Font activation issues in Affinity suite

[Chazam]

I use Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo but there is a strange issue issue with certain active fonts not being available to Designer and Photo.

I am on a Mac and using Typeface2 font management app. After activating the fonts I need and go to either Photo or Designer, the fonts I have activated are not available, but are available in Publisher.

I have read this only happens to Postscript files.

The question begs however, why are all my fonts available only to Publisher and not Designer and Photo?

Aren’t they all part of the Affinity suite?

Surely this is a very important bug that needs to be looked at.

[Old Bruce]

Is Typeface able to auto activate fonts for Designer and Photo? Their website is painfully short of information on Auto Activation. The changelog in the Mac App Store only briefly mentions Indesign.

With some of the font managers you may have to shut down and startup the application after activating a font.

[Soo]

Hello - I am using Typeface as well and having activation issues. For example I've activated Frutiger (PostScript Type 1) and it's not showing up in Publisher. However it does show up in Photoshop. I've restarted and all that. And then there are other fonts where it's no issue with them showing up in Publisher.

[loukash]

5 hours ago, Dr. So said:

(PostScript Type 1)

Type 1 fonts are on their way out of the door:
https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/kb/postscript-type-1-fonts-end-of-support.html

The best and most sustainable solutions are:

• upgrade them to OpenType versions
• convert them to OpenType yourself (end user license restrictions may apply)

See also, among others: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/131831-kerning-not-working ff.

 

[Soo]

Interesting, I did not know this. I might might have to invest in updating my font collection. Besides Typeface, is there a font manager you woudl recommend that is not subscriptions based?

[loukash]

On El Capitan I'm using FontExplorer 4 which is nowadays free under certain conditions, specifically if you still had the original free-as-in-beer v1 installed.
v4 can autoactivate fonts without a plugin in more or less any standard MacOS app, including Affinity. (I, for one, never liked auto activation.)
v4 doesn't work on Catalina anymore.

Currently I'm evaluating affordable alternatives like FontBase and RightFont.
I'm not overwhelmed.
Should I eventually move to Catalina for good, I'll likely end up buying a FontExplorer 7 license. FontExplorer is simply too good to be beaten. Having used v1 since 2005, I've seriously grown too accustomed to its features. Not to speak of the p.i.t.a. having to rebuild all my sets, tags and comments in a new font manager…

[Soo]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have no idea why I didn't think of that font manager before - didn't realize it's not subscription based. BTW - Typeface support suggested a workaround that works!

Place the font folder on an external connected drive. Problem solved, Affinity recognized the PS fonts instantly.

I  will take your suggestion and slowly start updating all PS fonts to OTF. I recently moved to Catalina which is why I've had to sort this stuff out.
On a side note I just want to say that I'm really liking Publisher. I started off with Quark 1 and Adobe's subscription was highly motivating in me trying out Publisher. It's enjoyable to use.

[loukash]

27 minutes ago, Dr. So said:

Affinity recognized the PS fonts instantly.

But it still won't apply any auto-kerning, right?

27 minutes ago, Dr. So said:

updating all PS fonts to OTF

As I've noted in the other thread, it's pretty easy to convert Mac Type 1 fonts to OTF PostScript using a font editor like TypeTool (32-bit only) which I've been using since many years. Haven't tried other converters yet, apart from experimenting with OTF-to-WOFF online conversion tools.

27 minutes ago, Dr. So said:

I started off with Quark 1

Me with Aldus PageMaker 3 back in 1989 or so
For fonts, I have used Adobe Type Manager on Mac OS 9. Don't remember what I was using on System 7, and I skipped OS 8 altogether. Font management on OS X was horrible until Linotype's free FontExplorer X set the standard and changed the game.

27 minutes ago, Dr. So said:

Adobe's subscription was highly motivating in me trying out Publisher

Yep, I got stalled at CS5/CS5.5 which still works on El Capitan with some issues, also on Sierra. But the actual installation may fail on any newer MacOS so one would need to install while running e.g. Mountain Lion and then upgrade the partition to e.g. Mojave to see if it still works. Or either copy or symlink all the scattered Adobe library support folders and hidden prefs to a more recent MacOS partition – that's something I want to test on Mojave!

27 minutes ago, Dr. So said:

It's enjoyable to use.

v1.9 just out of beta today!
Yay!

 

[nwhit]

Old thread, but have a question. I've downloaded a few free trials of these mentioned font manager apps, but for the life of me I cannot see how to use them within Affinity apps! None of their documentation explains how to use the managers within an app, only how to organize fonts. 

Can anyone explain how to use TypeFace, FontBase, RightFont, etc. Like I said, adding and organizing looks easy. But how are these used within the Affinity apps themselves to select and set type?

Thanks.

[Old Bruce]

Essentially the three you have named will allow you to take your hundreds or thousands of fonts and have 90 - 99% of them turned off. But when you want to use them you turn on a set. Some of the font managers will work with some applications and turn on fonts when you open a document that has some currently turned off fonts in the document. Presupposes you have the fonts on your computer. 

They are mostly good for people with thousands of fonts.

[nwhit]

So in other words, the font sets/groups you create in a font manager become the only active fonts showing in apps??? But not clear on how can they not show (deactivate) the 355 "permanent" fonts in OS11 that can't be deactivated? Is a font manager app actually moving fonts out of fonts folders, or trying to deactivate fonts not in a group?? But that, of course, can't be done in OS11 with the 355 fonts in System/Library/Fonts. 

I guess I'm still not seeing how what is created as sets within the font manager apps affects what I see as font lists within apps. Old age, I'm thinking!! 😂

[nwhit]

Aha! Think I may have found the workaround! According to this article by a prepress guy, apparently one of the font managers (TypeFace) can actually shut off/deactivate the OS11 System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental fonts, which are 283 fonts, many of which are seldom used by some people. 

Assuming this is true (I hope!!!), I can thus use TypeFace to create actual sets that would only include the fonts I want, plus it has to include the 73+ system fonts that cannot be deactivated. That would really help clear up the All Fonts dropdown!! 

http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html

UPDATE: Just tried to deactivate one of the Supplemental fonts and it worked! And it no longer showed up in APub All Fonts!!! Looks like I may have found the magic solution! Plus TypeFace is only $35, so a lot more affordable than some of the other options, which according to the article, none of the others can deactivate these 283 Supplemental fonts. Thank goodness!!