Variable fonts support

[walt.farrell]

19 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

And, the same goes for my iPad - installed ONE variable fontfile (font called Thunder) thru Publishers setting, and, got 38 (!) different styles/weights into my iPad!

Because that's what a Variable font is. One font definition, with multiple weights/styles.

[fde101]

16 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

multiple weights/styles.

Technically, pseudo-infinite weights/styles.

Variable fonts have parameters that can be adjusted by software that supports them to let you set those parameters arbitrarily between the minimum and maximum values they support.

They tend to also have "presets" for some of those parameters (such as weight which is one of the most commonly supported) which most software recognizes (whether supporting variable fonts directly or not), but with supporting software, you can adjust them to any desired point in between those presets as well.

Weight is the most common parameter they tend to offer, but some of them support additional parameters such as width (narrow/condensed vs. extended), slant/oblique, or stylistic options which can be completely unique to the font family.

[kenmcd]

30 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

Strange, but can someone explain why this is possible on my Mac?

That is the Mac font list displaying all the named instances in the variable font. The Mac font list supports variable fonts. But the Affinity application using this font list app does not. 

The Mac font list will also misleadingly show color fonts of various types - which are also not supported.

For variable fonts on Windows, the Windows font list will show only the default master for all the instances (which is what it is supposed to do when variable fonts are not supported in the application).

So the Mac font list is very misleading. 

Affinity would have to write their own font picker app to fix this (which is not likely to happen any time soon).

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

50 minutes ago, kenmcd said:

That is the Mac font list displaying all the named instances in the variable font. The Mac font list supports variable fonts. But the Affinity application using this font list app does not. 

The Mac font list will also misleadingly show color fonts of various types - which are also not supported.

For variable fonts on Windows, the Windows font list will show only the default master for all the instances (which is what it is supposed to do when variable fonts are not supported in the application).

So the Mac font list is very misleading. 

Affinity would have to write their own font picker app to fix this (which is not likely to happen any time soon).

I don’t get, as above attached file (Thunder font), is giving me 38 different weights/styles from one single file…

What I mean is that support for Variable Fonts isn’t critical because one single file is giving us many many different weights in Publisher…

Try to install the attached fontfile above and test in Mac or iPad…

[fde101]

1 hour ago, kenmcd said:

So the Mac font list is very misleading. 

The Mac "font list" is based on font support by the OS, which would ordinarily make those things work for apps that leverage the OS functionality to render the fonts, even if the apps do not support variable or color fonts directly.  The fact that Serif opted to go their own way on font management and rendering means that they are failing to take advantage of functionality the OS is trying to hand them on a silver platter but are still using one tiny piece of it that is engineered with the assumption that the rest is being used, creating a mismatch of functionality.

This is not a flaw in the design of macOS, but rather a highly questionable design choice by Serif.  They are asking the OS to give the user a choice based on what the OS can do, but then taking the choice from the user and applying it to what the application can do, which happens to be less in this case.

 

1 hour ago, kenmcd said:

Affinity would have to write their own font picker app to fix this

No, to fix this, Serif would need to either leverage OS-provided functionality, or implement their own functionality to be at least on par with the OS feature set.  Writing their own font picker code (not a separate app, that would serve no purpose) would eliminate the mismatch but would leave them in their current position of inferiority.

[kenmcd]

Serif did not "go their own way" with the font pickers - they are using what the OSs provide. That is the problem (with what is displayed in the font list).

Application font rendering support is a different issue.
Yes, they did create their own shaper for reasons known to them.
Just as InDesign created its own shaper.
ID later added the Harfbuzz shaper to just their World Ready Composer (primarily for language support).

Rasterizer issues are similar. PDF library issues are similar.

So I am not sure what the font pickers have to do with any of this.

[kenmcd]

On 3/21/2023 at 2:53 PM, Shrinks99 said:

Getting outside the scope of this topic so I don't want to go too off the rails, but yes!  This is a good idea and something I had planned to do actually, the fonttools static export wasn't playing nice with the variable version of Recursive I have installed due to a naming conflict?  My attempts to fix this with the Glyphs source files were unsuccessful, seemed to be an issue with the version mismatch & also me being lazy and not configuring the build system properly.  I'll try out Slice!  I found this repo once before but lost it so thanks for reminding me about it!

Note: Shrinks99 was successful in creating his custom corporate fonts (R/I/B/BI).
He first used GF fonttools instancer to create the static fonts.
https://fonttools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/varLib/instancer.html
But we discovered APub could not render the fonts properly as they used an OpenType feature normally only used for variable fonts (rvrn, Required Variation Alternates).
So he then used OTFeatureFreezer to freeze that feature into the fonts.
https://github.com/twardoch/fonttools-opentype-feature-freezer
Custom static corporate fonts from a variable font complete, and working in APub.

[fde101]

46 minutes ago, kenmcd said:

Serif did not "go their own way" with the font pickers - they are using what the OSs provide. That is the problem (with what is displayed in the font list).

Application font rendering support is a different issue.

No, the problem is that they DID go their own way with font rendering, but did NOT go their own way with the pickers.  There is nothing wrong with what the OS provides on either one.  The problem is that Serif used only part of what the OS provides - they used the picker from the OS and not the font rendering from the OS - creating a disconnect between the two.

[MikeW]

7 minutes ago, fde101 said:

No, the problem is that they DID go their own way with font rendering, but did NOT go their own way with the pickers.  There is nothing wrong with what the OS provides on either one.  The problem is that Serif used only part of what the OS provides - they used the picker from the OS and not the font rendering from the OS - creating a disconnect between the two.

Got a thread to point to about this? I've only read statements that they built their own shaper (hence slow to accommodate a larger language set).

[fde101]

59 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Got a thread to point to about this? I've only read statements that they built their own shaper (hence slow to accommodate a larger language set).

 

[MikeW]

I still take those statements as referring to the text shaping. 

Rendering to the screen what the shaper sends to it is part of every OS. A renderer includes dealing, among other things, what method of anti-aliasing method is used. Probably a bigger task the shaping. 

Only Dave can really clarify what is meant. 

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

On 11/23/2022 at 12:03 PM, JariH said:

Oh no...

Just struggled with my design and found out Affinity does not support variable fonts.

Affinity, please. Anything, even predefined weights would do. I need specific typefaces that are available only in variable font.

I can’t understand the exaggerate of the need of Variable Fonts…

Designers/art people/typographic people has for decades made stunning works, WITHOUT Variable Fonts…

And, you can load Variable Fonts into Affinity Suite and use them as ordinary fonts with multiply styles/weights, but not as variable sizing…

There are too many other features into Affinity Suite that goes before implementing Variable Font (Spiral tool, Blend tool, Data Merge/Books (iPad) etc etc…

[walt.farrell]

52 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

And, you can load Variable Fonts into Affinity Suite and use them as ordinary fonts with multiply styles/weights, but not as variable sizing

As long as you don't plan to export to PDF. 

Or use Windows.

[Floor]

50 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

I can’t understand the exaggerate of the need of Variable Fonts…

Designers/art people/typographic people has for decades made stunning works, WITHOUT Variable Fonts…

And, you can load Variable Fonts into Affinity Suite and use them as ordinary fonts with multiply styles/weights, but not as variable sizing…

There are too many other features into Affinity Suite that goes before implementing Variable Font (Spiral tool, Blend tool, Data Merge/Books (iPad) etc etc…

You can indeed 'use' variable fonts (the named instances) in Affinity apps, but they're not 'supported'. What this means is the following:

1. Affinity can load variable fonts: YES
2. Affinity can use variable font named instances (regular/bold etc.): YES
3. Affinity can adjust variable axes: NO
4. Affinity can render variable font named instances correctly: NO

The biggest issue is point 4: while you can choose a named instance of a variable font, it doesn't render correctly. See screenshot: left is Affinity, right is another app that renders variable fonts correctly. As you can see the tracking/kerning is incorrectly using the Regular values, instead of the values for the named instances. Font used: SF Pro variable.

The ability to adjust and tweak variable axes (point 3) would also be great, but rendering named instances correctly would already be a great improvement.

[DamienG]

Quote

I can’t understand the exaggerate of the need of Variable Fonts…

What I can't understand is why users come into this thread to tell other users their feature requests are exaggerated or unnecessary. People have needs and requirements and it's not your position as a user of the product to go round telling them they're wrong or overreacting.

Quote

And, you can load Variable Fonts into Affinity Suite and use them as ordinary fonts with multiply styles/weights, but not as variable sizing…

If this was true then yes it would be less painful but for me, at least on Windows, it is not.

A good example is Inter variable. When I install the inter.ttf file on Windows I see 19 correctly named instances (styles) in the Fonts control panel. It looks absolutely fine in WordPad etc.

Affinity Photo shows me 19 instances of "Inter" called "Regular" all of which appear to be actually just the thin weight. Absolutely unusable even without axis sliders etc.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

46 minutes ago, DamienG said:

What I can't understand is why users come into this thread to tell other users their feature requests are exaggerated or unnecessary. People have needs and requirements and it's not your position as a user of the product to go round telling them they're wrong or overreacting.

If this was true then yes it would be less painful but for me, at least on Windows, it is not.

A good example is Inter variable. When I install the inter.ttf file on Windows I see 19 correctly named instances (styles) in the Fonts control panel. It looks absolutely fine in WordPad etc.

Affinity Photo shows me 19 instances of "Inter" called "Regular" all of which appear to be actually just the thin weight. Absolutely unusable even without axis sliders etc.

In some point I think I'm right what I did writing here.

As I said - people have been doing incredible things with computers for more then 30 years without Variable Fonts, so, what some is thinking here on the forum that they can't work with Affinity because they not supporting these fonts...

There are 10000 fonts out there, both free and cheap commercial that can make good typographic...

Time will tell when Serif Labs is supporting Variable Fonts, but probably not before 3.0 release...

[Alfred]

26 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

There are 10000 fonts out there

There are hundreds of thousands of free or cheap fonts out there, perhaps millions. Certainly many more than ten thousand!

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

6 minutes ago, Alfred said:

There are hundreds of thousands of free or cheap fonts out there, perhaps millions. Certainly many more than ten thousand!

A little OT, but, what marketplace is best to buy high quality Variable/static Fonts with great kerning/ligatures?

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

A little OT, but, what marketplace is best to buy high quality Variable/static Fonts with great kerning/ligatures?

I’m no expert, but I imagine it depends on what you’re looking for. The major font vendors offer a huge selection of well-designed fonts, often at very different prices even when they don’t have a sale on, so it can be worth shopping around.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

7 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I’m no expert, but I imagine it depends on what you’re looking for. The major font vendors offer a huge selection of well-designed fonts, often at very different prices even when they don’t have a sale on, so it can be worth shopping around.

Just looked at Fontshop.com - full family of Gill Sans cost 568 Euro...

If you then wants 10 to 20 pro fonts it will be 10000 Euro, almost like a new powerful Mac!

[Alfred]

2 hours ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

Just looked at Fontshop.com - full family of Gill Sans cost 568 Euro...

If you then wants 10 to 20 pro fonts it will be 10000 Euro, almost like a new powerful Mac!

[Alfred]

2 hours ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

Just looked at Fontshop.com - full family of Gill Sans cost 568 Euro...

Gill Sans Complete Family Pack (15 styles) is the same price from Fonts.com and MyFonts.com. Gill Sans MT Complete Family Pack (21 styles) is available from Linotype.com for about half the price.

[DamienG]

2 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

My final comment on the subject of variable fonts, because it has all been said several times. Johannes Gutenberg did not complain about the lack of variable fonts. He got on quite well with static fonts.

Technically wrong as in the days of metal type each size was individually tailored and adjusted for the size - also known as optical correction - which static fonts do not do but is an option with variable fonts.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

33 minutes ago, DamienG said:

Technically wrong as in the days of metal type each size was individually tailored and adjusted for the size - also known as optical correction - which static fonts do not do but is an option with variable fonts.

Hmmm… I don’t get it - if you buy a commercial pro font (static), it has thousands of crafted kerning-pair for ‘optical correction’…

It shouldn’t be any difference between a static and a variable font concerning readability/kerning/tracking…

[DamienG]

9 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeSmile said:

Hmmm… I don’t get it - if you buy a commercial pro font (static), it has thousands of crafted kerning-pair for ‘optical correction’…

It shouldn’t be any difference between a static and a variable font concerning readability/kerning/tracking…

They literally tweaked every glyph in the days of metal type - serif sizes, width, contrast, overshoot, ink trap sizes, crossbar height etc. per point size.

That isn't available in a static font although the concept of hinting came close but that was only practically used for small sizes and most OS's ignore hints now anyway.