Combining Diacritical Marks Input

[Miller Krause]

I'm using the Mac version of Affinity Publisher 2.04.  I've seen similar questions in 

 and elsewhere, so I suspect the developers are aware of this, but I'd like to add my voice to a less specific and more generic topic, the input of diacritical marks in general.  I have a need for some specific unicode combinations, the combining inverted breve below, as in ι̯ (Greek iota with the inverted breve below U+032F, standing for a non-syllabic iota or semi-consonantal glide) and combing ring below, as in λ̥ (Greek lambda with a combining ring U+0325 below, standing for a syllabic lambda acting as a semivowel).  Both diacritical marks are supported by my font, Gentium, which is designed for Greek and diacritical marks.  I can produce these as composite unicode characters that register as a single glyph in other Mac programs like Pages, but they are treated as two characters in Affinity Publisher, whether I produce them manually with the Mac "Show Emoji & Symbols" menu in Publisher or paste them in from Pages or another application.  The λ̥ typographically appears correct in Publisher, with the ring centered under the letter, and I'm okay with that, but the ι̯ appears as two separate characters, with the combining diacritic placed first, under empty space, and the iota second, over empty space.  

Is there a method to input these characters in such a way that they appear in Publisher as combined unicode characters, or is the unicode implementation in Publisher bugged?  Having looked at other reports on the forum, I haven't found a solution that lets me create the iota with inverted breve below in a fashion that appears to be a single character.

[Lee D]

Thanks for the report, I've added it to the existing one as if that is resolved it should resolved the linked issues as well.

[kenmcd]

On 3/11/2023 at 9:12 PM, Miller Krause said:

Both diacritical marks are supported by my font, Gentium, which is designed for Greek and diacritical marks.

I assume you are using Gentium Plus - which does have Combining inverted breve below (U+032F). The older versions do not have this mark.

This is not a problem with APub. It is an issue with the font and user entry.
(Note: That older issue is a different issue.)

Combining marks are aligned by anchors on the base characters inside the font.
The Greek small letter iota (U+03B9) base character does not have the needed bottom anchor.
So the combining mark has nowhere to attach itself, and it is then (mis)aligned by the side bearings on the mark (which could be better).
The Latin small letter iota (U+0269) does have the needed bottom anchor.
So it does work as expected with that combining mark (see below).

Plus, the combining mark should be entered after the base character.
It appears you are entering the combining mark first.
(I know, the older applications using old legacy marks did this differently)

Below is Gentium Plus v6.200 in APub 2.0.4:

 

Below is the same text in LibreOffice v7.5.1.2 - which looks the same.

That looks the same as APub as they are both processing the font as designed.

Note: combining marks have no advance width, but font developers sometimes play with the side-bearings settings to get a better alignment in the case of missing anchors. Gentium Plus does not have this feature. You could file an issue in the repo to request a fix, but even if accepted that takes time.

So your only quick fix is to use a different font which has the features you need.

[kenmcd]

5 hours ago, Lee D said:

Thanks for the report, I've added it to the existing one as if that is resolved it should resolved the linked issues as well.

This does not appear to be an issue with APub. See above.