Font style list sort order

[MikeTO]

It would be nice to tweak the sort order for font styles within a font family to ensure they're ordered consistently regardless of the naming conventions.

Adobe - I believe they sort by width, weight, slope, and then alphabetically which leads to a predictable outcome in order of increasing weight and with the roman/regular version always listed before the italic. Condensed/expanded styles are always grouped together.

 

Affinity - I believe it sorts by weight and then alpha, but not by width or slope. Not sorting by slope leads to italics sometimes being sorted before the roman/regular version (Minion Pro, left) and not sorting by width leads to condensed styles not being grouped (Myriad Pro, right).

 

Apple - same as Adobe, but reverse sorts by width so the condensed styles are last.

 

 

[Daniel Höpfl]

I noticed the same problem when I played around with variable fonts (which quickly get lots of styles).

Thanks to @MikeTO for making me aware that it is not limited to variable fonts.

The actual sort order is not important to me (I guess there is some kind of best practice in the typography world) as long as it is consistent.

I think Affinity does no sorting at all, just using the order it discovers the styles. (It is not sorted by weight, see my example where it shows “ExtraBold“, “Light”, “SemiBold”)

[Patrick Connor]

Thanks Mike I think this has now (finally) been logged with the developers

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "inconsistent font trait display order" (REF: AF-3654) has been fixed by the developers in the latest beta build (2.6.0.2805). The fix is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Affinity Info Bot to notify us.

[MikeTO]

@Affinity Info Bot The revised font style sort order in the 2.6 beta is definitely better, but while the italics are sorted after the non-italics for most fonts, some like Roboto Flex (variable) have the italics sorted first so they're backward.

EB Garamond now has italics sorted to the end which is off.

 

This point isn't an issue, but I preferred the condensed styles being after the regular styles like in 2.5 (left) versus 2.6 (middle). Adobe does the same, but Apple (right) reverse sorts by width which seems a tad nicer.

  

Open Sans (variable from Google) was sorted poorly in 2.5 (left) and it's different but not better in 2.6 (second). Adobe doesn't do any better (third) but Apple (right) does a nice job.

   

Edited November 18, 2024 by MikeTO
clarified variable fonts