Fonts not assigned correctly

[Jo23]

Affinity Photo 2.1.0 on Mac and PC affected. Have the same Affinity Photo versions on the two computers (work and home).

• Create a document on PC containing text using installed Google fonts Carlito or Arimo
• Open document in Mac. Fonts are not displayed correctly, probably substituted.
• When text is selected in the Mac environment the name of the font is listed as "? Carlito" or "? Arimo" (prefixed by a question mark).
• The text can be set to Carlito or Arimo. So installed fonts in Mac are OK. (Installed fonts on PC are ok as well)
• I have not yet tested the other way around (create on Mac and open on PC) but the above can be reproduced reliably. Was also a problem in previous versions 1.0.4 of Affinity Photo

 

[Hangman]

Hi @Jo23 and welcome to the forums,

I don't think this will be the issue but certainly with Arimo there are static and variable versions so just checking whether you perhaps have the static version installed on your PC and the variable version on mac (or vice versa)?

Carlito appears to be static only which is why I suspect the above is unlikely to be the issue but thought it worth checking...

Could you perhaps upload a simple document created on your PC using those two fonts, just some simple text, so we can check on the Mac here to see if we experience the same issue...

[Jo23]

Hi @Hangman, thank you for your fast reply!

Yes, I took care to install the static fonts in both systems. Please find a simple document attached. Most text is in Carlito, some text (ladder of numbers at the right side) is in Arimo.

2005 AD AH AGE Mixed Fonts.afphoto

[Jo23]

Another observation, @Hangman --

• export the Affinity Photo document containing the Carlito font as PDF on the PC
• import the PDF in Affinity Photo on Mac
• result is that Carlito font properties are correctly shown in Affinity Photo

However,

• open the Affinity Photo document from a PC containing the Carlito font with Affinity Photo on Mac
• Affinity Photo in Mac environment displays text with the "? Carlito" error
• export that Photo document as PDF on the Mac
• import that PDF on the Mac into Affinity Photo
• result is that the "? Carlito" has been converted to "Helvetica". And Helvetica is correctly displayed in the Mac document.

In summary, PC Photo -> PDF -> Mac Photo works. PC Photo -> Mac Photo gives "? Carlito" error. PC Photo -> Mac Photo -> PDF -> Mac Photo causes offending font to be reassigned.

Thank you for looking into this!

[Hangman]

Hi @Jo23,

Thank you for the document... I've installed the two fonts directly from Google Fonts and for me, Arimo is recognised correctly when opening your file, Carlito isn't... However, if I download a free version of Carlito from a font website and install it in place of the Google Fonts version, then Carlito is recognised e.g.,

https://fontsme.com/carlito.font

Is it at all possible that the version of Carlito on your PC differs from the version on your Mac, i.e., are they both definitely 100% the Goolge Fonts version of Carlito?

26 minutes ago, Jo23 said:

• open the Affinity Photo document from a PC containing the Carlito font with Affinity Photo on Mac
• Affinity Photo in Mac environment displays text with the "? Carlito" error
• export that Photo document as PDF on the Mac
• import that PDF on the Mac into Affinity Photo
• result is that the "? Carlito" has been converted to "Helvetica". And Helvetica is correctly displayed in the Mac document.

That makes sense because exporting to a pdf, Photo doesn't recognise Carlito and is therefore using a fallback font in it's place...

If you open your Photo document in Affinity Publisher instead and then take a look under Font Manager you will see the default substitution font for Carlito is Helvetica so that is what you are seeing when exporting the unrecognised Carlito font to a pdf file and then reopening it...

I would perhaps uninstall Carlito on both your Mac and PC, ensuring both are definitely removed from the respecitive font managers you use on both Mac and PC. Download Carlito again from Google Fonts on both Mac and PC and reinstall. Ensure Carlito is now correctly assigned to your Affinity Photo file on PC, save the file and then open again on Mac to see if you see the same issue and let us know...

 

[kenmcd]

4 hours ago, Hangman said:

However, if I download a free version of Carlito from a font website and install it in place of the Google Fonts version, then Carlito is recognised e.g.,

Did you install all four fonts from that Carlito family (v1.103)?
If not, could you please try it again with all the fonts installed.
That family has some name errors which I would expect to cause issues.
Full Font Name (04) and PostScript Name (06) are both wrong (same as Family Name).
This I expect can cause confusion in some applications.

Google Fonts did a "hotfix" on their version (1.104) to fix some other stuff
which also fixed those name errors,
but it also removed one set of name fields for the Mac platform (01),
and just uses the Microsoft platform names (03) -- which is "normal" now.
Even Apple no longer requires platform ID 01 names.

So I am surprised the v1.103 version appears to work.

Affinity does not appear to be using the PostScript Name to match the fonts.
This would make the most sense as it is unique and a standard format.
But, a simple test fails.
Make a test page with an entire font family listing and using all the styles.
Export to PDF.
Check the PDF to assure all the fonts are embedded using the correct PostScript Name.
Open that PDF in APub and many of the styles are listed as missing.
That is pretty ridiculous.

So back to Carlito... please let me know if v1.103 does or does not work with all four fonts installed.
The GF v1.104 should be easier to match correctly because all the name fields are correct (and unique) unlike v1.103 where the three fields are the same (and should not be).

[Hangman]

13 hours ago, kenmcd said:

Did you install all four fonts from that Carlito family (v1.103)?

The version downloaded from Google Fonts is v1.104 which consists of :

Carlito-Regular.ttf
Carlito-Italic.ttf
Carlito-Bold.ttf
Carlito-Bold Italic.ttf

13 hours ago, kenmcd said:

Affinity does not appear to be using the PostScript Name to match the fonts.
This would make the most sense as it is unique and a standard format.
But, a simple test fails.
Make a test page with an entire font family listing and using all the styles.
Export to PDF.
Check the PDF to assure all the fonts are embedded using the correct PostScript Name.
Open that PDF in APub and many of the styles are listed as missing.

All seems fine on macOS...

PDF Created in Affinity Photo Using both the Carlito and Arimo Font Families Downloaded from Google Fonts

 

 

Same file opened in Affinity Publisher

 

 

 

[kenmcd]

On 6/2/2023 at 6:57 AM, Hangman said:

However, if I download a free version of Carlito from a font website and install it in place of the Google Fonts version, then Carlito is recognised e.g.,

That would be the v1.103 version.
I guess that had me confused.
As that appears to say the v1.103 is recognized correctly.

The GF v1.104 version should be identified correctly - all the name fields are correct.
The v1.103 version may not be identified correctly if the app is not looking at PostScript Name (as the Affinity apps seem to do).

But it does sound as if your results are different than the OP (who also had GF v1.104 on a Mac).
So still confused here. Guess I may need a nap.

[Hangman]

14 hours ago, kenmcd said:

But it does sound as if your results are different than the OP (who also had GF v1.104 on a Mac).

This is what I want to check with @Jo23, do they definitely have the identical version of Carlito installed on both their PC and Mac. My guess is likely 'no' so I think the easiest way to confirm is to uninstall completely on both, re-download from Google Fonts on both PC and Mac, reinstall, and reassign Carlito to the Affinity Photo document on PC, Save and then open on Mac.

I would be 99.99% sure that will work, but could equally be wrong...

[Jo23]

Thank you very much @Hangman and @kenmcd!

 

On 6/2/2023 at 3:57 PM, Hangman said:

Thank you for the document... I've installed the two fonts directly from Google Fonts and for me, Arimo is recognised correctly when opening your file, Carlito isn't... However, if I download a free version of Carlito from a font website and install it in place of the Google Fonts version, then Carlito is recognised e.g.,

 

Reinstalling Arimo solved my issue.

With Carlito, reinstalling did not help. My earlier and the recent Carlito downloads from Google Fonts are version 1.104. However, all faces of the more recent download are larger compared to the earlier download. So there appears to be a mismatch within the font files on my computer and there probably is not a compatibility problem with Affinity Photo documents between PC and Mac.

I can update you in a few days once I have compared work PC and home Mac with freshly installed Carlito. I can work with Arimo or Carlito for publications so we do have a solution already.

Again, many thanks for your fast and thorough discussion!

 

[Jo23]

Again, many thanks to @Hangman and @kenmcd!

As you suggested, re-installing the most recent downloads of Carlito cleared the problem completely. There is no compatibility issue between Affinity Photo documents from Windows or MacOS. There may have been a problem in the font files of Carlito. That appears to have been solved with version 1.104 of Carlito.

 

 

[Hangman]

Hi @Jo23,

No problem at all, glad everything is now working as it should...