Convert Text to Curves Creates Inner Lines

[forest-for-trees]

Hello,

I'm new to Affinity Designer, have been using it for a project over the past few days to replace Illustrator. I love the speed and usability but have come across an issue that I'm banging my head against. I have a font called "Haptic Slab" which is a Google Font. I am preparing the file for print and attempting to expand everything and merge into as few shapes as possible. When I "Convert to Curves" for this font, it creates tons of inner lines that are not easily reconcilable, see first attached screenshot. If I go one by one to each letter after converting to curves, I can flatten to the correct shapes. However, when I try to select everything and flatten using "Add", it cuts gaps into the characters as in second attached screenshot. I have tried every combination of the insert options and everything produces holes. See attached screenshots for more details. Any help greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[Sean P]

Hi forest-for-trees,

This isn't a bug with Affinity - it is unfortunately a side effect of a poorly made font. It looks like the original creator has just overlapped shapes to form the letters. So when you convert to curves, you will get the original font's curves. This can be seen when still using the text (prior to conversion) using Outline view mode. With regards to the failure (such as the one on the E) when using 'Add' however this is a known issue that is with development. Also worth noting that the overlapping gaps you're seeing is likely due to having the Winding fill mode set, and not using Alternate - this isn't a bug.

And can also be seen in Illustrator when converting the text to outlines:

 

[forest-for-trees]

Hi @Sean P, thanks for the quick and thorough reply. And for letting me know about the "Add" bug currently in development. I did ensure that all layers were set to "Winding (Non-zero) before selecting "Add", because that does seem highly related what I saw, but I was still unable to achieve the desired result. While the development team is working on fixing the bug, do you know of any workaround to this problem that won't require me to "Add" each individual character before finally merging the entire string of characters together? Thanks for your help.

[kenmcd]

On 4/19/2021 at 2:20 AM, forest-for-trees said:

Haptic Slab

Not finding a "Haptic Slab" in Google Fonts.

Did find a Hepta Slab which looks like the right one. Is that it?

The easiest fix is to remove the overlaps from the font. Takes about five minutes. If you still need it.

[kenmcd]

On 4/20/2021 at 5:49 AM, forest-for-trees said:

do you know of any workaround to this problem that won't require me to "Add" each individual character before finally merging the entire string of characters together?

Appears to be working when the overlaps are removed from the fonts. These are curves.

Decomposed the composites, flattened the layers, removed overlaps, and renamed to Hepta Slab AF.
With a different font family name they can be installed along with the original versions.
Appear to be working fine, but let me know if there are any issues.
And also please let us know that this worked for you.

HeptaSlabAF.no.overlaps.7z

[forest-for-trees]

@LibreTraining Thanks so much, that's a great suggestion! I haven't edited a font in the past which is why this didn't occur to me but it seems simple enough. I will give it a shot, or try the file that you've provided. And yes, I meant Hepta Slab, my mistake!