Problems with Alternates in Typography Panel

[eclecticthis]

In the old version of Affinity Photo, I would open the Typography panel (Ctrl+Shift+T). Highlight a letter I wanted to change in my text, and in the section of the panel that says All Alternates, choose the alternate letter I want. Then I'd highlight another character I wanted to change and the letter shown in the All Alternates would change to reflect that.

But that's usually not happening in Version 2. I usually have to Hide the All Alternates and then Unhide it in order to see it show the right letters. Occasionally it works, but I'm not sure what is different from when it works and when it doesn't.

For example. I first highlight the letter E in my text, and choose the alternate E I want. Then I highlight the letter M, but it still shows the alts for letter E. I click on the little arrow next to the words All Alternates to hide that part of the panel, then click it again to unhide it--and then it finally shows me the alternates for M. 

[Dan C]

Hi @eclecticthis,

Thanks for your report!

I've tested this here and it appears to depend on the font in use - for certain fonts (such as Bahnschrift) the 'All Alternates' display the character 'A', regardless of which character is selected in the text object.

For other fonts (such as Blueprint) the 'All Alternates' displays the character that I have selected in the text object, and this behaviour is consistent across both V1 & V2 for me.

Can you please confirm for me, which font are you using in Photo, which shows this difference between app versions?

Many thanks in advance

[eclecticthis]

Sorry I didn't get back to you.

I think this has happened to me with every font that I've tried to do the Alternates for. 

One of the more recent ones I used, and experienced this with, though is Desire Pro. 

[Dan C]

No problem at all, thanks for confirming that for me!

I've tested this here with Desire Pro and it appears to be working as expected for me, as below -

 
Are these the steps you're taking in Photo, where you see different results?

[eclecticthis]

My attempts to recreate this is sporadic. It will be working, and then suddenly it's not working. 

I start thinking that maybe I'm doing something like using my tablet pen to straight dragging over the next letter is causing it to happen, instead of clicking before the letter and then dragging (if that makes sense). And at first it will seem like that might be it, but then it will be working just fine again when doing it that way.

Or I think maybe there's just something weird with my drawing tablet?

Okay. Just now I decided to try to use the arrows on my keyboard to try to select the letters. Again, the results were sporadic. Sometimes I'd highlight a letter that way and it would show them in the dialogue box, and other times it would stay the same.

Maybe there's just something weird with my particular computer. 

 

[Dan C]

8 hours ago, eclecticthis said:

Okay. Just now I decided to try to use the arrows on my keyboard to try to select the letters. Again, the results were sporadic. Sometimes I'd highlight a letter that way and it would show them in the dialogue box, and other times it would stay the same.

Thanks for your further testing!

Interestingly I've been able to replicate this when using the Shift + arrow keys to select characters, but as you've mentioned this is not consistent and took around 60 seconds of creating and removing selections in this manner before I could replicate the issue.

As I've been able to recreate this, I'll get this logged as a bug with our developers now for further investigation - many thanks for your report