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Text Styles Panel (Edit Style Dialog) Documentation?


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While still somewhat new to Afinity's product line, I have been doing the Learning Curve Thing. 

While I am generally able to find out most things, I have been stumbling over the details in the Text Styles Panel (Edit Styles Dialog).  I have dug and dug and can't find any documentation and cannot find any hints on the web for some of the Options in that Dialog.

For example,  Typography > Alternates has a series of Combo Boxes that set numbers for Stylistic Alternates, Swash, Ornaments, Annotation Forms and All Alternates.  I haven't a clue what those numbers imply. 

And it doesn't stop there.  

Features in Typography > Variants and the checkboxes in  Typography > Figures for Ordinal, Fraction, Alternate Fraction and Mathematical Greek are equally mystifying. I might know what an Ordinal is, but what does it mean to check that checkbox?

Can anyone point to some documentation on this stuff?   A Video?  

Thanks.

 

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Rather than looking specifically for what those options mean in the Affinity dialog, perhaps you need to do some research into the OpenType features that they enable. With an understanding of the typography features, the meaning of the dialog options should be more obvious. A couple of possible starting places:

https://www.adobe.com/products/type/opentype.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenType

-- Walt
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https://affinity.help/publisher/English.lproj/pages/Panels/characterPanel.html

  • Standard Ligatures—applies any available typeface ligatures to the selected text.
  • Contextual Alternatives—applies any alternative typeface designs available for glyphs depending on their relative position within a word or with respect to neighbouring glyphs.
  • Ordinals—automatically applies a superscript to letters which are part of an ordinal number.
  • Fractions—dynamically converts fractions into a single glyph.
  • Superscript—converts text characters to superscript, i.e. characters are set higher than neighbouring characters and font size is decreased.
  • Subscript—converts text characters to subscript, i.e. characters are set lower than neighbouring characters and font size is decreased.
  • All Caps—displays all selected text as upper case (or small caps, if Small Caps option selected).
  • Small Caps—displays lower case letters as miniature upper case. If using an OpenType font that does not define small-caps characters, normal capitals are scaled down to the appropriate height.
  • Character variants—allows specific character variants within the text.
  • Stylistic Sets—allows you to automatically apply a font's alternate characters throughout the text.
  • Swash—applies stroke extensions to characters throughout the text.
  • More—provides access to additional typography settings.

Also a look into the Glyph Panel > pulldown menu for various fonts can shed some light on various glyph groups within a font (e.g. fractions > maths) or glyph alternatives (e.g. ligatures).

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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10 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Rather than looking specifically for what those options mean in the Affinity dialog, perhaps you need to do some research into the OpenType features that they enable. With an understanding of the typography features, the meaning of the dialog options should be more obvious. A couple of possible starting places:

https://www.adobe.com/products/type/opentype.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenType

Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typographic_features is probably worth a glance, if for no other reason than to demonstrate how many typographic features exist.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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12 hours ago, thomaso said:

https://affinity.help/publisher/English.lproj/pages/Panels/characterPanel.html

  • Standard Ligatures—applies any available typeface ligatures to the selected text.
  • Contextual Alternatives—applies any alternative typeface designs available for glyphs depending on their relative position within a word or with respect to neighbouring glyphs.
  • Ordinals—automatically applies a superscript to letters which are part of an ordinal number.
  • Fractions—dynamically converts fractions into a single glyph.
  • Superscript—converts text characters to superscript, i.e. characters are set higher than neighbouring characters and font size is decreased.
  • Subscript—converts text characters to subscript, i.e. characters are set lower than neighbouring characters and font size is decreased.
  • All Caps—displays all selected text as upper case (or small caps, if Small Caps option selected).
  • Small Caps—displays lower case letters as miniature upper case. If using an OpenType font that does not define small-caps characters, normal capitals are scaled down to the appropriate height.
  • Character variants—allows specific character variants within the text.
  • Stylistic Sets—allows you to automatically apply a font's alternate characters throughout the text.
  • Swash—applies stroke extensions to characters throughout the text.
  • More—provides access to additional typography settings.

Also a look into the Glyph Panel > pulldown menu for various fonts can shed some light on various glyph groups within a font (e.g. fractions > maths) or glyph alternatives (e.g. ligatures).

Thanks, but this is the easy stuff that I had no problems with.  The difficult stuff concerns the Text Styles Panel, not the Character Panel or the Paragraph Panel.    When you edit or create a new Text Style, you get a Dialog that has many options for creating Text Style Presets.

One of the big confusion issues is that not everything in that Dialog may apply to a selected Font.  But its there.

I've progressed a bit further in my attempts to rationalize the "New/Edit Text Style (my term as the dialog has no name)" Dialog.

I've found by opening the Typography Dialog from menus, by clicking Text > Show Typography, alongside the "New/Edit Text Style" Dialog that the true nature of some of the controls becomes evident by what shows up in the Typography Dialog as things are changed for a selected Font.  But again, not everything may apply to a selected Font, so to get anywhere understanding the Dialog, one must shuffle through selected some different OpenType Fonts and Standard Fonts to see what gives.    That helped me to knock off several of the unknowns from my list.

My understanding has best improved by actually playing with the Dialogs and Fonts.

The problem that remains is that of the available Fonts I have, none of them seem to reflect the remaining unknowns.  The Font Designer of a Font must either include features and attributes or not include them ... to see them in the Typography Dialog and effect them from the "New/Edit Text Style" Dialog.

The unknowns that remain for me are all of the Variants Controls in the Typography Section and in the Paragraph Section, Bullets & Numbering, the Style Drop-down List, which only has two options,  [No Change] and [No Style] with no clue as to how to set a specific Style and add it to that Drop-down List.

One other clue is what shows up in the Style Settings Box at the bottom of the Dialog.   This will state that things are turned On or Off, have been set, etc.

 

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58 minutes ago, flyinglentris said:

Thanks, but this is the easy stuff that I had no problems with.  The difficult stuff concerns the Text Styles Panel, not the Character Panel or the Paragraph Panel.    When you edit or create a new Text Style, you get a Dialog that has many options for creating Text Style Presets.

One of the big confusion issues is that not everything in that Dialog may apply to a selected Font.  But its there.

I've progressed a bit further in my attempts to rationalize the "New/Edit Text Style (my term as the dialog has no name)" Dialog.

I've found by opening the Typography Dialog from menus, by clicking Text > Show Typography, alongside the "New/Edit Text Style" Dialog that the true nature of some of the controls becomes evident by what shows up in the Typography Dialog as things are changed for a selected Font.  But again, not everything may apply to a selected Font, so to get anywhere understanding the Dialog, one must shuffle through selected some different OpenType Fonts and Standard Fonts to see what gives.    That helped me to knock off several of the unknowns from my list.

My understanding has best improved by actually playing with the Dialogs and Fonts.

The problem that remains is that of the available Fonts I have, none of them seem to reflect the remaining unknowns.  The Font Designer of a Font must either include features and attributes or not include them ... to see them in the Typography Dialog and effect them from the "New/Edit Text Style" Dialog.

The unknowns that remain for me are all of the Variants Controls in the Typography Section and in the Paragraph Section, Bullets & Numbering, the Style Drop-down List, which only has two options,  [No Change] and [No Style] with no clue as to how to set a specific Style and add it to that Drop-down List.

One other clue is what shows up in the Style Settings Box at the bottom of the Dialog.   This will state that things are turned On or Off, have been set, etc.

 

Well, I'm as good with this as I can get.   I roughly figured out the remainder of the unknowns without being able to see their effects on a Font.

Key to understand Variants is the following Wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_form_(Unicode)

 

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4 hours ago, flyinglentris said:

One of the big confusion issues is that not everything in that Dialog may apply to a selected Font.  But its there.

I think the Edit Style options window offers all options, regardless of a specific font. That enables you to specify a style according its open type parameters and get those used which are available in a certain font used with this style. Note that you also can define text style properties without having selected a font.

3 hours ago, flyinglentris said:

Well, I'm as good with this as I can get.   I roughly figured out the remainder of the unknowns without being able to see their effects on a Font.

Key to understand Variants is the following Wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_form_(Unicode)

That's why I pointed you before to the Glyph Panel. It lists the various sections ('blocks') mentioned in this wiki and shows according visuals. What a font contains is not up to Affinity, nor can the app detect if the font designer has assigned the glyphs correctly. The blocks listed within a font are quite different, also some fonts use unspecific block names like "Specials" or "Private Use Area".

781138723_glyphpanellistArial.jpg.86ca0f6540e02af74787484239b8d1c9.jpg  1615623912_glyphpanellistAdobeFanHeiti.jpg.c2154b8b4d7d098fcaea5e828b2cd201.jpg

 

 

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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On 6/23/2020 at 7:47 AM, thomaso said:

I think the Edit Style options window offers all options, regardless of a specific font. That enables you to specify a style according its open type parameters and get those used which are available in a certain font used with this style. Note that you also can define text style properties without having selected a font.

That's why I pointed you before to the Glyph Panel. It lists the various sections ('blocks') mentioned in this wiki and shows according visuals. What a font contains is not up to Affinity, nor can the app detect if the font designer has assigned the glyphs correctly. The blocks listed within a font are quite different, also some fonts use unspecific block names like "Specials" or "Private Use Area".

781138723_glyphpanellistArial.jpg.86ca0f6540e02af74787484239b8d1c9.jpg  1615623912_glyphpanellistAdobeFanHeiti.jpg.c2154b8b4d7d098fcaea5e828b2cd201.jpg

 

 

For now, I've had a good Intro to the topic of Typography in Affinity Photo and with Usage in Affinity Photo, Design and Publisher, the diversity of Font Variations will become more fluent in my Knowledge Base.

Thanks.

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