Variable Font Support

[Alfred]

20 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I wasn’t looking in the right place! You need to go to ‘Text Studio > Character > Variations’.

Honk ‘Shadow Length’ (SHLN) doesn’t work. It should be able to do what you see in the GIF near the top of this page (see the latter part of the animation):

 

[Alfred]

9 minutes ago, R C-R said:

FWIW, this is where it is shown in the first post by @Ash  after the "Variation settings on iPad." text.

Thanks. I probably saw it there when I first visited the thread, but that was way too long ago now!

[MikeTO]

3 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Honk ‘Shadow Length’ (SHLN) doesn’t work. It should be able to do this (see the latter part of the animation):

FWIW it doesn't do that in Photoshop either

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I thought I'd play around with the new Variable Font support using Publisher 2.5.0.2415 on my iPad.

I downloaded Roboto Flex from Google Fonts, asked iFont to install it, and got this:

Are there any hints for how to install Variable fonts some other way that is supported?

Walt, I have another problem on my iPad Pro M1 - I was eager to test the Variable Font functionality, but, I did the mistake to install the V-fonts before I started the new Publisher beta (2.50) - all of a sudden the fontmenu in Publisher is almost useless, it scrolls so slow slow, and lagging heavily…

Now I can’t if it’s a bug in latest beta for iPad, or, some fonts are interfering with something…

How is it on your iPad? Is the fontmenu OK?

[Frozen Death Knight]

2 hours ago, Alfred said:

You’re welcome! And yes, they’re all free.

https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq

 

Anyone else having the issue of the Beta not importing all the installed fonts from Google? I now have nearly 2000s fonts installed thanks to the Github version of those fonts, but they only appear in retail. Do I need to reset the Beta to make things work?

[Hangman]

7 hours ago, Alfred said:

Honk ‘Shadow Length’ (SHLN) doesn’t work. It should be able to do what you see in the GIF near the top of this page (see the latter part of the animation):

Font Book advises against installing Honk owing to an issue with the 'glyl' table structure but that aside, it is a 'colour' font which isn't supported by the Affinity apps so that may have something to do with it but that's just a guess...

[adrien_b]

Hello,

A major issue I have encountered is that Affinity does not respect or take into account the 'Required Variation Alternates' feature ('rvrn'). It is mandatory and should not be exposed in the UI, but it allows type designers to specify alternates to use for specific glyphs between two values of an axis. (OpenType reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/features_pt#rvrn)

I have designed a font that has a variation alternate for dollar and cent. Several variable fonts use this type of alternate.

Affinity's behaviour:

 

The normal behaviour :

 

 

[walt.farrell]

10 hours ago, AffinityMakesMeWonder said:

Walt, I have another problem on my iPad Pro M1 - I was eager to test the Variable Font functionality, but, I did the mistake to install the V-fonts before I started the new Publisher beta (2.50) - all of a sudden the fontmenu in Publisher is almost useless, it scrolls so slow slow, and lagging heavily…

Now I can’t if it’s a bug in latest beta for iPad, or, some fonts are interfering with something…

How is it on your iPad? Is the fontmenu OK?

I haven't noticed any issues, but I haven't checked how many fonts I have installed.

How many do you have?

There was an issue with having more than 80 fonts installed, I think, and I don't recall if that was fixed yet.

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

I now have nearly 2000s fonts installed thanks to the Github version of those fonts, but they only appear in retail. Do I need to reset the Beta to make things work?

How did you install them? If you installed them to your iPad for general use using some font manager then I would expect them to show up in the Beta, too. But if you installed them using Settings in the Retail Affinity app, then they're installed just for that app. And as far as I know, in that case, you would have to specifically install them into the Beta app, too, as the Retail and Beta don't share settings.

[StuartRc]

Must admit I had to do a bit of reading up on this subject!😀..I am sure it is going to be a fantastic new feature and looking forward to using it!

1. Many of the Variable Fonts appear to exhibit 1 or 2 axes so tried to download ones that have 3 or more variable options 
2. Mixed Fonts could require access to style to get Variable to be recognised
3. Had 1 Crash while scrolling or selecting font (bit vague but did not observe exactly what was going on!) (Crash report attached)
4. Like the idea of a reset to default values. Would be practically impossible to control with so many options and many fonts installed. 
5. Think might uninstall non VFonts of the same name in future!
 

Testing W.I.P Installed
Source Serif 4 (weight 400 | optical Size 20) Y
Geologica(weight 400 | Cursive 0 | Sharpness 0 | Slant 0) Cursive not sure what it does! shows on list + Slant and sharpness missing
Roboto Flex others testing
Saira (Weight 100 | Width 100) Y
Source Serif 4 (weight 400 | optical Size 20) Y
Noto Sans Display (weight 400 | Width 100)
Roboto Serif (Weight 100 | Width 100 Optical Size 20 | Grad 0 )  Grad no show
Advent Pro (Weight 400 | Width 100) y
Literata (weight 400 | optical Size 12) y
Playfair (weight 300 | optical Size 5 | Width 112.5) y
Pathway Extreme (weight 100 | optical Size 8 | Width 100)
Recursive ( Monospace | Casual |weight 400 | Cursive 0 Slant 0) 

Google Popular
Open Sans (Weight 400 | Width 100) had to go into font and select style to get this to display
Montserrat (Weight 100)
Inter (Weight 400 | Slant 0)
Roboto Condensed (weight 400)
Roboto Mono (Weight 400)
Oswald (Weight 400)
Noto Sans (Weight 400 | Width 100)
Raleway (Weight 100)
Nunito Sans (weight 100 | optical Size 12 | Width 200 | YTLC 500 )
Playfair Display (Weight 400)
DM Sans (weight 400 | optical Size 9) 
Noto Serif (Weight 400 | Width 100)

Couple of No Shows on the Variable lists looks ok so far (Added these to favs so can easily source them)

Noto Sans Display has 72 variants

Google Popular
Open Sans (Weight 400 | Width 100)
Montserrat (Weight 100)
Inter (Weight 400 | Slant 0)
Roboto Condensed (weight 400)
Roboto Mono (Weight 400)
Oswald (Weight 400)
Noto Sans (Weight 400 | Width 100)
Raleway (Weight 100)
Nunito Sans (weight 100 | optical Size 12 | Width 200 | YTLC 500 )
Playfair Display (Weight 400)
DM Sans (weight 400 | optical Size 9) 
Noto Serif (Weight 400 | Width 100)

 

On my travels in the internet I came across a few tools and featured information that is useful:

1. Axis definitions: https://fonts.google.com/variablefonts#axis-definitions

This helped interpret the abbreviations

2.Sort of Font analyser: https://wakamaifondue.com/ 
so you can see font parameters by dragging the font onto target

3. Font Testers:
Loads but I liked these 
https://v-fonts.com/
https://www.axis-praxis.org/specimens/__DEFAULT__
https://play.typedetail.com/

4. Google Font links
Google Fonts with 365 of 1623 families

https://fonts.google.com/?vfonly=true

https://fonts.google.com/?vfonly=true&sort=popularity

https://fonts.google.com/?vfonly=true&sort=date

5 V-Font Links
https://v-fonts.com/

https://v-fonts.com/licenses/

https://v-fonts.com/licenses/free-for-commercial-use

https://v-fonts.com/licenses/bundled

6. Some Stuff with free stuff!
https://uncut.wtf/
https://www.fontshare.com/
https://anrt-nancy.fr/en/fonts
https://www.typotheque.com/
https://typotheque.luuse.fun/
https://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
https://www.losttype.com/
https://www.tunera.xyz/
https://www.design-research.be/by-womxn/
https://fontesk.com/tag/variable/

 

Crash while editing VFonts.zip

[earl_grey]

It's very useful! I think now 'Roboto Flex' can replace many of the fonts in my work.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, StuartRc said:

Geologica(weight 400 | Cursive 0 | Sharpness 0 | Slant 0) Cursive not sure what it does! shows on list

The Cursive axis has a range of 0 to 1 for me on my Mac but it doesn't seem to do anything. Also, although Font Book validates Geologica without problems & the styles seems to work as expected in the betas, the style names are a bit weird in that in Font Book there are ten different styles just named "Thin" in the second column. Each does have a different "Full Name" in FB, for instance "Geologica Thin Regular" or "Geologica Thin SemiBold Italic" but in Affinity the short names are the only ones that show up & one of the thins is missing. Below is the Font Style popup in APub beta, showing 9 "Thin" styles, but I can't tell which of the ten FB ones is missing.

Anyway, for anyone that wants to play with those styles, attached is a small Geologica.afpub file with each of these 17 styles in small art text layers, in the same order as in the popup.

[StuartRc]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

The Cursive axis has a range of 0 to 1 for me on my Mac but it doesn't seem to do anything. Also, although Font Book validates Geologica without problems & the styles seems to work as expected in the betas, the style names are a bit weird in that in Font Book there are ten different styles just named "Thin" in the second column. Each does have a different "Full Name" in FB, for instance "Geologica Thin Regular" or "Geologica Thin SemiBold Italic" but in Affinity the short names are the only ones that show up & one of the thins is missing. Below is the Font Style popup in APub beta, showing 9 "Thin" styles, but I can't tell which of the ten FB ones is missing.

Anyway, for anyone that wants to play with those styles, attached is a small Geologica.afpub file with each of these 17 styles in small art text layers, in the same order as in the popup.

Interesting! I think I might just uninstall something like open sans and just re-install the variable version to see if clears mixing
The Cursive range is 0-1 for me (the slider works fine also
I checked the meaning =Uncle Google says “Cursive” (CRSV in CSS) is an axis found in some variable fonts that controls the substitution of cursive forms. “Off” (0) maintains upright letterforms such as the double-storey "a" and "g," “auto” (0.5) allows for cursive substitution of cursive forms when combined with the slant axis, and “on” (1) asserts cursive forms even in upright text with a slant of 0. whatever that means!
 

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, StuartRc said:

and “on” (1) asserts cursive forms even in upright text with a slant of 0. whatever that means!

It should mean that you get the shape the letter would have were it Italic, but upright rather than slanted as it would be in normal Italic text.

[Frozen Death Knight]

6 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

How did you install them? If you installed them to your iPad for general use using some font manager then I would expect them to show up in the Beta, too. But if you installed them using Settings in the Retail Affinity app, then they're installed just for that app. And as far as I know, in that case, you would have to specifically install them into the Beta app, too, as the Retail and Beta don't share settings.

I only use Windows. I installed them the same I do with every font by installing to the OS, which is why it works as normal for the retail version. None of the installed fonts or favourited fonts appear in the Beta however.

[StuartRc]

13 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

It should mean that you get the shape the letter would have were it Italic, but upright rather than slanted as it would be in normal Italic text.

I was just looking into it! just to see if I can get the slider to play! 
just put the font back through Wakamai Fondue...it should have Slant and sharpness as variables but do not display

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

I only use Windows. I installed them the same I do with every font by installing to the OS

Sorry; I thought your post that I replied to was in the context of the iPad, not Windows.

If you're on Windows I would expect all the fonts you installed to be available to both the retail and beta versions, as long as you're using the same Windows user account or you installed them for all users.

[R C-R]

32 minutes ago, StuartRc said:

I was just looking into it! just to see if I can get the slider to play!

If you can get it to do anything can you post an example file with some text where it has a visible effect? I'm just guessing but from what you posted & Walt said, only certain characters will show anything. Does that seem right?

Also, do you or anybody else see the same 17 Geologica font styles in the popup and/or 18 in Font Book or whatever other font manager you use?

From all those different 'thin' style names I have to agree with whoever suggested more descriptive names in Affinity (like the full or Postscript names Font Book shows) would be useful. Since some can be fairly long (like Geologica Thin ExtraBold Italic", it seems like the idea of a separate window or studio is a good one.

[MikeTO]

I can't get the Cursive axis to work in Geologica, either. Values from 0 to 0.49 should give you a 2-storey "a" while values from 0.5 to 1 should give you a 1-storey "a". "g" should also change.

It works in Photoshop but not in Affinity. Google font tester: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Geologica/tester

[Hangman]

4 hours ago, StuartRc said:

Geologica(weight 400 | Cursive 0 | Sharpness 0 | Slant 0) Cursive not sure what it does! shows on list + Slant and sharpness missing

The only thing it does is change the font's stylistic set, which only appears to impact the lowercase 'a' and 'g'...

You can see the impact of this when selecting the 'Cursive Shapes' option in the Typography panel. However, I assume this should activate automatically when adjusting the Font Variation Cursive Slider to a value of 0.5 or above, so to me, this looks like a bug...

[StuartRc]

12 minutes ago, Hangman said:

The only thing it does is change the font's stylistic set, which only appears to impact the lowercase 'a' and 'g'...

You can see the impact of this when selecting the 'Cursive Shapes' option in the Typography panel. However, I assume this should activate automatically when adjusting the Font Variation Cursive Slider to a value of 0.5 or above, so to me, this looks like a bug...

 

Yep could be 😀...I can see the 'a' change using the checkbox on Typography panel but very little else....! I tried adding characters from the glyph panel but that had no effect. Still there are 2 variable options missing on the font...pity I like the font!

[R C-R]

21 minutes ago, Hangman said:

The only thing it does is change the font's stylistic set, which only appears to impact the lowercase 'a' and 'g'...

I'm not seeing any change for a or g when I change the Cursive slider in the variations popup. (The sliders do not update until I close & reopen the popup, but Cursive is the only one that does nothing visible for words like "agriculture.") agriculture.afpub

[Hangman]

1 minute ago, StuartRc said:

Yep could be 😀...I can see the 'a' change using the checkbox on Typography panel but very little else...

Hopefully the lowercase 'g' as well...

2 minutes ago, StuartRc said:

I tried adding characters from the glyph panel but that had no effect.

I guess that depends on which glyphs have stylistic alternatives...

3 minutes ago, StuartRc said:

Still there are 2 variable options missing on the font...pity I like the font!

Cursive is the only one that's not working correctly using the Font Variation sliders, Sharpness works correctly...

[Hangman]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I'm not seeing any change for a or g when I change the Cursive slider in the variations popup. (The sliders do not update until I close & reopen the popup, but Cursive is the only one that does nothing visible for words like "agriculture."

That is what appears to be the bug, i.e., using the cursive slider in the Font Variations panel fails, you only see the effect when changing the stylistic set to cursive in the Typography panel...

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Cursive is the only one that's not working correctly using the Font Variation sliders, Sharpness works correctly...

That is what I see, as well ... other than the slider field values not updating.