Ligatures missing

[GeirSol]

APub:
I'm getting an error on pdf-import. It's related to ligatures.
The ligature of "fi" is not handled correct.

Original pdf:

APub import:

 

There is a second bug here as well "pp" becomes "1"
But that should maybe be a separate thread.

Two fonts in question:
Academico and Norfolk

[walt.farrell]

Do you know what application created the PDF file?

[GeirSol]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Do you know what application created the PDF file?

Sibelius
No render-issues in standard pdf-programs.

[walt.farrell]

Thanks.

30 minutes ago, GeirSol said:

No render-issues in standard pdf-programs.

And probably not in Affinity applications, either if you Place the file in PassThrough mode.

The issue is likely that Sibelius provided a subset set of the font glyphs, and did not include the necessary information for the ligatures. You can cause the same issue with having Affinity applications reopen a PDF they created if you Subset the fonts, and it's resolved (in that case) by choosing not to subset them in the Export settings. If Sibelius has a similar setting that might help you in this case, too. 

[stokerg]

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

The issue is likely that Sibelius provided a subset set of the font glyphs, and did not include the necessary information for the ligatures. You can cause the same issue with having Affinity applications reopen a PDF they created if you Subset the fonts, and it's resolved (in that case) by choosing not to subset them in the Export settings. If Sibelius has a similar setting that might help you in this case, too. 

Yup that's exactly what has happened, see attached screenshot, i exported one of the samples to PDF and all the fonts are subset.

Sadly it doesn't appear that Sibelius has any settings to overcome this when exporting to PDF or if they do, they have hidden them very well!

[GeirSol]

Thanks for checking!
Yes, that's probably it.
Here are my files fonts.
Now, what's the solution?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, GeirSol said:

Now, what's the solution?

Either: 

1. Place the file in Affinity using PassThrough mode, rather than Opening. 

Or 2. Install the Fonts (if you don't have them) and fix the errors by hand. 

Or 3. Use a different application to edit the PDF. 

Or 4. Use a different application to create the PDF.

 

 

 

[GeirSol]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Either: 

1. Place the file in Affinity using PassThrough mode, rather than Opening. 

Or 2. Install the Fonts (if you don't have them) and fix the errors by hand. 

Or 3. Use a different application to edit the PDF. 

Or 4. Use a different application to create the PDF.

Thanks!

#1 Is there a way to place multiple pages at once, or do I need to place all 350 pages of my book individually?
#2 Tried it. Time-consuming and prone to errors
#3 Like: Use Adobe Indesign instead?
#4 Highly unlikely

#5 Change font in Sibelius to something without ligatures.

This seems almost like a showstopper for me
Crossing my fingers for #1 could work.

[GeirSol]

Is this listed as a bug in Affinities system?
Will it be addressed?

I'll consider postponing my work until a fix is released.

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, GeirSol said:

#1 Is there a way to place multiple pages at once, or do I need to place all 350 pages of my book individually?

https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Media/placeImagesAutoflow.html

But I'm curious: if you're putting the entire PDF into your document, what's the purpose of your document? Why not just use the original PDF?

[walt.farrell]

Just now, GeirSol said:

Is this listed as a bug in Affinities system?
Will it be addressed?

As far as know, no, and no. But @stokerg would have more to say on that

[GeirSol]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Media/placeImagesAutoflow.html

But I'm curious: if you're putting the entire PDF into your document, what's the purpose of your document? Why not just use the original PDF?

My book contains of 70 documents. Music scores are in pdf, other text as odt/rtf and spreadsheets

[GeirSol]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Media/placeImagesAutoflow.html

But I'm curious: if you're putting the entire PDF into your document, what's the purpose of your document? Why not just use the original PDF?

Thanks!
At first I did have problems getting scale and center right. But, finding the right way, this seems workable 👍

[GeirSol]

Wait, place gives me no editable content!!
And, I'm uncertain scale is correct.

Is it really to much to ask that Publisher can import pdfs as they are?
If font subsets are included so a pdf-reader can read it correct, then it should be there for Publisher as well.

I need to rethink my workflow here.
I might need to set up a special part from Sibelius that fit's the needs of Publisher.

And I might need to change my main text font to something without ligatures.
After spending hundreds of hours formatting my music, this will require a ton of work.

I need to check out Adobe Indesign and similar.
Not to mention that I bought Affinity V2 for this project.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, GeirSol said:

place gives me no editable content!!

Place gives you an embedded document, and (with Passthrough) a faithful reproduction of the PDF content., which should resolve your Ligature issues.

I don't think you had said you wanted to be editing the PDF content. If you did, and I missed it, my apologies. There is no way you can have editable PDF content and have the right ligatures, using Affinity for those PDFs, as far as I know.

 

[GeirSol]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Place gives you an embedded document, and (with Passthrough) a faithful reproduction of the PDF content., which should resolve your Ligature issues.

I don't think you had said you wanted to be editing the PDF content. If you did, and I missed it, my apologies. There is no way you can have editable PDF content and have the right ligatures, using Affinity for those PDFs, as far as I know.

 

No need to apologize for that. It just takes time for me to comprehend the consequences of the different methods.

If I can get place to work, with no placement/scale-issues, then that might do it for me. But, I was planning of using headers for a TOC, and in passthrough they are not available, nor can I tweak them if needed.
There are also a myriad of other layout-tweaks I would do in standard pdf import, that I can't do now.

But, there might be benefits as well.

Sorry, if I come out grumpy. You're just helping the best way you can, so thanks!

[GeirSol]

On the technical side:

For the ligature "fi" both the ligature and the letters should be present in the pdf font-subsets. Besides, the fonts are installed on my OS.

So, I don't understand the argument that it's missing for Publisher.

[walt.farrell]

30 minutes ago, GeirSol said:

For the ligature "fi" both the ligature and the letters should be present in the pdf font-subsets. Besides, the fonts are installed on my OS.

They should be, yes. But the PDF structure is a complex one and the ligature characters (as I understand the structure) are kept in a separate table.

If you were creating the PDF using Affinity, the ligatures would not be added to that separate table if you're subsetting the font. (I'm not sure if this is considered a bug by Serif.) The solution when using Affinity products to create PDFs is to not use subsetting, but to embed the full font.

It sounds like Sibelius has that same behavior (which, again, may be a bug), but does not provide a way of embedding the full font.

[GeirSol]

10 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

It sounds like Sibelius has that same behavior (which, again, may be a bug), but does not provide a way of embedding the full font.

If the exported output from Sibelius displays perfect in all PDF-readers, then I'm pretty sure they'll not label it as a bug.
But, indeed, supporting full font export would be a good thing in this case. Yet, in my limited understanding this would be to cater for the shortcomings of Affinity.

[GeirSol]

36 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

One thing you could try: instead of exporting from Sibelius, print it (I assume there is a print command, I don't know as I don't have Sibelius). Choose PDF/Save as PDF (lower left corner of macOS' print dialog). This will use macOS rather than whatever Sibelius uses to produce PDFs. It may handle ligatures differently. Then open that PDF in APub.

There's no promises but it's easy to find out if this works or works better. 

Thanks, but that gave a lot of missing fonts on import.

[lacerto]

Please just try changing the font you are using for lyrics. I have Sibelius 7 so an older version but the fonts that it uses work just fine, including ligatures, and export fonts exactly similarly as shown in your screenshot (sub setted, Identity-H encoding). The fact that the ligature "fi" is replaced with another glyph, "v", is a symptom that ligatures have been encoded in a non-standard way in the font you are using. Sibelius 7 uses e.g. Plantin MT for lyrics and ligatures in that font open just fine in Affinity Publisher.

[GeirSol]

5 minutes ago, lacerto said:

Please just try changing the font you are sing for lyrics. I have Sibelius 7 so an older version but the fonts that it uses work just fine, including ligatures, and export fonts exactly similarly as shown in your screenshot (sub setted, Identity-H encoding). The fact that the ligature "fi" is replaced with another glyph, "v", is a symptom that ligatures have been encoded in a non-standard way in the font you are using. Sibelius 7 uses typically Plantin MT for lyrics and ligatures in that font open just fine in Affinity Publisher.

Thanks, interesting. But, changing the font now will require me to go through every 350 pages of my opera.
I'm using Sibelius 2022.12

[lacerto]

Another thing worth consideration is whether your version of Sibelius can export PDFs in color modes other than RGB (or possibly Grayscale, which in a CMYK document will be handled as RGB and ultimately output as four-color black). Mine cannot so my method of using output from Sibelius has been converting to black ink in Adobe Acrobat Pro. If you are going to open the PDFs for editing, you have the chance of replacing all RGB or Gray black with black ink only. But if you are not producing to commercial press, this is probably not an issue for you. Some print shops can also accept pure RGB workflows and do the necessary CMYK conversions on site.

[lacerto]

2 hours ago, GeirSol said:

But, changing the font now will require me to go through every 350 pages of my opera.
I'm using Sibelius 2022.12

In version 7 you can Select all > Filter  > Lyrics, and then change the font for the whole selection in one go. But it may of course cause issues if the replacing font deviates remarkably from the currently used. Just an idea, worth testing anyway at least those ligature parts first.

[GeirSol]

2 hours ago, lacerto said:

Another thing worth consideration is whether your version of Sibelius can export PDFs in color modes other than RGB (or possibly Grayscale, which in a CMYK document will be handled as RGB and ultimately output as four-color black). Mine cannot so my method of using output from Sibelius has been converting to black ink in Adobe Acrobat Pro. If you are going to open the PDFs for editing, you have the chance of replacing all RGB or Gray black with black ink only. But if you are not producing to commercial press, this is probably not an issue for you. Some print shops can also accept pure RGB workflows and do the necessary CMYK conversions on site.

Sounds a little to advanced for Sibelius. But, I'll have a check.

1 hour ago, lacerto said:

In version 7 you can Select all > Filter  > Lyrics, and then change the font for the whole selection in one go. But it may of course cause issues it the replacing font deviates remarkably from the currently used. Just an idea, worth testing anyway at least those ligature parts first.

Yes, but there's other text as well. And all ties into a carefully designed layout.