Font rendering issue (variable fonts)

[Colin_Fredericks]

Greetings!

I've run into a font rendering issue in Publisher 1.10.4. I'm on MacOS 11.6.1.

Edit to add: Alfred found a workaround below. Check out the first reply if you're working with variable-width fonts.

In the first attachment you can see a Google Font, Newsreader (Regular weight in this case), in both the on-screen view from Publisher and the exported PDF from that same file.

The in-app display of Newsreader is so bad that I wondered if I had installed the wrong font, or if there was a more serious issue. The kerning is different, and even the shape of some of the letters is different (look at where the arcs on the "m" connect, or even the shape of the "o"). I find it hard to even work with on screen - it's genuinely difficult for me to read it.

Steps to duplicate are installing Newsreader, typing anything into any document in that font, and exporting a PDF for comparison. The screenshot is from a new file.

In further bad news, I seem to have found another bug with this particular font while testing and reporting this one, which is that setting the font to "Bold" or "Light" or what-have-you and exporting a PDF again does not get you Bold in the PDF. The PDF retains Medium-weight. Changing the font weight works on-screen but not in export. See second attachment. This makes it really unusable.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

P.S.: I have already reported the issue to Google Fonts, and they of course told me to report it here, because getting any kind of help with modern applications is a never-ending-game of "go ask your mother."

Edited November 24, 2021 by Colin_Fredericks
Indicating workaround

[Alfred]

Variable fonts can’t currently be used in the Affinity apps. If that’s what you installed, you need to uninstall it/them and install the fonts from the ‘static’ folder instead.

[Colin_Fredericks]

Seriously? No warning or anything when I try to use them, they just fail? I spent hours trying to track this down over several days.

[garrettm30]

I think something should be done. Hopefully variable fonts compatibility will be added some time in the future (there are several feature requests for it). In the interim, it would probably be better if Affinity would just not load those fonts. But I don't know if that is a reasonable possibility from the programming side.

[Colin_Fredericks]

Update: Installing the static fonts did indeed work. @AlfredThank you for the fix.

Overall this was incredibly frustrating. Seriously, I probably spent 8 hours over the past 3 days trying to figure this out - an entire work day wasted. I should charge companies my consulting rate before I try to document their bugs. I'd be a thousandaire.

[kenmcd]

The problem is the Mac font picker shows the variable fonts instances as available in the app, when they are not. And since all apps on the Mac are expected/required to use the Mac font picker, this is happening.

What happens on Windows is you only see what is actually supported, which for a variable font in an app that does not support variable fonts is the default master. Per the OpenType specs this is how it is supposed to work.

What you are seeing in the Export to PDF is the default master (which I wanted to confirm is the Medium before I posted, but Alfred got the correct issue posted first). The default master is basically a full static font.

On Windows in the font list all you see is the default listed - so you would see Medium multiple times with this font. So that let's you know immediately there is a limitation. 

Tell Apple to stop listing fonts which are not supported in the user's app in their font picker. That would end the confusion.