Compatibility of Publisher v2 with Fontstand in ToC

[Raul Ciannella]

Hi, 

I'm currently working on a book. I've rented a font (Pensum) from Fontstand and using it with Affinity Publisher v2 (Mac). Everything works fine with titles and body paragraph styles, but when I tried to use it with the Table of Content styles it doesn't recognize the font. The name is there but the result is weird and misplaced characters from another font. If I change to an installed font (say Palatino) everything is fine again. Just wanted to know if ti was a bug or I was doing something wrong.

 

Thank you, 

Raul.

[MikeTO]

You should be able to resolve this by editing the TOC text styles. The font family and weight may not be defined, it may show No Change, so just change that to exactly what you want.

Good luck.

[kenmcd]

1 hour ago, Raul Ciannella said:

I've rented a font (Pensum) from Fontstand and using it with Affinity Publisher v2 (Mac).

Which Pensum style did you assign to the TOC styles?

And which Pensum Pro styles do you have available?  All?  A few? (which specifically)
Does it show you a version for the fonts?  (the Fontstand site shows nothing)

The Pensum Pro family (v2.0) has an unusual configuration with the style names which may confuse Affinity.
The v1 fonts were also a bit odd, but in a different way.

If you have a sample document available, I could test here (have the fonts).

[Raul Ciannella]

I have Pensum Pro regular, Bold and Italic. I assigned the Pensum Pro regular to the TOC style. Now I'm not near the computer but I will send you a sample of the document as soon as possible.

[Raul Ciannella]

44 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

You should be able to resolve this by editing the TOC text styles. The font family and weight may not be defined, it may show No Change, so just change that to exactly what you want.

Good luck.

Yes I tried to edit the TOC style but to no avail. I'll try reset the font preferences and start again anew

[kenmcd]

23 minutes ago, Raul Ciannella said:

I have Pensum Pro regular, Bold and Italic.

If you can disable the Italic, you can try that.
Shut down Affinity first (so the font cache will be rebuilt when opened).
Then disable or un-install the Italic.
Then restart Affinity and see if the TOC is OK.
If the TOC is OK, then a name conflict is probably the issue.
If the TOC is not OK, then my guess was apparently wrong.

The Pensum Pro has "Regular Italic" in the Typographic Style name.
Usually this is just "Italic".
This may be confusing Affinity.
And both the Full Font Name and the PostScript Name fields also include "Regular" in them.
Also may confuse Affinity.
When Affinity gets confused, odd things happen.

I could test it locally with the local fonts with a test document.
And I could test-modify the Italic and see if the issue goes away.

[Raul Ciannella]

2 minutes ago, kenmcd said:

If you can disable the Italic, you can try that.
Shut down Affinity first (so the font cache will be rebuilt when opened).
Then disable or un-install the Italic.
Then restart Affinity and see if the TOC is OK.
If the TOC is OK, then a name conflict is probably the issue.
If the TOC is not OK, then my guess was apparently wrong.

The Pensum Pro has "Regular Italic" in the Typographic Style name.
Usually this is just "Italic".
This may be confusing Affinity.
And both the Full Font Name and the PostScript Name fields also include "Regular" in them.
Also may confuse Affinity.
When Affinity gets confused, odd things happen.

I could test it locally with the local fonts with a test document.
And I could test-modify the Italic and see if the issue goes away.

You're probably right. The thing is that now I've basically finished the lay-out and I'm afraid if I disable the italic it will mess with the body as well, which works fine at the moment 

[kenmcd]

Send us a test doc.
My thing is fonts.
@MikeTO is an expert in TOCs.

So together we will figure this out somehow.

[Raul Ciannella]

23 hours ago, kenmcd said:

Send us a test doc.
My thing is fonts.
@MikeTO is an expert in TOCs.

So together we will figure this out somehow.

Here's test doc. 

tripa_farris_test_TOC.afpub

[Old Bruce]

23 hours ago, kenmcd said:

My thing is fonts.

thing = expertise

I know quite a bit about fonts. Compared to you I know next to nothing about fonts.

 

[kenmcd]

The good news is it looks like you have the OpenType feature Scientific Inferiors (sinf) enabled on the Index text.
So turn that Off in the Typography Panel and you should be fine.

 

Pensum Pro is an advanced text font - with lots of OpenType features.
They linked both Subscripts (subs) and Scientific Inferiors (sinf) to a full set of figures, currency signs, lowercase a-z, punctuation, dashes, etc. (61 glyphs).

The bad news is - the names are even more of a mess than I initially thought (looked closer today).
And if you are using the OTF fonts, they could be even worse (more name fields).

I only installed the Regular, RegularItalic, and Bold.
Messed-up names fields can result in the wrong fonts in a PDF.
So test Export to PDF now.
If you have any issues, please come back.

 

[Raul Ciannella]

13 minutes ago, kenmcd said:

The good news is it looks like you have the OpenType feature Scientific Inferiors (sinf) enabled on the Index text.
So turn that Off in the Typography Panel and you should be fine.

 

Pensum Pro is an advanced text font - with lots of OpenType features.
They linked both Subscripts (subs) and Scientific Inferiors (sinf) to a full set of figures, currency signs, lowercase a-z, punctuation, dashes, etc. (61 glyphs).

The bad news is - the names are even more of a mess than I initially thought (looked closer today).
And if you are using the OTF fonts, they could be even worse (more name fields).

I only installed the Regular, RegularItalic, and Bold.
Messed-up names fields can result in the wrong fonts in a PDF.
So test Export to PDF now.
If you have any issues, please come back.

 

That's great, thank you. I don't know how the scientific inferior got enabled at all! But you're right about the fonts, Affinity recognizes Pensum Pro as regular/bold as one font and the italic as a separate font. I did some pdf export tests and they look ok. I really like the font, pity it causes all those issues.

Thanks again, if something comes up I'll let you know.

[kenmcd]

24 minutes ago, Raul Ciannella said:

Affinity recognizes Pensum Pro as regular/bold as one font and the italic as a separate font. I did some pdf export tests and they look ok. I really like the font, pity it causes all those issues.

If you add any more fonts from that family, check your PDF export again.
The BoldItalic will probably be in the same family as the RegularItalic.
And the Bold and Italic buttons may not work as expected.
So always check your PDF output.

They are really nice fonts... except for the name issues.
Appears the developer only focuses on ID and Adopey (and only tests there).
If I was going to use them in something important, I would fix them first.

So just keep an eye on it. Good luck!

 

[Raul Ciannella]

Hi everybody.

Not related to the previous topic, but regarding the same file. I'm doing a galley proofreading of the book and noticed that Publisher often leaves isolated letters (or letters with an apostrophe, hanging at the end of the line (as in the example) which is not really right. Is there an automatic way I can tell Publisher not to separate the letter+apostrophe with the following word? I created a "do not divide" character style but still I have to go word by word.

Thank you.

 

 

[MikeTO]

I'm unable to duplicate this. Could you please share a test document? I assume you have Character > Language > Spelling set to Català.

How are you typing that apostrophe?

Could you select the apostrophe and press Ctrl+U and then tell us what unicode value it is?

Here's a document I created which breaks properly with language set to Català.

test-catala.afpub

Good luck

[Raul Ciannella]

41 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

I'm unable to duplicate this. Could you please share a test document? I assume you have Character > Language > Spelling set to Català.

How are you typing that apostrophe?

Could you select the apostrophe and press Ctrl+U and then tell us what unicode value it is?

Here's a document I created which breaks properly with language set to Català.

test-catala.afpub

Good luck

OK, I modified a little your doc and placed the apostrophe example in the first line.

test-catala.afpub

[Raul Ciannella]

Unicode for the apostrophe is U+2019

[MikeTO]

25 minutes ago, Raul Ciannella said:

OK, I modified a little your doc and placed the apostrophe example in the first line.

There's a space after that apostrophe - choose Text > Show Special Characters and you'll see a blue dot for the space. I assume that was just a mistake and a result of cut and paste since Affinity sometimes adds spaces where you don't want them.

But removing the space doesn't fix the problem with your document. It appears to be a bug in the hyphenation code - disabling hyphenation will fix it. The best workaround I can offer you is to set Minimum Prefix to 3 which many people prefer anyway. That would avoid the bug.

For Serif, here's a test document demonstrating the bug. You'll need to the Catalan hyphenation dictionary for this one.

test.afpub

[Raul Ciannella]

Checked, thank you. It's a real bummer. I'll try the workaround you suggest and then re-check manually.

Should we communicate the bug?

Thanks again.

 

Raul

[MikeTO]

I think it's the same bug I reported just recently so I've added it to that thread and asked Serif.

 

[Raul Ciannella]

3 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I think it's the same bug I reported just recently so I've added it to that thread and asked Serif.

 

Thank you. It might also be caused by Affinity thinking the apostrophe is just another valid character to apply hyphenation to. The fact the problem is solved by changing prefix from 2 to 3 characters might imply that. Moreover, languages like Catalan have special phonetic graphic sign like the "l·l" (a double L with a dot in the middle, as in the word "il·lustració"). When hyphened, Affinity will wrongly separate the "l·" from the other "l". It could also be a fault in the Catalan Hyphenation dictionary.