Incorrect rendering of CMU Serif font

[tropilio]

I'm using Computer Modern Serif in Affinity Publisher, and some of the symbols (apostoprohe, double f) are wrongly rendered.

How it should look like:

How it actually looks like:

[walt.farrell]

For the apostrophe: Check your Auto-Correct Settings, specifically Language Dependent Single Typographic Quotes.

For the ff: Check your Text Style or the Character panel for the ligature settings. There are two:

1. In Positioning and Transform, the "fi" toggle at the begging of the set of icons.
2. In OpenType features: Standard Ligatures.

Depending on what features/glyphs the font provides, either of those might be causing this.

[Alfred]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

For the apostrophe: Check your Auto-Correct Settings, specifically Language Dependent Single Typographic Quotes.

The ‘curly’ apostrophe should look as it does in the following example:

It’s far from obvious why it looks as it does in the OP’s screenshot (from Font Squirrel, for those wondering) showing what it should look like.

[PaulEC]

I think the difference is down to the fact that the display on Font Squirrel just uses the basic glyphs, while the apostrophe and ligature in APub are replaced with a "smart" apostrophe and a ff ligature respectively.

What is interesting is that the apostrophe in APub is displayed differently to how it is in LibreOffice (where it looks like Alfred's example.) I'm not sure why, but the apostrophe (in CMU Serif) seems to look better (not quite so much like a blob!) in the other fonts in the CMU collection.

[Alfred]

45 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

I'm not sure why, but the apostrophe (in CMU Serif) seems to look better (not quite so much like a blob!) in the other fonts in the CMU collection.

As you can see from my screenshot (from AD on iPad) the apostrophe in CMU Serif doesn’t look like a blob here.

[PaulEC]

17 minutes ago, Alfred said:

As you can see from my screenshot (from AD on iPad) the apostrophe in CMU Serif doesn’t look like a blob here.

I'm still trying to see why it's it's different for myself and the OP than it is for you - yours is obviously correct! (and it's how it displays in LibreOffice!)

[Alfred]

31 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

I'm still trying to see why it's it's different for myself and the OP than it is for you - yours is obviously correct! (and it's how it displays in LibreOffice!)

It’s quite likely that multiple versions of the font are available. Do you get the same result on iPad as you do on Windows?

[PaulEC]

20 minutes ago, Alfred said:

It’s quite likely that multiple versions of the font are available. Do you get the same result on iPad as you do on Windows?

I haven't tried on iPad. But I did download the font from Font Squirrel, so I'm assuming it should look the same as your version!

I've just looked at the Glyph Browser, the "right quote" looks wrong there as well, although the "left quote" looks OK. In LibreOffice's "Insert Special Character" tab they both look correct. Basically it seems to be the way APub displays this particular glyph, (at least for me) but I have no idea why!

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, PaulEC said:

I haven't tried on iPad. But I did download the font from Font Squirrel, so I'm assuming it should look the same as your version!

They could be different versions, but I’m afraid I don’t even remember whether I actually got my copy from Font Squirrel, anyway! I only mentioned that site because it’s obvious to me that the OP’s screenshot is from there.

[Dan C]

Hi @tropilio,

Thanks for your report!

I can confirm I've been able to replicate the issues with this font here and I will be logging these with our developers now.

22 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

For the apostrophe: Check your Auto-Correct Settings, specifically Language Dependent Single Typographic Quotes.

I can also confirm that disabling the 'Change straight quotes to typographic quotes' will use the same 'straight' quote shown on Font Squirrels preview, though the ff ligature still renders incorrectly.

20 hours ago, Alfred said:

As you can see from my screenshot (from AD on iPad) the apostrophe in CMU Serif doesn’t look like a blob here.

Interestingly, on macOS / iPadOS the apostrophe is rendered correctly, though the 'ff' ligature is still incorrect so I will be including this information with our devs also

I hope this helps

[Dan C]

2 hours ago, Dan C said:

though the ff ligature still renders incorrectly.

In further testing, it appears as though the ff ligature in the font file is the issue here, not Publisher. When enabling Ligatures in Word, I see the same issue -

Therefore you will need to disable ligatures in Publisher when using this font in the Typography settings, which you can find in the Character Studio or by using CTRL + Shift + T -

I hope this helps!

[Samst Tag]

The font is "just" very badly instructed. Instructions say where the points of an glyph move when rendered in small sizes. Windows uses that instructions (which are part of  the font file and created by the font creators) quite strict to render fonts for the screen, Mac and Android use other font rendering technologies which don't follow the instructions the font comes with that strict.

So it's not an bug of Publisher (or Windows), but of the font.

[kenmcd]

On 3/29/2023 at 4:28 AM, tropilio said:

I'm using Computer Modern Serif

The Latin Modern fonts from GUST are an updated version (in OTF format) of the Computer Modern fonts.
https://www.gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/latin-modern/download

Take a look at the History and ReadMe links on that page to see what has been done.
Those fonts may work better.