Outlined text problem

[Adit]

Hi affinity forum!
Hope you guys have a great day... 
I want to ask about this topic, maybe to silly to ask but i still wonder is there anyway to make the outlined text like the curved shape (attached on image) so i can still edit the outlined text without convert it to curve. Am experiencing this on affinity designer 2.0.4 Windows 11. P.S its not happened on mac version.

Thankyou

[firstdefence]

Which Font is it that you are using?

I have a font called Figtree that has the same behaviour and I think it's because it is a variable font or it is a static version of a variable font. 

 

[Adit]

its montserrat

[firstdefence]

This is how montserrat is constructed as seen in the Font editor Gylphs

At the moment Affinity doesn't support Variable fonts, I have no idea why?

[GarryP]

When looking for a solution to a problem regarding text, a good first thing to do is to try searching the forums for the font name to see if that font is already known to have, or be causing, problems.

For example: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/174562-why-my-montserrat-typeface-look-weird-when-i-swap-fill-to-stroke/

[lacerto]

For this specific font the solution was to get the version of font where overlapping outlines were cleaned, but when I had a closer look on the issue, it does not seem that mere support of variable fonts of an app is the key to avoid the problem. E.g., CorelDRAW and VectorStyler both fully support variable fonts but both show the outline issue with Montserrat, and it also shows when exporting e.g. to PDF, on both platforms. The same issue shows also with many glyphs (but not all) in some variable fonts, like SF Pro, but not e.g. in Skia, where there are no overlapping outlines when the font is used stroked, nor are there any when the font is opened in font editors (Glyphs and FontLab 8 tested).

So it would appear that it is a font specific issue, both in context of static and variable fonts, as it does not seem that an app can resolve this problem -- whether it supports variable fonts or not; in some situations like one presented here, one possible workaround could be creating a curves object with cleaned overlaps and then place a text object behind with zero opacity fill and no stroke, if it is important that selectable / searchable text is included in the export.

outline_issue.pdf

[kenmcd]

On 4/2/2023 at 1:15 PM, lacerto said:

So it would appear that it is a font specific issue

No. Nothing wrong with the variable font. Not a font specific issue.
The issue is with those applications not being able to apply a stroke properly.
(which I wrongly assumed they would be able to do if they support variable fonts)

[lacerto]

On 4/14/2023 at 3:51 AM, kenmcd said:

The issue is with those applications not being able to apply a stroke properly.

But which graphic design application that allows full control of glyph stroke attributes [and also conversion of text to outlines] can do that? Latest Corel, Xara, VectorStyler, Pages and Inkscape cannot, QuarkXPress 2018 cannot, nor can e.g. Illustrator or InDesign CS6 (though those two date from the time variable fonts did not exist and so such compositions were probably rare and there never was need for rendering in some specific way that removes overlapping strokes; I have currently not subscription active on those two on so cannot check if the current versions can).

Word and Photoshop can, but they do not allow similar control of outline (e.g. stroke alignment) -- the latter only via an effect. I rather switch a font than do graphic design in Word, or logo design in Photoshop. [FontLab 8 Windows version can, too, in Text preview, while the macOS version is totally buggy in rendering preview.]

On the other hand, if these kinds of overlapping compositions are required by variable fonts, then why does not Skia use / depend on them? 

Basically I am just saying that Affinity apps are not alone in this alarming inability.

[kenmcd]

18 hours ago, lacerto said:

InDesign 

I just did a quick test in ID17 and it appears to work as expected.
(have it running in a VM just to test stuff)

The same issue affects browsers, so I have seen a number of discussions in the Google Fonts repos.
When applying the outline using webkit-text-stroke you can see the same issue.
IIRC some of the browsers do work, and some do not. (cannot remember which now)
There is a test page here: https://jsbin.com/movowohesu/edit?html,output
And here: https://www.html-code-generator.com/demo/css/text-stroke
Although the second one seems to have issues at the moment.
Normally it has a button which allows you to select online fonts from Google Fonts.

[lacerto]

On 4/15/2023 at 3:16 AM, kenmcd said:

I just did a quick test in ID17 and it appears to work as expected.

I installed version 18.2.1 of InDesign and yes, it can render these fonts without issues, so it seems that Adobe apps have been able to do so for some years now (possibly starting from late 2019 when support for variable fonts was implemented in InDesign).

No, I was just sloppy when testing. There is no change from CS6 versions, it is just that if these problematic glyphs have a fill, they will be rendered correctly, not showing the overlapping outlines. If the fill is removed, they show also in the latest versions of Adobe apps (InDesign and Illustrator at least; as mentioned Photoshop handles text outlines differently and does not have this issue), both when using variable and regular fonts:

Affinity apps by default draw the stroke in front so they would show the crossing outlines also if there is a fill, but this can be changed by using the Order option of the Stroke panel.

EDIT: The behavior shown above in InDesign with filled text only works when using outside aligned stroke. If using center aligned stroke, the strokes would show similarly as in non-filled text. Affinity apps can avoid that by changing the paint order but when using other than the outside aligned stroke, the stroke width would of course be affected (e.g., half or all of the stroke would be covered by the fill color).

EDIT2: There is also another consideration and that is whether a graphic design app, capable of converting text to outlines, should actually (by default or at least optionally) honor the original design, using the exact construction of the glyph outlines and control points? Could the designer intentionally use crossing outlines in a way that causes an effect shown above in letter "W", and that would show also in filled letter when using center aligned strokes? Perhaps not in letter shapes but e.g. in symbols? Is there a property (meta data, instruction) that allows the designer to indicate whether such shapes are to be removed when rendering the font, or honored? So far the only app that I know that can actually remove these "artifacts" and that allows full control of stroke (width, alignment, cap and join type, etc.) is FontLab 8, and there showing or hiding them is an option called "Keep/Remove skeleton overlaps". That's an option I would like to have in graphic design apps, as well (along with the ability to choose whether outlines are drawn in front or back), but perhaps this is just something that is intended to be used in font editor? But I am not sure if "removing skeleton overlaps" should be something that a graphic design app should do automatically, without giving the user an option of keeping them, instead. 

[kenmcd]

On 4/14/2023 at 11:10 PM, lacerto said:

No, I was just sloppy when testing. There is no change from CS6 versions, it is just that if these problematic glyphs have a fill, they will be rendered correctly, not showing the overlapping outlines.

I think I did the same thing. Have to take a closer look.