Two Font Questions: Why did I have to manually choose 100% black? And missing letters

[jamesgangcreative]

I haven't been using Publisher for a long time, and I've learned a lot through videos. I just finished a 204pg book, 5 x 7, everything looks great. I had to start over twice, had to tweak margins ... and almost a third time, due to some weird thing that happened when one page got pasted in the wrong place. By accident, I figured out how to move it (as cutting, deleting, etc, was deleting the entire chapter). But I digress.

I'm done, finished. It looks terrific.  I export as a PDF. It looks jaggy. I go back into the filer and everything is not 100% black. It's some 'almost" black. I had created it with CMYK since it will printed not online. Perhaps I didn't have to do that and the publishing company would fix it? But in any event, I found I had to manually change the headers/footers, the Headings, the body font, etc. to 100% black with the sliders. Thankfully, I was able to change the body text with an "all" but ... the "all" didn't include the other items I mentioned. Going forward, why was the content NOT 100% black as a default.

#2. This is the most serious issue as I do not want to have to try and change fonts or recreate this ENTIRE thing again. The "ffs" in any word that has a double ff ie bluff, off, offer, ANY word, the double ff is a square indicating missing elements. If I save as a PRINT PDF, they are there. However, that does me no good as that save is on 8 1/2 x 11 and isn't set to print as a book. So... here I am, the penultimate stage to "just simply" send to the client to review so I can "just simply" upload onto Ingramspark and I have flummoxed. What mystery step is alluding me? What setting? What do I need to do to fix this? I assume it is to be exported as PDF/1 ... I think I got the black handled... but this is a head scratcher. 

 

[stokerg]

Hi @jamesgangcreative,

When you first added the text, how did you set the colour of it?  Was it via the CMYK sliders on the Colour studio or via one of the swatches?  Setting the using the sliders and is the method i use and set the K to 100 and when exported out as a PDF/X-1a the text is 100K only.

For the font issue, its possible its an issue with the actual font.  If you can try clicking File>Export>PDF and click on the More button and where you have Fonts, untick Subset fonts and try exporting.  If still having the issue, go back to Export>PDF>More and here you can change the Embed Fonts option to Text as curves, then export.  That should give you a PDF you can show the client and we can then look at getting a copy of your afpub and font from you to see whats going on.

[walt.farrell]

For the ligature problem, there's also the option of disabling Standard Ligatures via the Typorgraphy options available in the (I think) Character panel or within a Text Style. But if you're using Affinity to view the PDF, changing the Embed Fonts setting usually handles it.

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

there's also the option of disabling Standard Ligatures

The problem with disabling Standard Ligatures is that the output won’t include any standard ligatures! That’s OK if you don’t mind being unable to use them, but ligatures such as ‘ff’ are there for a reason.

Switching off the ‘Subset fonts’ option is definitely the best way to go. For most fonts, the consequent increase in file size is unlikely to be very great.

[Dennison]

Thank you for your suggestions.

turning off Subset fonts made NO difference

turning off ALL ligature settings in a Text Style WORKED.  (I have yet to double check for unintended consequences)

cheers,

Den

 

[jamesgangcreative]

10 hours ago, stokerg said:

Hi @jamesgangcreative,

When you first added the text, how did you set the colour of it? 

I did nothing. Or at least I assumed it was 100% black. No idea. Only after I did a test print and then go back in did I see the sliders had moved.

Was it via the CMYK sliders on the Colour studio or via one of the swatches? 

Have no idea why it wasn't defaulting to 100% black.

Setting the using the sliders and is the method i use and set the K to 100 and when exported out as a PDF/X-1a the text is 100K only.

That's how I fixed it but I had to choose body text, header, heading1, heading2, and change them all individually. Is there a way to do a global color change?

For the font issue, its possible its an issue with the actual font.  If you can try clicking File>Export>PDF and click on the More button and where you have Fonts, untick Subset fonts and try exporting.  If still having the issue, go back to Export>PDF>More and here you can change the Embed Fonts option to Text as curves, then export.  That should give you a PDF you can show the client and we can then look at getting a copy of your afpub and font from you to see whats going on.

I gave up. I found that BOOK ANTIQUA is almost exactly the same in weight and sizing, so I changed the font. Very similar to Palantino, and though there are no issues regarding restrictions, I gave up. It would print fine if I saved as a PDF. It wouldn't if I saved as a PDF in the correct size in AF. I tried every PDF setting. Then gave up. 

No worries. I just will make sure I use BOOK ANTIQUA when using AF> 

Thank you. 

 

[jamesgangcreative]

6 hours ago, Dennison said:

Thank you for your suggestions.

turning off Subset fonts made NO difference

turning off ALL ligature settings in a Text Style WORKED.  (I have yet to double check for unintended consequences)

cheers,

Den

 

Guess you had the same issue? I found BOOK ANTIQUA is almost exactly the same as Palatino so I just replaced the font. 

[jamesgangcreative]

8 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

For the ligature problem, there's also the option of disabling Standard Ligatures via the Typorgraphy options available in the (I think) Character panel or within a Text Style. But if you're using Affinity to view the PDF, changing the Embed Fonts setting usually handles it.

Wasn't using AF to view the PDF. Was viewing the PDF after it was downloaded and saved. Thanks. 

[Dennison]

Yes James, sounds like the same problem.  

Unfortunately part of the error is that the symbol µ - which I am using in this book and others - gets replaced with a small square on pdf export. I don't know of any substitute.

Until there is a solution,

1) I'll send my file to a friend using Windows who will export the pdfs and send back to me

2) abandon Monterey and return to Big Sur.  

I expect the root of the problem lies with Apple - font management.  I bought AF Designer through the Apple Store which conveniently added a glitch that sometimes prevents saving a document which evidently is a font management issue. (Does not occur with AF Designer bought from the Serif store).  

[Dennison]

Unfortunately, though exporting from afpub to pdf on a Windows DID solve the "ff" and symbol issues, it created a NEW issue - "fi" WITHIN svg drawings (imported from AF Designer) were replaced with a box. 

see screenshot.

Seems the best solution is to abandon Monterey and return to Big Sur, even if we are not sure at this stage where the problem is originating. 

 

 

[walt.farrell]

6 hours ago, Dennison said:

fi" WITHIN svg drawings (imported from AF Designer) were replaced with a box. 

Did you turn off the ligatures in that object after you imported it, too?

What do you mean by "imported" in this context?

[Dennison]

The image with objects and text frames was exported from AD as an svg

[Dennison]

The text in the image had no style attached when it was created on AD

[walt.farrell]

But how did you get it into Publisher?

Place? (And if so, Linked or Embedded)

Or Copy/Paste?

In either case, you should be able to set the text style for the text, and turn off the ligatures. Though with a Placed document you might need to Place it in a way that allows the Edit Document option.

[Dennison]

Placed and linked

 

Not sure that I understand the Edit document option - I'm placing SVG images that have text in them.

 

Your help is greatly appreciated.

[walt.farrell]

52 minutes ago, Dennison said:

Not sure that I understand the Edit document option - I'm placing SVG images that have text in them.

First, you are placing SVG files, not images. Sorry to be pedantic, but images work differently from files in the Affinity applications, and the distinction can be important, especially when Placing them, and when considering the differences between Linked and Embedded.

If you Place your SVG file as an Embedded file, rather than a Linked file, then when it is selected in the Layers panel, and you have the Move Tool active, the Context Toolbar will offer you an Edit Document option. If you click that button, you will open a new editing tab for the Embedded document within Publisher, and you will have all the Publisher capabilities available during that editing session.

Unfortunately, from an experiment that may not help you in this situation. I found that the SVG file I embedded already had the ligature character in it. I could turn off ligatures, and then replace the single "ffl" character with the 3 characters "f", "f", and "l". But other than that, if the ligatures are causing you a problem, all you can do (I think) is convert the text to curves when you export.

If you want to remove the ligatures, and keep the individual characters, you might need to use that approach (Embed, Edit Document, turn off ligatures, replace characters). Or you could go back to the original document you created the SVG file from, and turn off ligatures there, and re-export.

[Dennison]

Thanks for your help Walt.

The issue does seem to be with Ligatures - I turned them off for all Text Styles in both APub and Ad and the problem has gone away.

Unfortunately, symbols from the Apple menu ("Show Emoji and Symbols") are still replaced with blank squares.  I ended up creating replicas as objects and overlaying them over the text frame.  Not ideal but a solution.

Hopefully there will be a solution from Apple or Serif soon.

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome. Perhaps someone else will have an idea about the emojis.

[thomaso]

9 hours ago, Dennison said:

symbols from the Apple menu ("Show Emoji and Symbols") are still replaced with blank squares. 

I didn't read the entire thread since this sounds like a separate subject. To me emojis, added in an Affinity text, get exported successfully and not replaced by substitutes, regardless of the applied font and even though Affinity displays the '!' at the font name, indicating missing glyphs (as expected).

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

I didn't read the entire thread since this sounds like a separate subject. To me emojis, added in an Affinity text, get exported successfully and not replaced by substitutes, regardless of the applied font and even though Affinity displays the '!' at the font name, indicating missing glyphs (as expected).

Works for me as well, running Catalina on my Mac.

[Dennison]

I'm running Monterey. Maybe the latest updates from Apple and Serif will remove the hiccup. 

"solved" the issue by creating a replica object, but there is now an object separate, and overlaying, the text frame

[kenmcd]

On 3/14/2022 at 10:18 PM, Dennison said:

Unfortunately, symbols from the Apple menu ("Show Emoji and Symbols") are still replaced with blank squares. 

The Apple Color Emoji font is an SBIX font.

Affinity applications do not support SBIX fonts. So it will display the missing character box.

But there have been some other situations where it does not display properly, but on the Mac it does export properly. Which I am guessing is because the text rendering engine on the Mac (Core Text) and/or the PDF engine (Quartz) does support this.

 

[Dennison]

Thanks for this update.

Not sure I understand correctly.  The Emoji DOES display correctly in the APub document but becomes a square in a pdf export

 

Macbook M1

APub 1.10.5

Monterey 12.21

[R C-R]

13 hours ago, LibreTraining said:

Affinity applications do not support SBIX fonts. So it will display the missing character box.

??? The Apple Emojis do display on my Mac, like @Dennison wrote above.

[walt.farrell]

14 hours ago, LibreTraining said:

The Apple Color Emoji font is an SBIX font.

Affinity applications do not support SBIX fonts. So it will display the missing character box.

The release notes for 1.10 (both Mac and Win) say:

Quote

• Added support for most emoji.