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Font list usability improvements


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The addition of the recent fonts at the top of the font list in Affinity Designer 1.4 is great when you have just a couple of fonts you're using for a project and you need to switch between them. However, I've found it gets in the way when I'm in the early phase of choosing fonts to use.

 

If I'm auditioning fonts, going through my font collection methodically, I lose my place each time I select something new. I can't use the keyboard to jump back by typing the font name either, because it jumps to the recents at the top.

 

A potential solution would be to always start back at the current font's position in the list instead of in the recents, since it's much easier to scroll to the top than to find your place again. And all things considered, the recent font menu may be something of a stopgap anyway until Designer gets text styles via Affinity Publisher.

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  • 1 month later...

Nivrams, what happens when you try to use it? Can you find the font and symbol you want in Font Book, then copy and paste from Font Book to Affinity? That works for me here. These symbol fonts don't define normal characters a-zA-Z, so you shouldn't expect those to work.

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  • 2 months later...

I have found type a problematic. The symbols in Zaph dingbats do correspond to key stroke. You just have to remember the key you need tor the character you want. That's where a glyphs chart would help… as it would help for the additional characters available with opentype fonts. Zaps dingbats don't work with my AD 1.4.1. Bodoni Ornaments do, so its not because they are not alphanumeric. My Zaph Dingbats are a system font locked open. Always available. I have problems with my Gotham font. Only four of the sixteen weights are available. The four display incorrectly in the tools bar but better in the Fonts panel. Gotham regular displays ultra thin.  Going to Font Book to find a glyph is not a professional solution. I do use Suitcase to manage my fonts.

I am trying to learn Affinity products. I tried to use the rectangle tool to provide a path to place type on. That proved to be a challenge that I have not yet solved. I cannot, for the life of me, change that box into a path that will accept type. I cut it with the scissors, but as soon as I click on the type tool the path turns back into a box that wants to contain the type.

I'm not sure it is a good thing to combine bit-map with vector. That's what you have Affinity Photo for. Placing bit-mapped images is necessary, but get the vector thing right first. Use Affinity photo for bit-mapped editing. 
I really don't want to go back to Illustrator. My work is not that complicated.

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So you have two symbol fonts, one called "Zaph Dingbats" and the other called "Zaps dingbats", and the former works but the latter doesn't? Again, what happens with it? Is it that the font won't render at all, or is it that the characters aren't where you expect them on the keyboard? (I suggested copying from Font Book to help diagnose the problem, not necessarily as a solution.)

 

To use a rectangle as a path for text, select it and use Layer > Convert to Text Path. You can also click on its edge, but only with the Art Text tool. I suspect you were trying with the Frame Text tool instead. Clicking on a vector shape with the Frame Text tool turns it into a text frame, which isn't very useful with rectangles but may be with other shapes.

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  • 4 weeks later...

1+ for the original request here. Back on an earlier version (I don't remember which), if you were looking (auditioning is a good word) for a font you could go through your list one by one. Having seen one on your design, when you clicked on the font menu it would take you back to that font and you could key down to the next. Now (since a couple of versions), in my view, it doesn't work anywhere near as well. You get "recent fonts", which may be useful in other circumstances but not in font picking.

 

In addition (and this is the worst thing, in my opinion), if you type a font name, it will take you to that font in the recent fonts section, instead of that font in your full font list.

 

In my opinion, the earlier way of font selection was much better.

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  • 2 months later...

I was about to post about the recent fonts list too, but found this thread.

 

We definitely need to be able to exclude the 'recent fonts' from the results when you type in the font list. I remember this bug in Microsoft Publisher and let it slide because it wasn't 'professional software'!

 

On a side note, it would be great to be able to categorise fonts as 'serif', 'sans-serif', 'symbol' etc. to make selection easy.

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