Importing PDF - Linux Libertine Italic not recognized properly

[Frank Zimmerman]

This happens in all three programs: Designer, Photo, and Publisher. I have both Linux Libertine fonts and Linux Libertine G fonts installed. I use the non-G ones (due to some issues I had when copying text from a PDF), but LibreOffice puts the G versions on. So both are installed, and do not interfere with each other.

When I have Linux Libertine italic (non-G version) text in a PDF, and import that file in to any of the three programs, the italic text gets garbled. The character spacing is messed up, and the text is not italicized. If I select some of the text that should be italics, then look at the font selector, it says Linux Libertine Initials.

If I select the text that should be italics (in Publisher, for example), then change the font to Linux Libertine, the font style box shows as "regular." If I select it to pick from the drop-down list, I see "regular, initials, semi-bold, semi-bold italic, bold, and bold-italic." The "initials" entry is showing where "italic" should be.

The Libertine fonts can be downloaded here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxlibertine/

Affinity-Test.pdf Affinity-Test.odt

[Affinityconfusesme]

Are they variable fonts? Those kinds of fonts are not currently supported in affinity?

[Komatös]

Hi @Frank Zimmerman and welcome to the forums.

It seems to me that the font is no longer maintained. The last update on Sourceforge was in 2016, and there are several glyph errors throughout the font family. Also, Libertine Initials and Italic have the same postscript name.
 

[kenmcd]

Those old fonts from SourceForge have errors in the name fields.
That is what is most likely causing your errors.

The Linux Libertine fonts included with LibreOffice have been fixed.
So you could use those versions.

The Libertinus font family is an updated/bug-fixed version of those fonts.
Download here: https://github.com/alerque/libertinus
This is probably the best option.

The "G" fonts include the old Graphite smart font technology (and are also broken IIRC).
I would un-install all the G fonts.

[Frank Zimmerman]

Let me take these responses in order:

1. Variable Fonts? I don't think so. These are TTF, not OTF.

2. "No longer maintained". There are probably hundreds of thousands of fonts that are "no longer maintained." They are not operating systems. Are you suggesting that Affinity will only work with fonts that are currently being maintained? Even with some extremely old font collections, from WordPerfect 2000, MS Office 97, Lotus (1995), Harvard (1994), and the Bitstream Font CD (1993), I almost never see problems. The Libertine/Biolinum fonts are not crude fonts hacked together in someone's basement. They are fairly full-featured unicode replacements for Times New Roman and Arial, supporting many codepages, ligatures, and internal support for smallcaps, as well as other typographic features.

3. "several glyph errors throughout the font family." Are you saying that these glyphs are what is causing Affinity to choke on the italic font? Or are the glyph errors in some unicode chinese characters that are not even being used? Is this relevant to the problem being experienced?

4. "Libertine Initials and Italic have the same postscript name." Are you suggesting that opening the font in a font editor and changing the postscript name will fix the problem?

5. "...old fonts from SourceForge have errors in the name fields. That is what is most likely causing your errors." See #4 above. Are you saying that if I fix the name fields in a font editor, it will all work?

This opens another question.

Why is it that LibreOffice, Gimp, Inkscape, Foxit Phantom, and Abbyy FineReader have no problem with these fonts, and do not confuse the initials and the italic versions, and do not radically mess up the font kerning for the Italic face, like Affinity does, even though apparently, these two fonts (italic and initials) have the same internal postscript name. How is it that these other software avoid having this problem, but Affinity cannot avoid it?

It seems to me that there is a weakness in the method that Affinity is using to identify the fonts. Wouldn't it be better to fix this?

6. "I would un-install all the G fonts." Yes, I would like to do this, but I can't, because I have many books on my website, that still have those fonts, and I eventually need to load them and replace the fonts. Some of them have carefully placed images, and if the font used does not exist on the system, it may get substituted, and the paragraphs reformat, throwing the pictures askew. To prevent having to do even more work, I keep both font series installed, do a search and replace on font format, and this way the pages and paragraphs stay pretty much the same. It's the least disruptive way (that I know of), and saves headaches.

7. "The Libertinus font family is an updated...version..." I wasn't aware of that. I have downloaded and installed it. I will tentatively experiment with it. I can't immediately jump into a font replacement without careful consideration, as I have hundreds of books, some of them over 1000 pages, that would all need to be redone, and that is probably a years work or more. So I have to move carefully. If you change the foundation on a grass hut, you can do it in one day, and change it again the next. If you have to change the foundation on a skyscraper, it requires much more thought and careful planning!

I read on a wikimedia post that OTF does not display on screen as well as TTF. The post was from 2015 though, so maybe this is no longer the case? This would be a concern for me, as most of my PDF's are primarily for reading (on computer or iPad/Tablet), and only secondly for printing. I wouldn't want to compromise the reading quality.

***

So I tried my test document with the "Libertine G" series of fonts and opened it in Affinity Publisher. It was even worse. See the attachment. The missing characters are one of the reasons I switched from "Libertine G" (or "Libertine O" on Linux) about 4 years ago. When I used them in the past, the G fonts looked fine in a PDF, but if you attempt to copy out the text, some PDF viewers would leave out characters, especially where ligatures were involved. I think it was Chrome and Foxit Reader that had problems, whereas Edge and Adobe Reader worked (I might be mixing these up).

I also tested the same document, this time using "Libertinus". The result was successful, but interestingly, I had to choose font substitutions first (which I didn't have to do with the other Libertine/LibertineG fonts), as it could not find the original fonts (because when they are stored in PDF, somehow the name is combined without spaces (LibertinusSerifRegular) and so does not match any installed fonts. Affinity would have defaulted to Arial, but once I picked the substitutes, it worked fine.

[kenmcd]

I tested these old Linux Libertine fonts in LibreOffice a couple years ago - and they do not work properly. And you can probably find old bug reports in LibreOffice bug tracker. When the family is opened in TransType the errors are pretty obvious.

Libertinus did have some errors in it, but I thought those had all been fixed. I will take a look at the current versions later today to see if there are any problems. And check if there are any issues with the PostScript Name which would cause the odd PDF embedded name.

[kenmcd]

Libertinus v7.4.0 does still have an error in the SemiBold Italic font.
So I fixed that and exported the fonts to TTF with hinting (for screen display).
Libertinus.v7.040.TTF-Fixed.Names.zip

Linux Libertine (family) has been fixed for LibreOffice.
(I guess they finally got tired of shipping broken fonts.)
Linux.Libertine.Family.v5.3.0-Fixed.Names.zip

The Linux Libertine fonts were not fixed due to some licensing issues.
They could not get all of the original contributors to sign-off on the license update.
You can see old discussions about this in the LibreOffice bug tracker.
This is also why they are not updated and included in Google Fonts.
Again, you can see related discussions in the Google Fonts Issues tracker.

This is also why the family was forked and renamed to Libertinus.
Unfortunately Libertinus also suffers from some neglect.
Libertinus also removed some features (e.g. nalt).

All of these fonts are very old.
The G fonts are the original Graphite fonts.
The O fonts were conversions to OpenType-PS.

There are far more capable free OFL fonts available.

Fixed fonts are not going to fix the errors in existing PDFs.
But, it can prevent errors in the future.
So you may still have import issues.

Make sure to shut all applications down when un-installing the old fonts and then installing the new fixed fonts - you want all the font caches to update properly.

Not sure why you have odd PostScript Names embedded for Libertinus.
Nothing in the fonts would explain that.
Have to see the original docs and PDFs.

Note: I have no problem exporting your ODT file above from LibreOffice.
The correct fonts PostScript Names are embedded.
(unlike the odd names in your PDF above)
Affinity-Test.KM.exported.from.LO.pdf

It may be that you have too many different versions installed.
Also check that you do not have duplicate font files in your Windows Fonts folder and your User Fonts folder (look for duplicate files with a filename suffix like _0, _1, etc.).
That can confuse the Affinity font caching.

[Frank Zimmerman]

Ken, thanks for the effort put into your reply.

I took a closer look at my fonts. I usually am pretty careful to make sure I don't have duplicates and so forth. I did not have duplicates, and I was using the latest ones from the 5.3.0 set. But since Affinity was confusing the Italic and Initials font, I took a closer look at Initials. It's not part of the original set. It had an older version number (5.0.6). I removed this font, and now there is no longer confusion in Affinity, when loading a PDF.

These two fonts had the same Postscript Name: LinLibertineI for "Italic", and LinLibertineI for "Initials". I still hold that Affinity is wrong for relying solely on that name to identify a font, as none of the other programs I mentioned (Foxit Phantom, Abbyy Fine Reader, Inkscape, etc) have problems, even with the Initials font installed.

Furthermore, you stated that there were "odd names" in the PDF file I shared on my original post. Yet the only two fonts I used in that document were Linux Libertine (Regular) and Linux Libertine Italic. I never used the "Initials" font in that document. Why then should Affinity get confused, and load the "Initials" font instead, or load the kerning from that "Initials" font and try to apply it to the display of the Italic version? And furthermore, why, after I uninstalled "Initials", Affinity works just fine with that original PDF, regardless of the "odd names" you say it has in it. Why do the "odd names" suddenly work just fine?

You spent quite a bit of time talking about the errors and "broken" state of the original 5.3.0 Libertine fonts, but this has not been my experience. In general, they are superb: they look great, and they work well. While you stated "there are far more capable free OFL fonts available," I doubt it will be easy to find a full set of Serif and SansSerif fonts that have all the basic types (Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic), plus a Semi-Bold and Semi-Bold Italic, and that look really well together; and that have support for other languages, and ligatures, and other typographic elements. If you have a list of alternatives, please share it.

I tested the "Affinity-Test..." pdf that was linked at the end of your post. It works fine, but it prompts for font substitution (otherwise it will default to Arial), just like the PDF I made with Libertinus did. This may have something to do with the renaming of the Postcript names that you did to the fonts on your side, and that I do not have those particular "renamed" versions installed. Although why Libertinus should have the same issue, while I had the Libertinus fonts installed, escapes me. I still feel that this points to a weakness in identifying fonts, that is inherent in the Affinity code.