Character style changing font when not required

[gw_westdale]

An oddity - a bit obscure  - I think it's a bug, or perhaps two .  Designer 2  on Windows 11.
This was discovered when using Lorem Ipsum filler and removing language check from part of the text frame.

I have text that is in my 'Content' style (Open sans 12) including expanded filler text and shows huge numbers of spelling errors, of course.

I created a character style where the only thing that is changed is to set Language to None - in particular, Font Family is set to no change.

If I select a word or several and apply this style in the normal way, all well and good.

If I apply the secondary command - Apply and keep local formatting, in order to keep bold text,  the whole paragraph turns into Arial (which is the default font when I open a new Designer document).

(1) I suspect that this is related to the character style being based on character style NoStyle and hence leading to Arial default?
Should the "NoChange of font family" in a character style refer to the text that is being altered  and not to the default for the document.
... Further testing shows that this also happens for other property changes.

(2) Similarly -  I have a Content Bold style (set semibold) - it is based on Content so it does not change the font - in fact it sets the whole para to Open Sans semibold. So in both cases, the selection range appears to be ignored?

[PierMax]

I don't know if it's just me, but the text styles in Affinity have seemed clear but at the same time complex in the sense that they don't always apply to the font, I don't know if it's some bug or I haven't known use them properly, i did a udemy course but it doesn't go that deep. It also happens to me with snaps.

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, gw_westdale said:

I have text that is in my 'Content' style (Open sans 12) including expanded filler text and shows huge numbers of spelling errors, of course.

I created a character style where the only thing that is changed is to set Language to None - in particular, Font Family is set to no change.

If I select a word or several and apply this style in the normal way, all well and good.

If I apply the secondary command - Apply and keep local formatting, in order to keep bold text,  the whole paragraph turns into Arial (which is the default font when I open a new Designer document).

I can't duplicate this. It doesn't matter whether I apply the "No Language" character style directly or with 'keep local formatting', both methods just change the language without impacting the formatting.

I suspect there's something funny in your style setup. Could you share a test document? You don't need to upload the entire document, just copy a paragraph with the necessary styles to a text frame in a blank document and save that.

Thank you

[gw_westdale]

Thanks = - be glad to understand this

Select a few words in the text and apply No Language .... the underlines will clear

Now select some other words and select the second command in No Language, not the primary

For me the whole para changes to Arial

infographic shape.afdesign

[gw_westdale]

8 hours ago, PierMax said:

I don't know if it's just me, but the text styles in Affinity have seemed clear but at the same time complex in the sense that they don't always apply to the font, I don't know if it's some bug or I haven't known use them properly, i did a udemy course but it doesn't go that deep. It also happens to me with snaps.

I'm inclined to agree - I feel it would be neater if there were style sheets - similar to palettes - rather than pulling styles from other similar documents.
I have versions of documents with different indentation techniques for different volumes of text
(newspaper gridded, indented para style and 'powerpoint' style with blank lines between paras for instance )
I often used to end up with duplicate styles - but now I have learned to clear all styles before importing from the master document.

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, gw_westdale said:

Thanks = - be glad to understand this

Select a few words in the text and apply No Language .... the underlines will clear

Now select some other words and select the second command in No Language, not the primary

For me the whole para changes to Arial

The Heading 3 paragraph isn't change to Arial, it's already showing as Arial Bold, it's just changing to Arial Normal.

There's something funny about that Heading 3 paragraph. If you look at the formatting summary at the top of the Text Styles panel you'll see that it's "Heading 3 + Font: OpenSans-Extrabold" but Heading 3 is defined as Font-Family:OpenSans (inherited from _Headings) and Font-Weight:Extra-bold so there should be no need for the + Font: OpenSans-Extrabold.

I didn't have Open Sans so I installed it to test this. Here's your document after opening and before making any changes. Note that the font in the context bar is ? Open Sans and the font weight is blank. I'm unsure what's wrong with this paragraph but you can solve it by simply re-applying Heading 3 to it. Once you've done that, it will change from Arial Bold to Open Sans Extra Bold. Then right click applying No Language and keeping local formatting will work properly. So I don't know why your document was messed up but it's easy to fix.

 

[gw_westdale]

Thanks for looking. It's really helpful to discuss odd behaviour like this

Even odder though ..... A couple of things ....

1) See attached image 04  - I appear to have a clean Heading3 at this point. 
Not sure why Open Sans should show with query marker once you have installed the font family and restarted Designer - there might be a dependency on different weights  and just installing Extra Bold may not work?
Alternatively, this may be a 'different' Open Sans? [I've had trouble with various Helveticas at print shops].
I don't use Italics anywhere so the upright forms are attached - with open licence.

2) My test was actually on the normal or 'Content' styled paras as there are more words to play with 
 image 05 attached - showing clean style I think.
However -as you mention it  - a test on the Heading3 words has the same behaviour.

I notice you are testing with Beta on Apple  -- I can try the beta version on Windows to see if there is a difference.

**** EDIT  - no latest Designer beta on windows shows same behaviour.

**** EDIT 2  -- opened designer document in Publisher 2 not beta -  same behaviour
I have great sympathy for programmers on this one as the language attribute is not actually character based - I think it's the only common one that needs to look wider than the selected characters to get word boundaries - although having a character style that affects ligatures must be similarly horrid.

cheers

 

LICENSE.txt OpenSans-Bold.ttf OpenSans-ExtraBold.ttf OpenSans-Light.ttf OpenSans-Regular.ttf OpenSans-Semibold.ttf

[gw_westdale]

As simple a file as I can make with the problem.

New file and deleted all text styles. Created para style MyStyle with OpenSans font and language UK
Created char style NoLanguage with language set to none - no other changes.
Created text field full of filler and expanded it -  that is the file attached.

Applying NoLanguage to a small number of words                  fine
Applying Nolanguage with keep characteristics to a small number of words              turns para to Arial

SimpleNoLanguageFile.afdesign

[Lee D]

@gw_westdale Not having any issues with that file on my system. Can you do a screen recording showing the workflow/process?

[walt.farrell]

On 3/24/2023 at 10:49 AM, Lee D said:

Can you do a screen recording showing the workflow/process?

I have one for you, Lee.

This is using Designer 2.0.4 on my Windows 11 machine. The sequence shown below is:

1. Open the file that @gw_westdale provided above.
2. Select some words in a paragraph.
3. Click on the burger menu for the NoLanguage Character Text Style, and Apply to Characters.
   Note that the selected words were using Open Sans both before and after this step.
4. Select some other words.
5. Click on the burger menu for the NoLanguage Character Text Style, and Apply to Characters and Preserve Local Formatting.
   Note that the selected words were using Open Sans before this step, but are using Arial after it.
   In fact, the entire paragraph has changed.

 

 

[gw_westdale]

Thanks  Walt - glad I'm not going insane ... at least not in this case