Does Affinity suite support these typography features?

[project_2501]

I'm thinking of investing in commercial fonts - but I want to be sure Affinity suite supports the provided font features.

 

See images attached - taken from the font vendor website (links below).

 

I'm no expert, but these seem to be called "contextual alternative ligatures" and "opentype stylistic sets". Examples includes:

• "joining up letters"
• putting letters inside another - eg the Monterchi font which can place the second letter inside the first capital
• "handwritten" underlines that span the intended letters
• non-letter graphical elements, eg "ink splashes" as per Olicana
• full support to letter decorations (accents) for multi-language (Latin script) support - eg Brill Latin

 

One of the screenshots shows a font config dialog which looks like Adobe, not Affinity.

 

https://fonts.ilovetypography.com/fonts/zetafonts/monterchi

https://fonts.ilovetypography.com/fonts/g-type/rollerscript-2

https://fonts.ilovetypography.com/fonts/liebefonts/liebeheide

https://fonts.ilovetypography.com/fonts/g-type/olicana

https://fonts.ilovetypography.com/fonts/tiro/brill-latin

 

 

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, tariq said:

One of the screenshots shows a font config dialog which looks like Adobe, not Affinity.

While Affinity supports some Open Type features like Ligatures or Ornaments, …

…

… some of your listed fonts include options that aren't supported yet in Affinity. In particular "Liebe Heide" got a few threads, for instance …

On 11/9/2021 at 2:12 PM, fiëé said:

Some only show up in black, with “Liebe Heide”, the apps even crash.

On 1/26/2022 at 4:38 PM, kenmcd said:

LiebeHeide is an SBIX color font (with SVG image backup) which is a type not supported currently.

On 1/26/2022 at 12:32 PM, DWright said:

From the crash report that you provided it appears that the font itself is causing the issue,

In previous forum discussions of this font it simply did not work - it did not cause a crash. So that is new.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&q="svg font"&quick=1&sortby=relevancy&search_and_or=and

… while there are responses from Serif staff about "no plans" but it implies with the typical subjunctive that more feature requests by users may influence the decision for the future …

On 2/16/2018 at 2:14 PM, Leigh said:

We currently have no plans to add this feature but this could change in the future. We already have a few threads in the Feature Request section asking for this to be added.

On 1/13/2020 at 2:01 PM, Leigh said:

On 1/13/2020 at 1:48 PM, Fantomas.CZ said:

What a shame. Isn't is a time to at least start reconsidering?

I mean when talking about SVG color fonts, it's not just those flashy colorful typefaces, but also other types, like those "handwritten" brush typefaces. It's quite nice and there are quite a few fonts available out there.

I can only make sure your feedback is passed on to the relevant team, which I will do

[Andreas Scherer]

22 hours ago, tariq said:

• "joining up letters"
• putting letters inside another - eg the Monterchi font which can place the second letter inside the first capital
• full support to letter decorations (accents) for multi-language (Latin script) support - eg Brill Latin

I can confirm these by practical example. The Glyph Browser in APub is your friend.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Andreas Scherer

[Andreas Scherer]

40 minutes ago, Andreas Scherer said:

I can confirm these by practical example.

I used the non-commercial package of the Brill font directly from Brill.com and the Monterchi font for personal/non-commercial use from DaFont.com. (The latter installs as Monterchi Trial.)

[kenmcd]

9 hours ago, tariq said:

but I want to be sure Affinity suite supports the provided font features.

Affinity Publisher supports all the OpenType features used in these fonts.

The only thing not supported is the SBIX font format (used by LiebeHeide).
SBIX is a color bitmap font format originally used for the Apple color emoji font.
LiebeHeide is now also available as Color-SVG - but that format is also not available in Affinity (yet).

[project_2501]

Thanks everyone for the replies.

 

Can I check one thing specifically - the Olicana font has "ink splashes" and "fingerprints" - will these work in Affinity or are these SVG graphics?

[kenmcd]

The Olicana ink splashes and fingerprints are characters - with Unicode code points up in the PUA (Private Use Area).
So you can only select them in the Glyph Browser.
No OpenType feature to display them, so no way to type them.
Must use the Glyph Browser.

These characters have zero text width and are centered on the insertion point.
They will overlay what ever they are next to.
So if you insert them in the middle of a word, it may cover parts of the word.

Like any font character you can convert them to shapes (they are vectors).

[kenmcd]

Note: regarding what I said above about "no way to type them" - you can type Unicode code points directly by switching into Unicode mode.
Alt+U on Windows - it may be Control+U on Mac (I think).

Since those ink splashes and fingerprints are characters with a code point,
you could type them directly like that (if you know their code points).

[Oufti]

15 minutes ago, kenmcd said:

you can type Unicode code points directly by switching into Unicode mode.
Alt+U on Windows - it may be Control+U on Mac (I think).

Yes it is.