Bug with Mac version of Affinity Publisher 1.9.3

[Roger-Luc Chayer]

I love to work with Affinity Publisher and i use it to produce my paper and PDF magazine. However, since a recent update, there is a bug with the BOLD function. If you chose BOLD, it will only provide BOLD and ITALIC. It is impossible to have a regular bold. Is there a solution to this? Thank you.

[R C-R]

Do all fonts force bold to be bold & italic or just certain ones?

[Roger-Luc Chayer]

Hi R C-R, it does the bug with Helvetica and on many other fonts its simply not available, same for Italic...

[markw]

Hello Roger-Luc and welcome to the Affinity forums🙂
It’s possible that I’ve misunderstood your issue, but I don’t think I’m seeing your problem here.
If I choose Helvetica Bold, I get Helvetica Bold. It is not rendered italicised.
Could you post some screenshots or perhaps a file that consistently demonstrates your issue?

[Roger-Luc Chayer]

 

So i sent you screen shot of Helvetica regular and when i click on Bold only, it becomes bold italic automatically but i saw where to correct it. Still when you click on bold it should not be bold oblique by default.

[markw]

Well, that is strange?
Dose it happen in all documents for you or just this one?
Here is a short recording of me selecting Helvetica Bold, which is what I get.

[Roger-Luc Chayer]

I see, i dont have all that list when i chose Helvetica, I only use the B button and it automatically gives me B+I... May be I should reinstall Helvetica...

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, Roger-Luc Chayer said:

I see, i dont have all that list when i chose Helvetica, I only use the B button and it automatically gives me B+I... May be I should reinstall Helvetica...

What list do you have?

[Roger-Luc Chayer]

Actually same as you, its only the Bold Button that is bugged

[kenmcd]

First, when using the Bold and Italic buttons you are using the style groups to select a font.
When you are selecting the style from the list, you are using the typographic styles.
These are separate names in the font name table.
And may sometimes be configured wrong. Or simply badly.

Second, I tested selecting all the fonts in the Avenir Next font family - first using the typographic styles,
and then using the style group Bold and Italic buttons - the results were totally wacko (technical term).
So in APub 1.9.2 on Windows the results I got were inconsistent and broken.
This may also be the case in APub 1.9.3 on the Mac, or there could be differences, for better or for worse.

 

On 4/30/2021 at 7:44 AM, Roger-Luc Chayer said:

However, since a recent update, there is a bug with the BOLD function. If you chose BOLD, it will only provide BOLD and ITALIC. It is impossible to have a regular bold. Is there a solution to this? Thank you.

AFAIK the recent versions of the Mac come with 6 Helvetica fonts. (Helvetica Neue is a different family)
And I assume they are constructed properly.
But, in some of the Apple fonts I have examined the style groups are completely wrong.
So bad it that it would appear to be deliberate sabotage so the fonts do not work correctly in Windows apps.
Being on Windows 10 I do not have those fonts to test.

If you got the fonts from "the internet" they are probably bad fonts.
Every download I have seen of "Helvetica" is old fonts which are badly broken.

Could be the fonts, could be APub style group issues.
I would like to test the actual fonts if you would like to send them to me via PM.

 

1 hour ago, markw said:

Here is a short recording of me selecting Helvetica Bold, which is what I get.

This is selecting the typographic style from the list, which is different than using the Bold button.

 

[Roger-Luc Chayer]

Very interresting analysis, let me send you that...

[lacerto]

(...)

[Roger-Luc Chayer]

My mac version of Helvetica is 2005, quite old actually

[v_kyr]

• Big Sur (macOS 11) font conflicts with Helvetica and other common fonts
• Font Management in macOS, by Kurt Lang
• Font chaos in macOS Catalina and how to deal with it
• etc.

[R C-R]

9 minutes ago, Roger-Luc Chayer said:

My mac version of Helvetica is 2005, quite old actually

Font Book will show you the version number for each font face. I am running Catalina & all versions of Helvetica are at version 15.0d1e3.

Copyright info is © 1990-2006 Apple Computer Inc. © 1981 Linotype AG © 1990-91 Type Solutions Inc.

[kenmcd]

35 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

I tested behavior of Helvetica on macOS Big Sur 11.2.3 and B and I buttons seem to work ok for basic four styles (Regular, Oblique, Bold, Bold Oblique), but if B is pressed for Light, it changes to Helvetica Bold (similarly, if pressed for Light Oblique, it changes to Helvetica Bold Oblique), and pressing B again would change to Helvetica Regular (or Oblique, if Bold Oblique version was active). The same happens in Photoshop 2021 when using Cmd + Shift + B and Cmd + Shift + I. (I suppose the correct behavior would be disabling B and Cmd + Shift + B, whenever Helvetica Light is active). Based on this, this does not appear to be anything Affinity specific.

So PS is also wacko.
The style-links do not appear to make sense.
There is probably one R/I/B/BI style group and one R/I style group which is getting lumped together (which is wrong).

I tested with Avenir Next because it has two R/I/B/BI style groups in addition to multiple R/I style groups.
Just to see how APub handled it - answer - badly.
There is also a well known Adobe AFF11 font which has six R/I/B/BI style groups.
Given the results with just two I did not even bother to test that one.
Or the ones where the typographic family name is different than the style group family name.
Assume that will also have some odd results.

I have not bothered to test further or post my results as I have seen little inclination to fix some of this "wacko" stuff.
And some of the wacko-ness appears to be intentional, and trying to argue about it is a waste of time.

 

35 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

All 6 styles are included in a single .ttc collection file, which often fail to be installed on Windows (even if collection packages are supported on Windows, as well), so this could well be a way to implement some level of copy protection to fonts that come with the operating system.

I just extract them (TTC files) to the separate TTF files. Easier to examine and test.

 

[Roger-Luc Chayer]

My problem was just solved now because there was a conflict between different versions of Helvetica. By opening the font file, it warned me that there was a conflict and offered to correct automatically, i clicked to correct and now the bold works fine on APub:)

[kenmcd]

2 minutes ago, Roger-Luc Chayer said:

My problem was just solved now because there was a conflict between different versions of Helvetica. By opening the font file, it warned me that there was a conflict and offered to correct automatically, i clicked to correct and now the bold works fine on APub

Was the conflict with other Mac installed fonts, or some other "Helvetica" fonts you installed?

[Roger-Luc Chayer]

5 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

Was the conflict with other Mac installed fonts, or some other "Helvetica" fonts you installed?

It was multiple versions of Helvetica and other fonts

[R C-R]

25 minutes ago, Roger-Luc Chayer said:

My problem was just solved now because there was a conflict between different versions of Helvetica. By opening the font file, it warned me that there was a conflict and offered to correct automatically, i clicked to correct and now the bold works fine on APub

When you say you opened the font file, do you mean you checked the font family in Font Book or something else?

[lacerto]

(...)

 

[kenmcd]

1 hour ago, Lagarto said:

...so basically all wrong. But I am not an expert so I cannot say whether this means that style group is originally unmarked for the Helvetica Light styles, and would therefore be auto-assigned both by apps like Affinity apps and Photoshop, and FontLab, as being "Regular" and "Italic" members of the specified Family name ("Helvetica"). Can "Style group" actually be left empty? Anyway, if I'd click "Build names" or click the single auto-name button for the Style group name, FontLab would use "Helvetica Light" as the style group.

To follow OpenType specs and to work properly the style group should be Helvetica Light, not Helvetica.
Style groups must have a maximum of four fonts in them - Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic.
What this does, in the images above, is put two Regular and two Italic in the same Helvetica style group (which is wrong).

Yes, it can be left blank, but really not a good idea.
(the Cooper Hewitt font error the other day was caused by this)
Any app that uses the Bold and Italic buttons is going to choke.
Style group is how the buttons are linked to the Regular and each other.

I just checked Helvetica Neue LT Std, and Helvetica Neue LT WG1 and they both have two R/I/B/BI style groups and four R/I style groups.
All are configured properly.
The headings on the inner rectangles are the style groups.

Based on my tests with Avenir Next, these are not going to work properly in APub when selected with the Bold and Italic buttons.

I would guess that the Helvetica Neue version included with the Mac may be similar to the Std above.
But it would be interesting to check if those fonts are properly configured, or also broken like the Helvetica.

Ugh, been meaning to install macOS in a virtual machine just so I am able test all the fonts.
Guess I need to spend the time to do it. Bleah.

 

[Roger-Luc Chayer]

 I went in my library font section, selected the Helvetica file and double cliked on it, then t he message about the double fonts arrived..

 

[lacerto]

(...)

[loukash]

13 hours ago, Roger-Luc Chayer said:

 I went in my library font section, selected the Helvetica file and double cliked on it

Remove this from your Fonts folder:

This is a duplicate that doesn't belong in there. Looks to me like the old Mac TrueType suitcase from the OS 9 days and earlier, the one that was installed in System Folder:Fonts. Either you have installed it manually at some point, or an old application did it "automatically" while you have installed the app using its installer. (Yes, some apps do these things and everyone should hate them for that!)

Apple's Helvetica is an integral system font since decades, which means it lives in /System/Library/Fonts. I just checked a partition with OS X Panther which is the oldest OS X version I still got running on an antique PowerMac G4, so that was already the case in 2003.

And that was always a problem, and every designer was rightfully pissed at Apple for messing these things up because we couldn't be using the then still standard Type 1 Helvetica without running into conflicts because of the identical names. Since Apple refused to give in, other font vendors eventually came with their own versions that were uniquely renamed, like "Helvetica LT", to work around this problem.