FontCreator work in CrossOver Mac edition?