Variable Font Support

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

4 hours ago, A_B_C said:

FWIW — Last time I tested (by the end of last year), FontCreator does not work in CrossOver.

I installed FontCreator v.15.x on my MacBook Pro M1 this evening, and, it works well for what I will do in it...

Only thing that bugs is the main font preview - but all the rest in the app working well!

Can edit fonts etc ect - installed thru CrossOver Mac v.24.x.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

4 hours ago, R C-R said:

If you mean in FontGoggles & have installed it (the FontGoggles.dmg is here), you should see on the left in the Variations tab, a "Show hidden axes" button. That will display all 13 axes, including the 8 normally hidden 'parametric' ones.

If you mean in any of the Affinity V5 betas, then for reasons as yet not completely understood some Mac users see only 5, some sometimes but not always see 13, & I (alone?) always see all 13.

Now I have solved the "problem" with hidden Axes on Variable Fonts...

Downloaded FontCreator in demomode (non restricted), loaded Roboto Flex, uncheck the hidden Axes and then resave the .TTF-file...

Can be nice in the future if I/we find several other fonts that is restricted to only a few axes...

 

 

[gw_westdale]

On 4/26/2024 at 1:12 PM, Bryan Rieger said:

Yes, but it's not flagging it as an incorrect font regardless. Also, as folks move their existing documents from static fonts to variable fonts, no doubt this 'user error in configuration' will come into consideration.

I find myself a little confused in having  Cormorant (eg)  with 'Light'  twice in the drop down menu when both forms are installed - only by selecting can I see if a particular Light is actually the variable one, when the 'v' button lights up.  Could Affinity perhaps put  Light* in the menu (or just * ) to avoid this confusion?
I am not a heavyweight professional user but I make leaflets for politics, festivals and so on and don't want to cause them grief!

Edit : for advice.....
I notice also that some fonts that occur in both forms ( Google Cinzel for instance ) have naming that makes it impossible to have both forms under Windows - installing either asks if the regular form is to be overwritten on install.   Is this 'just how it is' and everyone has to live with it? 
I don't really want to update FontCreator just to change names as designing variable fonts is out of my league.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

One question again when we use Variable Fonts - there’s sometimes an Max/Min on Axes, why?

If I want get a lower or higher value on a specific axes, is that also an restriction that can be unlocked by any Font Manager app?

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, gw_westdale said:

I find myself a little confused in having  Cormorant (eg)  with 'Light'  twice in the drop down menu when both forms are installed - only by selecting can I see if a particular Light is actually the variable one, when the 'v' button lights up.  Could Affinity perhaps put  Light* in the menu (or just * ) to avoid this confusion?

You find yourself confused because it is inherently confusing! I think it would be wise to avoid having the static and variable versions of a font family installed at the same time, in much the same way as it’s best to avoid having TTF and OTF versions installed concurrently.

[Affinity-Inspiration]

2 minutes ago, Alfred said:

You find yourself confused because it is inherently confusing! I think it would be wise to avoid having the static and variable versions of a font family installed at the same time, in much the same way as it’s best to avoid having TTF and OTF versions installed concurrently.

Good point. I too need to seriously clean up my font book.

[Alfred]

29 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeWonder said:

One question again when we use Variable Fonts - there’s sometimes an Max/Min on Axes, why?

Probably because some effects don’t work well outside of a particular range of values (in much the same way as some static fonts are unsuitable for use at very small or very large sizes).

31 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeWonder said:

If I want get a lower or higher value on a specific axes, is that also an restriction that can be unlocked by any Font Manager app?

A font manager deals with font activation. I presume you mean a font editor app.

You should be able to tweak pretty much anything in an open source font, but there will usually be good reasons (see above) why the font designer has placed restrictions on the font as originally published.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

23 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Probably because some effects don’t work well outside of a particular range of values (in much the same way as some static fonts are unsuitable for use at very small or very large sizes).

A font manager deals with font activation. I presume you mean a font editor app.

You should be able to tweak pretty much anything in an open source font, but there will usually be good reasons (see above) why the font designer has placed restrictions on the font as originally published.

Your last sentence doesn't make sense - the restrictions on Roboto Flex is NOT a good example when the "hidden" axes on that font is very useful (for me)...

I can't see that all restrictions is good from a users perspective...

[Alfred]

52 minutes ago, Alfred said:

You should be able to tweak pretty much anything in an open source font, but there will usually be good reasons (see above) why the font designer has placed restrictions on the font as originally published.

 

27 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeWonder said:

Your last sentence doesn't make sense - the restrictions on Roboto Flex is NOT a good example when the "hidden" axes on that font is very useful (for me)...

I can't see that all restrictions is good from a users perspective...

Well, I did make a point of saying “usually”! 

[kenmcd]

3 hours ago, AffinityMakesMeWonder said:

One question again when we use Variable Fonts - there’s sometimes an Max/Min on Axes, why?

If I want get a lower or higher value on a specific axes, is that also an restriction that can be unlocked by any Font Manager app?

No. You do not want to do that.

Those axis Min/Max settings correspond to the masters at those points. When moving between the Min/Max you are interpolating between those masters. Moving outside of that Min/Max you are now extrapolating - and chaos ensues.

Some font designs will not look too bad with a little extrapolation, but all will eventually break down. Characters will turn inside-out, serifs will distort, counter spaces will fill-up - its a mess.

Yes, you can change this in a font editor. The masters are assigned a point in the design space, and you can change the axis min/Max to be outside of this (extrapolating), but it just makes a mess.

It can actually be kinda humorous watching characters turn inside-out. Similar things happen when the masters are not matched correctly and you have interpolation errors.

So, not a viable option.

 

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

1 hour ago, kenmcd said:

No. You do not want to do that.

Those axis Min/Max settings correspond to the masters at those points. When moving between the Min/Max you are interpolating between those masters. Moving outside of that Min/Max you are now extrapolating - and chaos ensues.

Some font designs will not look too bad with a little extrapolation, but all will eventually break down. Characters will turn inside-out, serifs will distort, counter spaces will fill-up - its a mess.

Yes, you can change this in a font editor. The masters are assigned a point in the design space, and you can change the axis min/Max to be outside of this (extrapolating), but it just makes a mess.

It can actually be kinda humorous watching characters turn inside-out. Similar things happen when the masters are not matched correctly and you have interpolation errors.

So, not a viable option.

 

Thanks for a detailed view of the problem when unlocking the min/max axes values on Variable Fonts!

Make sense…

But, in the same time, I’m curious of this results of “mess" - I will take a few favorite fonts and unlock, just for fun…

I’m glad that I can run FontCreator on my Macbook Pro M1 - the only font-app I’ve found that can resave font after parameter changes.

[Affinityconfusesme]

Some feedback. Is there a way that they can show if a font is variable or static in either the character panel or the font dropdown list? Also, an interesting behavior is that you can have two different fonts, one in the font dropdown list and the other in the context toolbar, which can be different. Because of this issue, I sometimes have difficulty choosing a font. I am curious if that is expected behavior or not.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

7 minutes ago, Affinityconfusesme said:

Some feedback. Is there a way that they can show if a font is variable or static in either the character panel or the font dropdown list? Also, an interesting behavior is that you can have two different fonts, one in the font dropdown list and the other in the context toolbar, which can be different. Because of this issue, I sometimes have difficulty choosing a font. I am curious if that is expected behavior or not.

Do you talking about iPad version now of v.2.50b2?

[Hangman]

20 minutes ago, Affinityconfusesme said:

Some feedback. Is there a way that they can show if a font is variable or static in either the character panel or the font dropdown list?

Webflow does just that by putting a bullet point style dot against the Variable Font Name and automatically grouping variable fonts so they all appear together in the font list, so you effectively have all static fonts in one section of the list and all variables in their own section which is nice because you have instant access to all your variable fonts without the need to scroll through what can be a long list of fonts trying to locate the variable font and you can instantly identify which fonts are the variable ones…

Something similar could be a nice addition to the Affinity apps perhaps 🤔

[Affinityconfusesme]

@AffinityMakesMeWonder Just look at my signature...

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

2 hours ago, Affinityconfusesme said:

@AffinityMakesMeWonder Just look at my signature...

No.

I’m away from home and can’t see your signature in iCabMobile on iPhone…

Wouldn’t be better if you tells us right away then just get us some ironic answer?

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, AffinityMakesMeWonder said:

I’m away from home and can’t see your signature in iCabMobile on iPhone…

Wouldn’t be better if you tells us right away then just get us some ironic answer?

It might expedite things a bit if you had mentioned earlier that you were using an iPhone browser rather than a desktop one....

[Patrick Connor]

22 hours ago, AffinityMakesMeWonder said:

Downloaded FontCreator in demomode (non restricted), loaded Roboto Flex, uncheck the hidden Axes and then resave the .TTF-file...

Don't do this, you shouldn't be editing other people's fonts, least of all if you have to do this every time there's a font update. We should provide a technical solution within the software for those who want to see all axes. 

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

It might expedite things a bit if you had mentioned earlier that you were using an iPhone browser rather than a desktop one....

OK. But, who brings every gadgets on a family birthday party far away??

Better to answer the question than argue about my lack of signature reading...

[Affinityconfusesme]

Hi Patrick,

RC-R could see all the axes for Roboto and is currently logged to not. It would be nice to be able to see all axes though.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

Just now, Affinityconfusesme said:

Hi Patrick,

RC-R could see all the axes for Roboto and is currently logged to not. It would be nice to be able to see all axes though.

I'm with you - if it's more axes to use, I wanna use them. If the Author wants to hidden them, remove them totally from the font file... Easy.

[walt.farrell]

24 minutes ago, AffinityMakesMeWonder said:

I'm with you - if it's more axes to use, I wanna use them. If the Author wants to hidden them, remove them totally from the font file... Easy.

As Ash mentioned in the first post, often the hidden axes are used internally within the font, and are changed based on the changes you make to the visible axes. If they were reminded completely the font simply wouldn't work as it was designed to.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

As Ash mentioned in the first post, often the hidden axes are used internally within the font, and are changed based on the changes you make to the visible axes. If they were reminded completely the font simply wouldn't work as it was designed to.

When we talk about Roboto Flexi 13 different axes, I have hard to believe that the five axes presented can achieve what the eight hidden axes can achieve - I really want the hidden axes IF they can change the fonts looking to be useful, if not, they can be hidden...

Downloaded a font yesterday that had 15 axes to play with - everyone of them really nice. 

[R C-R]

Just now, AffinityMakesMeWonder said:

Downloaded a font yesterday that had 15 axes to play with - everyone of them really nice. 

What font?

[kenmcd]

The hidden axis flag is not meant to never expose that axis.
It is a recommendation based on certain assumptions.

Quote

The HIDDEN_AXIS flag is provided to indicate a recommendation by the font developer that the axis not be exposed directly to end users in application user interfaces. Reasons for setting this flag might include that the axis is intended only for programmatic interaction, or is intended for font-internal use by the font developer.

Neither of these is true for the parametric axes in Roboto Flex when used in Affinity.

Additionally, the 20 pre-defined named instances in Roboto Flex do not even touch the 8 parametric axes at all - all of them remain at the axis default.

So basically without being able to see them, they are not used at all.

Being able to set the x-height is a very useful variable feature.
Being able to set the ascender height is a very useful variable feature.
Being able to set the descender depth is a very useful variable feature.
These are variable axes that make Roboto Flex an advanced variable font.
And makes it very useful to knowledgeable advanced users who know how to use it.

Quote

If this flag is not set, then applications may expose the given axis in a default user interface or, based on the nature of the axis, may choose to expose it in an advanced-user interface.

Which is what we are asking for - an advanced-user interface.
These are advanced axes.
Not all users would ever want to change them.
But advanced users will welcome the ability to use these axes.

Enable knowledgeable advanced users to do advanced stuff.

Based on the hints from the Affinity folks here, it sounds like they are working on adding this.
Which is welcome news.
So it appears they listened to the requests, and everyone just needs to be patient.

 

Side note: Roboto Flex is an OFL font so you can modify it as you wish.
And Google Fonts even encourages people to do so when they want some changes.
Whether you should be messing with an advance font like that is another issue.
Plus after Affinity adds the option to see all the axes, there will be no need.