Sanskrit Text Appears with Thin Weight Instead of Regular

[derekpadula]

Text written in a Sanskrit font appears with a thin body weight instead of a regular weight. It exports at the proper weight in a PDF, but it looks wrong in the program itself.

I have a body text that uses Roman letters, Japanese, Chinese, and Sanskrit in the same paragraph. I use the Noto Sans and Serif font families, including Noto Sans CJK JP, and Noto Sans Devanagari (as there is no Serif versions of these foreign language fonts). 

In the font selection field, all of the 9 style options for Devanagari are listed as "regular," even though they appear as light. This is not a problem in InDesign, where all 9 display properly, from Thin, to Regular, to Black. 

This is not an issue in InDesign or Word. I tried importing the text via IDML and via Word. In both cases, Publisher displays the Sanskrit text as a lighter version of its regular self. It then exports it as a regular weight.

This difference in weight throws off the readability in Publisher, and may also effect the distribution of characters and line width. 

Edited August 10, 2023 by derekpadula
Added tags

[Dan C]

Hi @derekpadula,

Thanks for your report!

It appears as though the font you are using is a Variable Font, which are not supported in Affinity at this time - hence the font only displays as 'Regular' in the font list.

Unfortunately you will need to download and install a regular multi-file version of this font if you wish to use it within Affinity.

I hope this clears things up

[derekpadula]

I believe this is incorrect, as I have the 9 static versions of the font installed (see this screenshot). 

Devanagari is offered as a variable font, but I installed 9 of the possible 36 static versions. The font can be downloaded from Google here, and it comes with both varieties:

https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Devanagari

Perhaps your team can experiment with the two and see what's going on.

In any case, if variable fonts are not supported, then why does it export properly at the Regular weight? Maybe a short-term fix would be that if Publisher detects a variable font, to render it in the app as Regular, just as it does when exporting.

Thank you.

[Dan C]

35 minutes ago, derekpadula said:

Devanagari is offered as a variable font, but I installed 9 of the possible 36 static versions. The font can be downloaded from Google here, and it comes with both varieties:

https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Devanagari

Thanks for letting me know - I've downloaded and installed the static versions of this font and these are appearing as expected within Publisher for me:

I'd recommend uninstalling all versions of this font through Windows, then ensure you are installing the static versions only to use with Affinity.

36 minutes ago, derekpadula said:

In any case, if variable fonts are not supported, then why does it export properly at the Regular weight? Maybe a short-term fix would be that if Publisher detects a variable font, to render it in the app as Regular, just as it does when exporting.

As Variable Fonts are officially unsupported, using them within Publisher will result in unexpected results, including differences between rendering on canvas and exporting to PDF. Rather than working around the issue temporarily, we simply recommend not using Variable Fonts until official support has been added, which is logged internally as an improvement with our development team