Japanese fonts in Affinity Designer (Desktop)

[vlimm]

Hi there, I'm trying to create a flyer in Japanese, and want to use some of the Japanese fonts installed on my computer to do so. However, Affinity doesn't seem able to properly apply the font that I've installed. Please note that this is a very common font in Japan. 

For your reference, I'm attaching two screenshots as well as the font installer itself. The first screenshot ("how it looks") shows what Affinity is displaying. The second ("how it should look") shows what the font is designed to look like. 

I'd appreciate any help you might be able to provide.

 

[markw]

Can I ask if you have attached to your post the correct fonts?
I ask as I don't think Devanagari is a Japanese font?
Neither of your attached fonts seem contain any characters that correspond to either of your Japanese text examples?

[Old Bruce]

@vlimm

Those are Indic fonts.

[stokerg]

Hi @vlimm,

We do have an issue logged with the Dev team about Devanagari fonts not working correctly in the Affinity apps, so i suspect that is the issue you are running into.

 

 

[Alfred]

6 minutes ago, stokerg said:

Hi @vlimm,

We do have an issue logged with the Dev team about Devanagari fonts not working correctly in the Affinity apps, so i suspect that is the issue you are running into.

As @markw and @Old Bruce have pointed out, Devanagari is Indic rather than Japanese.

[Alfred]

On 12/9/2021 at 10:34 AM, vlimm said:

For your reference, I'm attaching two screenshots as well as the font installer itself. The first screenshot ("how it looks") shows what Affinity is displaying. The second ("how it should look") shows what the font is designed to look like.

The second screenshot shows the same string of characters as the first, but using a different font and with two additional characters prefixed to it.

Edit: Here’s what Google Translate makes of the characters that I fed to it:

Edited December 10, 2021 by Alfred
Added screenshot from Google Translate

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

The second screenshot shows the same string of characters as the first, but using a different font and with two additional characters prefixed to it.

Here are three fonts in the Hiragino family:

There is one weight of Hiragino Maru Gothic ProN, two weights of Hiragino Mincho ProN, and three weights of Hiragino Sans. Here’s the heavier weight of Hiragino Mincho ProN, which looks closer to what the OP posted:

Here’s the text as text, for anyone who wants to copy and paste it to experiment with:

糸満シーサイドチャペル

[vlimm]

On 12/9/2021 at 11:01 PM, markw said:

Can I ask if you have attached to your post the correct fonts?
I ask as I don't think Devanagari is a Japanese font?
Neither of your attached fonts seem contain any characters that correspond to either of your Japanese text examples?

Perhaps I expressed myself poorly. The Devangari font family may not be a strictly Japanese font, but it has gone to the effort of including a gorgeous set of Japanese characters (most fonts don't bother and just go with defaults). We've found that many Japanese people use it. 
 

As for the sample, I'll have to double check this.

[vlimm]

On 12/9/2021 at 11:06 PM, Old Bruce said:

@vlimm

Those are Indic fonts.

Perhaps I expressed myself poorly. The Devangari font family may not be a strictly Japanese font, but it has gone to the effort of including a gorgeous set of Japanese characters (most fonts don't bother and just go with defaults).

[vlimm]

5 hours ago, stokerg said:

Hi @vlimm,

We do have an issue logged with the Dev team about Devanagari fonts not working correctly in the Affinity apps, so i suspect that is the issue you are running into.

 

 

Thank you! This is what I was looking for. Please note that this problem will be experienced by those looking to use Japanese, as well as by people using Devanagari for other languages. (It's got a gorgeous Chinese/Japanese character set.)

[vlimm]

5 hours ago, Alfred said:

As @markw and @Old Bruce have pointed out, Devanagari is Indic rather than Japanese.

As I have replied to them: 

In trying to get to my question quickly, I misspoke. The Devangari font family may not be a strictly Japanese font, but it has gone to the effort of including a gorgeous set of Japanese characters (most fonts don't bother and just go with defaults).

[kenmcd]

4 minutes ago, vlimm said:

The Devangari font family may not be a strictly Japanese font, but it has gone to the effort of including a gorgeous set of Japanese characters (most fonts don't bother and just go with defaults).

I do not see any Japanese characters in either of those fonts.
Are you sure what ever app you are using is not showing a fallback font?

If you provide a sample PDF, we can check which font is actually embedded.

[vlimm]

5 hours ago, Alfred said:

The second screenshot shows the same string of characters as the first, but using a different font and with two additional characters prefixed to it.

Edit: Here’s what Google Translate makes of the characters that I fed to it:

Yes, I realized I'd forgotten to type out the first two characters after posting, but hoped that most people would understand the font issue regardless. 

Yes, the first font (a sans serif one) is not the same as the second. That's my problem. The fonts are supposed to be the same (i.e., the same font is selected in both cases) but the display within Affinity is different than in any other program I have on my computer.

Please note that as per @stokerg, this is a known issue in Affinity. No further work required on our end.

[vlimm]

On 12/11/2021 at 3:41 AM, LibreTraining said:

I do not see any Japanese characters in either of those fonts.
Are you sure what ever app you are using is not showing a fallback font?

If you provide a sample PDF, we can check which font is actually embedded.

Definitely not a fallback, but it's possible I've attached the wrong files. It's the middle of the night here. I will check tomorrow when my computer's on again. Thanks!

 

EDIT: Should have researched "fallback" before making this comment. I thought fallback meant something slightly different.

[vlimm]

3 hours ago, Alfred said:

Here are three fonts in the Hiragino family:

There is one weight of Hiragino Maru Gothic ProN, two weights of Hiragino Mincho ProN, and three weights of Hiragino Sans. Here’s the heavier weight of Hiragino Mincho ProN, which looks closer to what the OP posted:

Here’s the text as text, for anyone who wants to copy and paste it to experiment with:

糸満シーサイドチャペル

Yes, the Mincho family does have nice serif scripts, but nowhere near as beautiful as Devangari. What you're seeing in the Hiragino / Mincho examples you provided is the difference between a serif and sans serif script, along with bold / normal. When I first came to Japan, I couldn't tell the difference between bold Mincho and Devangari, but now one makes me cringe at the thought of using it in a flyer. It's just too common as a font in documents and well...everything.

Using Mincho would be like using Times New Roman in an English flyer: use sparingly, at your own risk.

Hope this helps clarify the issues.

[kenmcd]

8 minutes ago, vlimm said:

Hope this helps clarify the issues.

Still like to see a PDF of the sample text in your original post above.

[Old Bruce]

29 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

Still like to see a PDF of the sample text in your original post above.

46 minutes ago, vlimm said:

...It's the middle of the night here. I will check tomorrow when my computer's on again. Thanks!

We will have to wait.

 

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, vlimm said:

Yes, the Mincho family does have nice serif scripts, but nowhere near as beautiful as Devangari.

Here’s your “How it should look” screenshot:

 

And here it is again, with my Hiragino Mincho ProN version superimposed:

 

1 hour ago, vlimm said:

When I first came to Japan, I couldn't tell the difference between bold Mincho and Devangari, but now one makes me cringe at the thought of using it in a flyer.

Apart from tiny variations in the kerning, I can’t see anything that lets me distinguish between the two. Please tell me what I’m missing!

[kenmcd]

18 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Apart from tiny variations in the kerning, I can’t see anything that lets me distinguish between the two. Please tell me what I’m missing!

Looks like that is the actual font being used.

[vlimm]

On 12/11/2021 at 4:05 AM, LibreTraining said:

Still like to see a PDF of the sample text in your original post above.

@LibreTraining

@Old Bruce

Sorry for the delay in responding. Swamped by Christmas.

Here are two scrubbed files with only the ITF Devanagari font, for illustration.

Note that as per other people's feedback in this discussion, Affinity is aware of the problem with the Devanagari font. So, I don't think we need to do any more on this. I can use other programs to work around this and still use the font. Not ideal, but necessary.

Devanagari from Pages.pdf Devanagari from Affinity.pdf

[Old Bruce]

the ...from Pages file shows Hiragino Mincho ProN. The ...from Affinity file is not any sort of actual Unicode characters in actual fact. I think that what you are seeing is as @LibreTraining said "a fallback font" One that is used when the entered character(s) does not exist in the chosen font.

[vlimm]

On 12/11/2021 at 5:41 AM, Alfred said:

Here’s your “How it should look” screenshot:

 

And here it is again, with my Hiragino Mincho ProN version superimposed:

 

Apart from tiny variations in the kerning, I can’t see anything that lets me distinguish between the two. Please tell me what I’m missing!

@Alfred

@LibreTraining

Sorry about the delay. Around Christmas work gets chaotic.

One of the things that can be quite beautiful about Japanese calligraphy and fonts is their bold, sweeping nature. Taking a step back, I can see your point. I got so caught up in the boldness of Devanagari that I failed to see that apart from the stroke weight the fonts are close to identical. Up until now, the boldest Mincho font I'd found didn't get as bold as the Devanagari version. Kerning isn't as important as that line weight. 

Your Hiragino Mincho Pro looks the closest yet, when used in bold. I will use that as a substitute in Affinity. Thank you.

 

[vlimm]

15 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

the ...from Pages file shows Hiragino Mincho ProN. The ...from Affinity file is not any sort of actual Unicode characters in actual fact. I think that what you are seeing is as @LibreTraining said "a fallback font" One that is used when the entered character(s) does not exist in the chosen font.

@Old Bruce

Yes, Affinity does not read the Devanagari font. This is a known problem. (see other posts in this discussion) You are correct, it is using a fallback font. But it's not because the font wasn't installed.

EDIT: I made a mistake in terminology earlier. Apologies.

[kenmcd]

2 hours ago, vlimm said:

Here are two scrubbed files with only the ITF Devanagari font, for illustration.

The font embedded in your Pages PDF is: HiraMinProN-W6

The font embedded in your Affinity PDF is: STHeitiSC-Medium

So the different applications are applying different fallback fonts when you are selecting a font which does not include the language/characters you entered.

The ITF Devanagari font does not include any Japanese characters so the applications are selecting a fallback font.

Best solution is to select the actual Japanese font you want.

[ashf]

There's no Japanese support in the Devanagari font.
Japanese characters will be substituted with a Japanese font.
https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/adobe-devanagari

So you should replace the Japanese part with a Japanese font to make it work properly.