Default horizontal spacing on certain fonts WAY off.

[ArmouredFrame]

Hi Folks,

I hope you're all keeping well.

I've been using the Affinity trio for a good while now, getting to grips with the many features it has, and reprogramming my Adobe muscle memory.

I'm about to start my first full commercial project. I've bought some fonts, made lots of assets and now I'm doing tests of how they all fit together.

A couple of my commercially licenced .otf fonts seem to have a strange problem, though. But none so much as 'Bullpen Banter'.

As attached. I've compared Affinity Designer/Publisher/Photo's rendering of these words, centered, and at the same font height as that of Word, Notepad, Wordpad and Web.

As you can see the spacing is well off. I've tried playing with Kerning, Spacing, Desired/Min/Max Letter Spacing, but some settings that fix one issue create another.

I've been searching for hours for a solution and I'm at my wit's end - so I'm turning to you for help.

Is there something I'm missing?

In case it's a driver thing or other tech issue anyone is aware of:

• Fresh install of 1.10.1 suite, default settings
• Windows 11 (Windows 10 machine does the same thing - so unrelated)
• Ryzen 7 4800H
• 32GB RAM
• Geforce RTX 2060

Many thanks in advance.

[kenmcd]

1 hour ago, ArmouredFrame said:

As attached. I've compared Affinity Designer/Publisher/Photo's rendering of these words, centered, and at the same font height as that of Word, Notepad, Wordpad and Web.

It could be an OpenType feature such as contextual alternates affecting the spacing.
Word, Notepad, Wordpad and possibly Web would have contextual alternates Off by default.
And in Affinity apps it is On default (as it should be).

I could not find that font anywhere - is it part of a comic creator kit? Serkworks?

If you send me a link via PM to download the font I can take a look at it for you.
And tell you exactly what is happening.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, ArmouredFrame said:

As you can see the spacing is well off. I've tried playing with Kerning, Spacing, Desired/Min/Max Letter Spacing, but some settings that fix one issue create another.

Please Start a new document, recreate that text and the problem, save the .afdesign or .afpub or .afphoto file, and share it with us. We might notice something you haven't considered.

[ArmouredFrame]

Hi, Walt,

Thanks for the reply. 

I've attached a fresh Design file as requested. I'm not sure if there's a way to embed fonts or anything in Affinity, but I've not found one. Unless of course that's not the settings you want to look at.

Many thanks in advance.

FontIssues.afdesign

[ArmouredFrame]

10 hours ago, LibreTraining said:

If you send me a link via PM to download the font I can take a look at it for you.

Thanks, for the offer, I really appreciate it. But this seems to go against the terms of use and I don't want to get banned the moment I arrive!

The font came with this pack: https://www.designcuts.com/product/comic-maker-toolkit/

In fact, I specifically bought the pack for that font.

If there's any other way you could help, it would be greatly appreciated. Any insights, bright ideas, or those settings folks don't often check.

I did look at the 'Contextural Alternates' option in the typography pane, and it doesn't have this as a clickable option (it's greyed out)

Many thanks again.

[firstdefence]

You can embed a font in a PDF and you check the subset option, it embeds a reduced character set. I'm pretty sure you are allowed to do this.

You can also File > Save as Package... and this allows you to save the fonts with the affinity file. The font will be exported as an .otf file so I would query this with the font creator.

[ArmouredFrame]

18 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

You can embed a font in a PDF and you check the subset option, it embeds a reduced character set. I'm pretty sure you are allowed to do this.

So, firstly, great call - I didn't know you could do this. Second, the font displays correctly when viewed in the PDF exported from the above file...

FontIssues.pdf

[kenmcd]

8 hours ago, ArmouredFrame said:

I've attached a fresh Design file as requested.

You typed the text directly?
Does this file display that font the same way for you - with all the spaces?
Here all I see is normal text (in a fallback font).

Sometimes when text is pasted from a PDF it will appear with a bunch of odd spaces.
Or pasted text may bring along some hidden characters from the original source.
(Which is probably why Walt asked you to create a new clean file.)
But in the PDF case there are usually some actual spaces added, and the tracking is all wacko.

8 hours ago, ArmouredFrame said:

PDF exported from the above file

Only thing I can see there is the embedded font's PostScript Name is not formatted properly.
Which points to potential quality issues.
Obviously there may be other font issues which cannot be seen by looking at a PDF.

 

[ArmouredFrame]

44 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

You typed the text directly?
Does this file display that font the same way for you - with all the spaces?
Here all I see is normal text (in a fallback font).

All typed manually. It appears exactly as it does in the image in the original post. Very strange.

The PDF appears on other devices exactly as it should. Viewing on iPhone for instance looks perfect.

It may be as you say, a problem with the font, but as it works with every other application, including Photoshop, InDesign etc. and other devices and operating systems, including MacOS, it's definitely steering me towards Affinity doing something strange with the font.

I'm waiting on a ticket with the seller, but I suspect they're going to come back with "well it works".

Many thanks.

 

[walt.farrell]

Having purchased and installed that font, I see the same as you, @ArmouredFrame.

@LibreTraining: I don't know if it will help, but this is what HighLogic FontCreator says for the capital W in that font:

I am suspicious of the "Advance Width", but completely confused by why it would display one way in the Affinity application and another in the exported PDF (which it also does for me).

 

[kenmcd]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I am suspicious of the "Advance Width"

Based on the PDF embedded font info I assume these are OpenType-PS (OTF) fonts.
Which means they would most likely have a 1,000 UPM.
So the 675 Advance width of the W would be in the ballpark of what could be expected.

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

but completely confused by why it would display one way in the Affinity application and another in the exported PDF (which it also does for me).

Yes, something really odd going on with these fonts.
Some other OpenType features can affect spacing, like ccmp, etc., but I am just guessing.
Kinda at a loss. This is very weird.
You know me, love to dig around in them and figure-out what is happening.

EDIT: after staring out the window for awhile ... I think it could be an OpenType feature which either (1) they have not coded properly, or (2) Affinity has trouble with this unusual feature (or not even supported yet). Or could be an old kern table issue. Or outlines the wrong direction. Or some other completely weird reason. I give. 😵

[Dan C]

My sincerest apologies for the delayed response here!

I can confirm I have since been able to test this using the specific font here and I'm able to replicate this issue - interestingly enough this issue only affects Affinity on Windows, as the font is correctly displayed in Affinity on macOS - so I'm logging this as a bug with our developers now to be fixed in a future update.

I hope this helps

[ArmouredFrame]

4 minutes ago, Dan C said:

My sincerest apologies for the delayed response here!

I can confirm I have since been able to test this using the specific font here and I'm able to replicate this issue - interestingly enough this issue only affects Affinity on Windows, as the font is correctly displayed in Affinity on macOS - so I'm logging this as a bug with our developers now to be fixed in a future update.

I hope this helps

No, I’m sorry for my delayed responses to you all! I’ve been bogged down with work at all hours and just had no time to come back for support!

Thats frustrating to hear, but it’s good to know I’m not going crazy. 
 

Thank you for putting it to the devs as a bug, and hopefully we’ll see an improvement in future.

Also, a big thank you to everyone who chipped in with troubleshooting advice. It’s much appreciated.

Many thanks again. 
 

A

[Alfred]

On 9/18/2021 at 8:15 PM, walt.farrell said:

I don't know if it will help, but this is what HighLogic FontCreator says for the capital W in that font

What does FontCreator say about the font metrics?

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Alfred said:

What does FontCreator say about the font metrics?

I'm not sure if this is what you asked for, nor whether anything will be relevant given that Dan seems to have confirmed there's something wrong in the Windows versions of the applications:

[kenmcd]

46 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm not sure if this is what you asked for, nor whether anything will be relevant given that Dan seems to have confirmed there's something wrong in the Windows versions of the applications:

Kinda strange, even for an "all caps" font. The comma is going to go lower than -1.

@Alfred These are all vertical metrics - and the issue is horizontal.

None of this is going to affect this issue.

[Alfred]

52 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

Kinda strange, even for an "all caps" font. The comma is going to go lower than -1.

Yup. Definitely a bit strange.

52 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

@Alfred These are all vertical metrics - and the issue is horizontal.

None of this is going to affect this issue.

Of course. Silly me! I’ll go away and hide in a cupboard somewhere…

[lacerto]

(...)

[Konrad1]

Sorry for bumping this old thread but the issue is still here 2 years later in V2 version...

Edited December 11, 2023 by Konrad1