Typing weird characters only in Affinity.

[katydid]

Hello,

I am using Designer on a windows desktop. All the sudden when I type I get weird characters. I probably accidently make some combination of keystrokes to cause this, but I have no idea what I did.  Can anyone help me correct this?

Thank you!

[Komatös]

Hi @ katydid and welcome to the forum.

Can you show us a sample screenshot, please? So we can see what's going wrong!

[katydid]

Sure thing, attached. 

[GarryP]

It would be useful if you could also tell us which bit of text you are working with in that screen-grab (I see four pieces of text, including the artboard name) and what you are typing, so we can tell where the problem might be.

If you can tell us:

• Which characters you are trying to type;
• Which characters you get instead;
• Which font you are using;
• What the language is set to in your machine;
• What the language is set to in “Settings / General”;
• What the language is set to in the “Language” section of the “Character Panel” while you are typing;

...we will have a better idea about what is happening.

[katydid]

Thanks for the help, I am a newbie.

I made this sheet before I started having problems. Numbers type correctly but any letters that appear in English were there before the problem. Now if I try to change them or type anything new, I get the weird text like is show as the artboard name.  It should say the default name of Artboard1.  In the layers panel the name shows up correctly but type is displayed wrong.

“Settings / General” is set to English US which is what I want.

I don't know how to find the other setting in the Character Panel.  I will try to find it.

[katydid]

I think I found it and it also says English US

[GarryP]

Thanks for the extra information.

I think this looks like an existing issue which was raised a while back, but I don’t know if there is a fix for it.

For example, see: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/177984-artboard-name-font/&do=findComment&comment=1046364

Hopefully someone else will know more about this.

[katydid]

Thank you so much for the information.  

[GarryP]

Has this only happened with this document or have you seen the same problem with other documents?

If you can share the document then someone might be able to look into it further.

[katydid]

It happens on every document I type on.  I assume that this started with the last update but I can't say that for sure.

[GarryP]

The last update to what? Designer, Windows, both, or something else?

Have you made sure that Windows is fully up-to-date, and your graphics card(s) drivers are also up-to-date?

[katydid]

I downloaded the new Beta but got the same problem. Then I tried changing the font from Ariel and that fixed the problem on my typed page but I don't if/how you can change the font used to display the artboard name.

[katydid]

Affinity designer update.  This problem ONLY happens for type displayed in an Affinity document. 

[v_kyr]

BTW, your weird characters are greek language characters for the UI and what you typed in!

[Alfred]

50 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

BTW, your weird characters are greek language characters for the UI and what you typed in!

Or rather, they’re Greek characters for the English language text!

Αρτβοαρδ1 = Artboard1
ΥΠΠΕΡ = UPPER
ΡΙΓΗΤ = RIGHT
ΧΟΡΝΕΡ = CORNER
 

[thomaso]

Possibly your Windows keyboard language got set to / confused by Greek? – Although it would affect all apps, not Affinity only, and every font face, it might be worth a check in Windows if Greek is a (selected) option there.

[Komatös]

If you press alt+shift or Windows key + space you can switch between the input languages installed in Windows. 

[v_kyr]

3 hours ago, Alfred said:

Or rather, they’re Greek characters for the English language text!

Αρτβοαρδ1 = Artboard1
ΥΠΠΕΡ = UPPER
ΡΙΓΗΤ = RIGHT
ΧΟΡΝΕΡ = CORNER
 

That's what was meant here! - As instead correct translated you would call those in greek usually more like this ...

Artboard1 = Πίνακας τέχνης 1
right = δεξιά
corner = γωνία
upper = πάνω

 

[kenmcd]

The "characters" are from the Windows symbol.ttf font.
They are symbols which look like Greek text, but they are not actually text.

This is where is gets really weird...
When I open that font in FontCreator and type the preview text
"Artboard1 UPPER RIGHT CORNER",
you can see the Greek symbols/text which matches the screenshots.

This makes absolutely no sense - it should not happen with this font.
All of the Unicode code points are up in the PUA, not normal text code points.
So this transliterated "Greek" should not appear.
It should be displaying the .notdef boxes for missing characters.

FontLab shows nothing - as it should.

So how is the inputted preview text being connected to the outputted symbols?
It appears to be using the glyph ID numbers.
I opened the font I assume Affinity is using for the UI on Windows, Segoe UI,
and compared the glyph ID numbers - and they match.
The Segoe UI input A is glyph ID 36.
The Symbol output of glyph ID 36 is Α (symbol for Alpha-grek character).
The Segoe UI input r is glyph ID 85.
The Symbol output of glyph ID 85 is ρ (symbol for the rho-grek character).
The Segoe UI input t is glyph ID 87.
The Symbol output of glyph ID 87 is τ (symbol for the tau-grek character).
The Segoe UI input b is glyph ID 69.
The Symbol output of glyph ID 69 is β (symbol for the beta-grek character).
Etc., etc., etc.

So the user interface text is being represented using the symbol font,
and the glyphs are being replaced based on the glyph ID (not Unicode code-point).

This makes no sense.
But, since it is also happening in FontCreator - this may be a Windows issue.
So maybe something changed with a Windows update.

In old fonts before Unicode, like old Type 1 fonts, the characters were mapped using the glyph ID and the glyph name.
And the characters had to be in a very specific order.
Many modern fonts still use this glyph order for those legacy characters.
It is as if the user interface is being glyph-mapped to this old order, in the symbol font.

Dunno what is happening here as it just makes no sense.
But at least we now know what is happening.
Now need to know why.
 

Note: this thread should probably be in the Windows bugs forum.

 

[lacerto]

15 hours ago, kenmcd said:

Now need to know why.

Aren't these kinds of odd renderings often symptoms of duplicate font installations (however possible for system fonts) or a corrupted system/app font cache? For clearing duplicate installation and system-wide issues (if this were not an issue affecting just Affinity apps) there are plenty of instructions on the Internet, but what would be up-to-date instructions for clearing Affinity-specific font cache (both on Windows and macOS)? 

[EDIT: The font used for rendering artboard titles is pretty small but does look like it could be Arial, while the rest/most of the UI text is not, so the problem might be related to just Arial.]

[thomaso]

14 hours ago, kenmcd said:

The "characters" are from the Windows symbol.ttf font.

6 hours ago, lacerto said:

the problem might be related to just Arial.

It may be different in Windows but to me on mac Arial also contains "Greek and Coptic" glyphs. They get automatically used if I switch the keyboard language to Greek.

[katydid]

4 hours ago, thomaso said:

It may be different in Windows but to me on mac Arial also contains "Greek and Coptic" glyphs. They get automatically used if I switch the keyboard language to Greek.

Interesting ... how do I see what my keyboard language is set to?

[v_kyr]

For ADe itself check your "Preferences -> General Options -> Language" settings.

For Windows see ...

• Manage the input and display language settings in Windows
• windows keyboard language  (search after that topics online via Google)
• ... etc.

[kenmcd]

17 hours ago, lacerto said:

Aren't these kinds of odd renderings often symptoms of duplicate font installations (however possible for system fonts) or a corrupted system/app font cache? For clearing duplicate installation and system-wide issues (if this were not an issue affecting just Affinity apps) there are plenty of instructions on the Internet, but what would be up-to-date instructions for clearing Affinity-specific font cache (both on Windows and macOS)? 

[EDIT: The font used for rendering artboard titles is pretty small but does look like it could be Arial, while the rest/most of the UI text is not, so the problem might be related to just Arial.]

The artboard text looks like a serif font, so it is not Arial.
Generally applications which are created using .NET are going to use the fonts API from .NET - which is going to be using Segoe UI on Windows.
I did a ADesigner test on Win10 and the "Artboard1" text is a sans serif which is probably Segoe UI.

I have confirmed in multiple applications now that different symbols fonts (not Unicode) are all being mapped via the glyph ID.
I tested: Symbol, Marlet, Wingding, Zapf Dingbats BT, etc.
So for me that weirdness is confirmed.

But, you are right about it is perhaps a font cache issue.
Why is the Symbol font being displayed instead of the Segoe UI font?
That is the source of the problem.

 

[kenmcd]

Regarding language settings...

Changing the keyboard language is only going to change the Unicode code-points which are sent when a key is pressed. Not going to change already entered and displayed text.

Changing the interface language is going to change the displayed text based on the translated text in the language files - and the appropriate font will also be selected at the same time.

In this case the English language text is being displayed with a font which does not support English (no Latin script) and for some reason Windows is mapping those glyphs to symbols which look like Greek text.
No language translation is happening.

If for some reason the Wingding symbol-font was used instead of the Symbol symbol-font, then the "text" would look like a bunch of dingbats instead of Greek characters.
Here is "Artboard1" using the Wingding.ttf font:

Those are the same glyph numbers as in the Symbol font.
It appears Windows is doing this glyph mapping for symbol fonts.
All of those characters have code-points up in the Unicode Private Use Area (PUA).

Segoe MDL2 Assets font is a Windows font used for a bunch of interface icons.
But it is flagged as an actual Unicode font, not as a symbol font.
This is a flag set inside the font.
All of the glyphs (icons) also have Unicode code-points up in the PUA.
But they are not mapped by Windows - and display the .notdef character as it should.

 

So the real issue is why is the Symbol font being substituted into the ADesigner interface replacing the correct interface font?