Search the Community

1. ALL programs: Ability to right click on a layer and create an embedded object. That would allow the editing of that object directly within the layer panel. Currently the only way to do this is to copy the layers, open Designer or Photo and then paste the layers, save the file and place the file as a linked or embedded object (!). It would be great to have all this automated. 2. Designer - vector perspective warp! 3. Publisher: Variable fonts. I currently have to go to Illustrator and use the variable fonts, convert to curves, save as an AI file and place within Publisher. Seriously, no. Would love to just use variable fonts directly. That would be amazing. There are so many high level variable fonts that I can't use and wish I could. They would help my designs. Less important but still interesting are color fonts, but much prefer to should loudly for variable fonts. 4. Publisher: custom bullets, as in vector objects that I can create and size within paragraph styles. I create my own bullets now this way but it's so time consuming as a custom design. 5. Designer: short cut key to toggle transparency back and forth. Or perhaps a button. 6. Publisher: sort fonts in a family by weight or width. Also in the family list ability to collapse (if not side, at least group and collapse) system fonts so that I can see only the designer fonts that I've installed. It take so much time to go through the list of system fonts that I will never select.

You might remember that the first incarnation of variable fonts, Adobe‘s Multiple Master format, was developed for PDFs. Two families, based on Myriad and Minion, were used to substitute fonts that were not embedded. Since MM fonts were variable, Acrobat produced instances of the fonts on the fly to match the width and weight of the font. Twenty-eight years later, this is still how Acrobat handles substitutions.

Do you have the Inter variable font installed? If Yes, un-install it and only have the static fonts installed.

I can't believe that in the 2.0 update (which I paid for), variable fonts are still not supported 🤯

Welcome to the forums @Radosław Bahnschrift is a variable font and variable fonts don’t work in the Affinity applications. A quick search of the forums for bahnschrift will give you lots of information about this and other related issues.

The problem is the Mac font picker shows the variable fonts instances as available in the app, when they are not. And since all apps on the Mac are expected/required to use the Mac font picker, this is happening. What happens on Windows is you only see what is actually supported, which for a variable font in an app that does not support variable fonts is the default master. Per the OpenType specs this is how it is supposed to work. What you are seeing in the Export to PDF is the default master (which I wanted to confirm is the Medium before I posted, but Alfred got the correct issue posted first). The default master is basically a full static font. On Windows in the font list all you see is the default listed - so you would see Medium multiple times with this font. So that let's you know immediately there is a limitation. Tell Apple to stop listing fonts which are not supported in the user's app in their font picker. That would end the confusion.

That is a variable font - which does not work in Affinity apps. The [wght] in the file name is to tell you the variable weight axis is available in the variable font. Generally you should not install both the static fonts and the variable fonts as there may be name conflicts created between the static names and the pre-defined instances in the variable font.

@Anouk Dupuis, as @kenmcd mentions, the Affinity apps don't currently support variable width fonts, so simply uninstall Inter-VariableFont_slnt,wght.ttf and change your titles to Inter Bold and then your pdf should appear as intended...

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums. You have installed the Variable version of the font. Unfortunately, the Affinity apps only support Static fonts. When you download the font from Google Fonts there's a folder in the download that contains the Static versions. You need to install them, instead.

The issue is variable fonts; which Affinity does not support yet, using the static fonts for Montseratt works fine.

Until Serif finally decides to implement support for variable fonts (PLEASE!!!), you can use tools such as Slice (release builds are available for macOS and Windows) to create static and subset versions of variable fonts. Not ideal, but a potential workaround in the meantime.

Where did you find the font? What kind of font is it? The Affinity applications support only standard Static fonts, not Variable fonts, nor SVG fonts, nor (most) Color fonts. Did you close and reopen the Affinity application after installing the font?

You can buy fonts anywhere you want. Or pick up free ones from Google or other free font sites. Unlike brushes, there is nothing in fonts that is specific to the Affinity applications. Just don't buy fonts that require features that Affinity doesn't support yet. That means you should not buy color fonts, or variable fonts. And you should buy newer fonts, as some really old ones (before OpenType became a standard) might not work. And many commercial sites are having Black Friday sales right now. Edit: Also, don't buy SVG fonts for use with Affinity.

OpenType-SVG is not supported in Affinity apps either on Windows or macOS, but on Windows Microsoft COLR format (which is a vector format) is supported on both platforms, and on macOS also the SBIX format (which is a bitmap format) is supported. On both systems you can use built-in color emoji fonts (on Windows Segoe UI Emoji, available also on macOS if you have Microsoft Office, and on macOS Apple Color Emoji), but I do not think that there are many useful color fonts available in these formats, or in OpenType-SVG or CBDT (Google, bitmap) color formats, either. I have not checked, but I think COLR format is supported on Windows starting from version 8.1, Windows 10 and 11 definitely support them on system level, but not even all Microsoft Office apps (Windows versions) support color versions of COLR fonts (e.g. current Windows version of Excel only supports b/w fallback versions, but Word supports the color versions). OpenType-SVG would probably be most useful format (supporting both vectors and bitmaps). The screenshot above shows how the COLR font glyphs (only supported on Windows version of Affinity apps) can be converted to curves and accordingly edited however wished without loss of quality. UPDATE: Version COLRv1 (supporting vector gradients and used e.g. in the Noto Color Emoji) is not yet supported in Affinity apps. Version 1, also supporting variable fonts, actually seems to be the most promising color font technology, and Google Chrome already supports it. UPDATE: Contary to what I first wrote, COLR format is supported also in the macOS versions of Affinity apps, corrections made accordingly in text above.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums. Probably, on the computer where it works you have the Static version of the font installed, and on the computer where it doesn't work you have the Variable version of the font. The Affinity applications do not support Variable fonts. The download file from Google Fonts should have a folder labeled Static containing the font files you need to use.

Welcome to the forums @amealz, Off the top of my head I would check to see if the History is being saved with the document. File > Save History with Document should be unchecked. After that I would want to know if there are any fonts causing problems. How many fonts are on the MacBook and are any of them old school PostScript type 1 fonts. Are any of them Variable or Coloured Fonts? The Affinity suite does not work with them.

I have been wondering what people want to do with the Variable fonts. I guess they would work for creating raster artwork, or possibly for creating SVG files. They won't work in PDF files unless you convert them to curves during or before Export, as PDF doesn't support Variable fonts yet. Then you don't have editable text any more in the PDF file.

Unless you do not use or miss certain alternative characters "Auto" or "Default" are fine. Alternative characters get selected in the "Typography" section of the "Character" panel (+ … Typography window). Their accessibility depends on the font file, not on Affinity, and thus available options vary between different fonts, depending on the available characters within the fonts. A script can be different from a language, e.g. English or German use mainly the same Latin script (characters) though 'ß' and 'ö' are part of German only, similar for e.g. quote marks, which vary typographically within various Latin scripts ( e.g. “ ” | „ “ | » « | « » ). Also a script can be independent from a language, a text can be written in a 'language' different from its script, e.g. Greek can be written in Latin or Cyrillic script (e.g. demokratia | δημοκρατία, or whisky | ουίσκι), or in Braille or Chinese script. Whereas Asian scripts as symbolic or syllable scripts often use the sound of a foreign word to choose according Asian characters – regardless of a possibly different meaning of its single characters which mainly are syllables or words, not just single characters as e.g. in Latin (e.g. whisky | 威士忌). As Chinese language & script can have dialects (Simplified vs. Traditional like Cantonese, Mandarin etc.) also in Arabic language the script may depend on certain Arabic 'flavours', as 'High Arabic' can be different from spoken Arabic and additionally varies between regional areas, e.g. Morocco versus Syria. Because of this optional complex flexibility when choosing language, type and character your question can not get a general answer without talking about certain goals with specific text spots – the mentioned "Auto" and "Default" excepted. So, in the Character panel the two options "Typography script" and "Typography language" influence each other / depend on each other, while both are always depending on the font respectively the way its chars got assigned by the font design to certain groups within this font. To make it worse, even 1 specific char can vary in its position in the font's Unicode table of different fonts. Thus only the available and variable Affinity Character panel Language menu options + the Affinity Typography window + the Affinity Glyph Browser can shed definite light on this in case of doubts. Last but not least, a text may contain characters which do not exist in a selected font, Affinity indicates this "unsupported characters" with an exclamation mark in front of the ! Font family name (+ reports it in the "Font Manager" window).

No, Affinity does use the Static. Affinity does not use Variable or Colour fonts.

LibreOffice now supports variable fonts - but named instances only.

The Microsoft Office Cloud Fonts are all created in variable font format and cannot be used in Affinity programmes at the moment anyway, as there is no support for variable font format in the programmes yet. And the cloud fonts are in a separate cache that only MS Office programmes have access to. Correction: Not all fonts are in variable font format.

I'm trying to switch to Affinity in my work, at some of the big creative agencies, but no support for variable fonts is a deal-breaker. Also, no apparent desire to consider it means it is hard to persuade others to give Affinity a go. I'm using variable fonts more and more often, and I am now getting locked back in to Adobe as Affinity just pretend they don't exist.

It's certainly true that you can't use Variable fonts, and I also have some memory that TTC fonts don't work. Yes, you can use the Affinity applications to do some PDF editing, but that is not their primary purpose. If you want a full-featured PDF editor you should probably buy a application specifically intended for that purpose.

From what I've read, that is only because the applications using the Variable fonts create static subsets and embed those subsets into the PDF file. But perhaps everything I've managed to find about that has been wrong, I suppose.

What is to not understand? Word supports the variable fonts, Affinity applications doesn't support the variable fonts.