Font Issue

[sbg]

Help!

I Downloaded Love Moon Font and A.P. is making all the capitals ornate.

I tried to change it in the glyphs but it doesn't work. I just want regular capitals.

New to Affinity. Affinity Photo 1.8.6, Mac desktop 10.15.7 Catalina. 

Would appreciate some advice!

[R C-R]

From the Text menu, select Show Typography. Do you see options there to control capitalization?

[Dan C]

Hi @sbg,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums 

11 hours ago, sbg said:

New to Affinity. Affinity Photo 1.8.6

I can confirm the latest version of Affinity Photo is 1.9.3 on macOS - can you please verify where you purchased the Affinity app from? Was this the Mac App Store or the Affinity Store?

I'm checking for 2 reasons, firstly we always recommend our users are on the latest version, as this ensures you have the most up to date bug fixes and features available for the Affinity app.

Secondly, I'd like to confirm the download source to ensure the link you have used is legitimate, as there are some resellers who sell illegal 'cracked' versions of the software which cannot be updated and we like to stay on top of these.

Many thanks in advance!

[Alfred]

13 hours ago, sbg said:

I tried to change it in the glyphs but it doesn't work.

Please tell us exactly what you tried to change, and where.

[sbg]

Hi Everyone! 

I did purchase from the Affinity website and Ill have to research the upgrades so I know they work on my system.

I did post (somewhere) that the solution posted by RC-R was the fix I needed. I deselected the "Initial" box and that solved the problem.

It must have been a default setting as I have not delved very far into this program as of yet.

Thank you all for your help!

[R C-R]

11 minutes ago, sbg said:

I did post (somewhere) that the solution posted by RC-R was the fix I needed.

I think what you did was to mark my post above with a "Like." That is not the same as posting that a possible solution fixed a problem.

[Dan C]

15 hours ago, sbg said:

I did purchase from the Affinity website and Ill have to research the upgrades so I know they work on my system.

Thanks for confirming that! There was no change in system requirements from 1.8.6 -1.9.3 (besides the My Account feature, however this is compatible with your system as you're running a macOS newer than Sierra) so you should be able to use these updates without issue

Please find download links for the latest versions below, these will install over the top of the current installations and effectively update the app to the latest version.

Photo - https://store.serif.com/update/macos/photo/1/

Designer - https://store.serif.com/update/macos/designer/1/

Publisher - https://store.serif.com/update/macos/publisher/1/

I hope this helps!

[kenmcd]

On 7/5/2021 at 2:49 PM, sbg said:

Help!

I Downloaded Love Moon Font and A.P. is making all the capitals ornate.

I tried to change it in the glyphs but it doesn't work. I just want regular capitals.

New to Affinity. Affinity Photo 1.8.6, Mac desktop 10.15.7 Catalina. 

Would appreciate some advice!

The Love Moon font uses the Initial Forms (init) OpenType feature to automatically replace the first character in the word (the initial form).
Since the OpenType feature Initial Forms is On by default (correctly per the OT specs), that feature must be manually turned Off if you do not want those ornate capitals.
So the Affinity app is correctly handling the font features as designed.
But obviously this can be a bit confusing if the font designer provides no documentation of the OpenType features included in the font.

 

[lacerto]

(...)

[MikeW]

9 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

... In InDesign the FInal Forms is by default turned off (also for italics). Can you tell what is the OT default setting for Final Forms? As it seems that the font designer can specify as per feature whether it should be turned on or off, I wonder if this is generally honored, or if there are OT recommendations which some apps honor and possibly override the designer choices? Personally I find final forms like this too strong to be used as a general setting (even if just with cursive styles, as in this case).  

If one has the ME version of ID, init, medi, fina are on by default...if I recall properly. But there are methods for turning these (and others) on by default in non-ME versions.

A font designer has no control over what an application does nor how a given font is displayed/used.

The init et al OT features should follow the spec in operation and on/off status in any application.

The font designer is responsible for using OT features "properly." In the case of Latin fonts using, in particular, the init, medi & fina features, well, they/we shouldn't use them. Those features are technically for complex scripts, not Latin scripts. There are other methods for such contextual changes in Latin scripts--which can be a pita to write. I too am guilty of using those features in Latin connected script fonts because they are easy to implement. The use of those features in the "Default" language block in a purely Latin font is, to me, an error.

Where I think application programmers go "wrong" in blindly turning on those features on (per the spec, though), is that if those features are turned on merely because the application is written to enable them when present regardless of the language blocks they are contained in then users are generally surprised. If a font has no Arabic (etc.) language declared but the font has one or more of those three features, I believe those features should not be on by default.

But, like it is easier for a Latin font to use those features for such effects, it is perhaps easier for application programmers to not make judgements on their applicability.

[lacerto]

16 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Those features are technically for complex scripts, not Latin scripts.

Ok, I see, I had not realized that this is the primary use of these features but had thought they were a kind of swash like stylistic features. 

[lacerto]

(...)

[kenmcd]

13 hours ago, Lagarto said:

In InDesign the FInal Forms is by default turned off (also for italics). Can you tell what is the OT default setting for Final Forms? As it seems that the font designer can specify as per feature whether it should be turned on or off, I wonder if this is generally honored, or if there are OT recommendations which some apps honor and possibly override the designer choices? Personally I find final forms like this too strong to be used as a general setting (even if just with cursive styles, as in this case).  

The font designer can only "turn-on or off" those features by deciding to use them or not.
The OpenType specifications indicate which features should be On or Off by default (and most apps follow the specs).
By using Initial Forms (init) and Final Forms (fina) the designer has made the decision to have these replacements done automatically by default.
If they wanted these replacements to be only done by user manual selection, they would have used stylistic sets (ssxx), or stylistic alternates (salt), or character variants (cvxx), etc. - OpenType features which are Off by default instead of On by default.

There are a lot of fonts which use these features (init, medi, fina) for Latin scripts.
Back when you could still search MyFonts dot com by OpenType feature codes, I searched for these codes.
There were hundreds of results, and those fonts are still being sold every day.

The OpenType specs were clarified in 2016 to say these features (init, medi, fina) are primarily for complex scripts (i.e. Arabic).
But many, many fonts were made before that clarification, and some designers still use them anyway.
Adobe's own Minion 3 still uses fina in the Latin script.
Many script fonts still use them because they just make sense in that situation.
I love the Laura Worthington script fonts and she still uses init, medi, fina all the time.
Which is why I think it is a bad idea to simply turn-off these features for certain scripts.
The best solution is to provide decent font documentation (Laura Worthington's font documentation is fantastic).
That way users would know what is happening and what to expect.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, LibreTraining said:

The OpenType specifications indicate which features should be On or Off by default (and most apps follow the specs).

What do the specifications say for init, medi, and fina? (I figure you can probably find that, or already know, faster than I could research it )

[kenmcd]

10 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

What do the specifications say for init, medi, and fina? (I figure you can probably find that, or already know, faster than I could research it )

The OpenType specs usually show this On/Off recommendation in the UI suggestion:  section for each feature code.
Since it is understood in this case that it should always be On, for each of these features this says:

Quote

UI suggestion: Control of the feature should not generally be exposed to the user.

You can take a look at the specs here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/features_fj#tag-fina
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/features_fj#tag-init
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/features_ko#medi