Variable Font Support

[Pauls]

also I see that Illustrator shows more axes than Indesign does so that must be a conscious decision on Adobes part. 

[MikeTO]

17 minutes ago, Pauls said:

The axes have a default value specified so we should reset to that 

Oh, I was thinking of a different type of reset. If I started with Bold and dragged two sliders, I'd want to reset to Bold and not to Medium, the default weight. But any sort of reset feature would be nice. Perhaps I was thinking differently because I've been trying some odd fonts. For example, Honk (Google Fonts link). If I start with Flower and mess around with the Shadow axis, I'd want to reset to Flower and not to Regular. This may not be a real world issue. 🙂 

Somebody in this or another thread today suggested removing the ticked values for the sliders so they could drag to any arbitrary value like Adobe. I think I agree but it would be great if there could be tick marks just for the named values. In a perfect world, the slider would snap to the named value ticks but still allow you to drag to other arbitrary values.

[Bryan Rieger]

3 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

I think I agree but it would be great if there could be tick marks just for the named values. In a perfect world, the slider would snap to the named value ticks but still allow you to drag to other arbitrary values.

+1 I think this is a great idea.

[Pauls]

I would just put the combo box with the built in styles on the axes panel - then you would just select the one you want and go from there

[walt.farrell]

I just played a bit with Roboto Flex Condensed Regular, and I noticed that:

1. Wwhen I click on the V (Variations) button, the weight is shown as 400.
2. If I drag the slider 1 click to the right, I get a weight of 420.
3. But when I then drag it 1 click to the left, I'm at 380, not 400.

I can only get back to the original by remembering it was 400 and typing that value into the box.

 

 

[Hangman]

7 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

• When I click on the V (Variations) button, the weight is shown as 400.
• If I drag the slider 1 click to the right, I get a weight of 420.
• But when I then drag it 1 click to the left, I'm at 380, not 400.

Possibly because the slider starts mid-way between the two tick marks, i.e., at 400 so moving right half a tick mark gives you 420, moving left by half a tick gives you 380?

[Pauls]

holding down the alt key on windows will allow smooth scrolling of the slider

[MikeTO]

And same on Mac with Option. I hadn't thought to try that. Thanks!

[Hangman]

9 minutes ago, Pauls said:

holding down the alt key on windows will allow smooth scrolling of the slider

So it does, I was convinced when I tried that earlier it didn't work!!

[walt.farrell]

20 minutes ago, Pauls said:

holding down the alt key on windows will allow smooth scrolling of the slider

It does, but I still couldn't get it to 400 without typing. I could get 401, or 397.

The other alternative was to use Undo, but that currently is affected by "AF-2845 - Variable fonts - Axes values not updating" so until you close and reopen the Variations dialog you're not sure whether it worked or exactly what it did.

 

[MikeTO]

I'd prefer to be able to see the axis values without having to open a popup because I can't tell that the attributes have changed when arrowing around. The only way to know that the attributes have changed when moving the cursor is to keep the Text Styles panel visible and keep an eye on the tiny, unformatted text in the Current Formatting field. With Adobe I can see the axis values change as I cursor around.

 

 

 

[MikeTO]

I know this isn't an Affinity issue, but it would be nice if axes like YTLC in fonts such as Nunito Sans were shown as "Lowercase Height" rather than YTLC. Perhaps Affinity could translate the common axis codes to make it easier for users?

[Affinityconfusesme]

I think I am going to pay A LITTLE more attention to the rmap tags now🤣

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/170391-variable-fonts-support/&do=findComment&comment=1201156

[Hangman]

6 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

I'd prefer to be able to see the axis values without having to open a popup because I can't tell that the attributes have changed when arrowing around.

To be honest I think Font Variations would be more useful as a studio panel in the same vein as the Typography panel...

[MikeTO]

The Text Styles panel's Current Formatting field doesn't show variant axis overrides. It works fine for No Style but not for text with a paragraph style.

 

 

 

 

[Seneca]

Another problem I've noticed, hopefully not duplicating another post.

Trying to update a Paragraph Style of text with a Variable Font applied resets the Variable Font to the original state rather than updating the Paragraph Style.

 

[Alfred]

21 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

I know this isn't an Affinity issue, but it would be nice if axes like YTLC in fonts such as Nunito Sans were shown as "Lowercase Height" rather than YTLC. Perhaps Affinity could translate the common axis codes to make it easier for users?

One could argue that it is actually an Affinity issue. The controls for OpenType ‘registered’ axes such as wght, wdth, and opsz are labelled with human-readable names — Weight, Width, and OpticalSize, respectively, for the above examples — so ‘foundry-defined’ axes (identified by uppercase letters) should be treated the same way, wherever practicable.

[MikeTO]

4 minutes ago, Alfred said:

One could argue that it is actually an Affinity issue

Agreed, but to be fair, Adobe doesn't translate it either.

[MikeTO]

It would be nice to be able to select text of differing attributes and change one axis without changing the other. I realize some axes change others so maybe it's not possible.

For example, if I format two paragraphs as Nunito Sans, one as Medium and one as ExtraBold, it would be nice to be able to change the width for both without changing their weight. Photoshop doesn't allow this - it hides the axis sliders when the values are mixed state. Affinity shows the axis sliders with the values of the first character in the range, just like the rest of the app, but it applies all of the axes each time an axis value is changed. It would be nice if it could apply just the changed axis if that's possible.

[MikeTO]

The Font Manager reports a font as missing if I change an axis. Using a named preset is okay, but changing an axis to an arbitrary value will result in the font being shown as missing in the Font Manager.

[Hangman]

3 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

The Font Manager reports a font as missing if I change an axis. Using a named preset is okay, but changing an axis to an arbitrary value will result in the font being shown as missing in the Font Manager.

Is this when opening a PDF with the embedded variable font? It will be missing if that's the case based on the unique filename allocated to the static instance of the font generated on export not matching the source filename for the font...

Preflight throws up no errors and Save as Package shows the fonts with a green tick...

[MikeTO]

The real-time rendering of changes is great and makes it easy to adjust your text. I was playing around with path text and changing axes and it was instantaneous. With the other guys, I had to drag a slider, let go and see the change, drag it some more, let go, etc.

 

 

[MikeTO]

22 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Is this when opening a PDF with the embedded variable font? It will be missing if that's the case based on the unique filename allocated to the static instance of the font generated on export not matching the source filename for the font...

Preflight throws up no errors and Save as Package shows the fonts with a green tick...

Just create a blank document, create a frame, choose a font such as Roboto Flex - Font Manager will say OK. Drag any slider - Font Manager will say it's missing. EDIT: but Preflight won't report it as missing.

Edited April 26 by MikeTO
Clarified Preflight

[R C-R]

This may be off topic but I thought I'd mention it here since it is related to variable fonts & maybe someone can help me understand what I am seeing in the current V2.4.2 retail apps.

Anyway, after installing the Shantell Sans-Variable Font to test it with the beta, I was curious to see how the retail apps handled it. I was surprised that unlike the typical multiple instances of "Regular" or whatever that users have been reporting when they have installed variable fonts, I got a list of its (preset?) styles & each of them works as expected:

Same with the 6 PlayFair Display (preset?) styles.

EDIT: I think what happened is even though I used Font Book to open just the PlayfairDisplay-VariableFont_wght.ttf & ShantellSans-VariableFont_BNCE,INFM,SPAC,wght.ttf files I downloaded from Google Fonts, when I clicked the "Install Font" button in Font Book, for some reason it installed the static fonts as well, but I can't be sure about that.

[Hangman]

12 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Just create a blank document, create a frame, choose a font such as Roboto Flex - Font Manager will say OK. Drag any slider - Font Manager will say it's missing.

I think (rightly or wrongly) this is because as soon as you adjust any of the variables the font variant no longer has the same internal name.

I think (again rightly or wrongly) it's the same as applying an adjustment to a variable font, exporting it to a PDF file and then opening the exported PDF file in one of the Affinity apps, the font is shown as missing because as soon as you make any edit to the font, depending on the changes made, the internal filename changes, e.g.,

Amstelvar-Roman[GRAD,XOPQ,XTRA,YOPQ,YTAS,YTDE,YTFI,YTLC,YTUC,wdth,wght,opsz].ttf

changes to...

Amstelvar_400wght_91.25wdth_35.2opsz_60GRAD_497.8XTRA_226.25XOPQ_79.35YOPQ_495YTLC_850YTUC_862.25YTAS_-337.1YTDE_885YTFI

and...

RobotoFlex-VariableFont_GRAD,XOPQ,XTRA,YOPQ,YTAS,YTDE,YTFI,YTLC,YTUC,opsz,slnt,wdth,wght.ttf

changes to...

RobotoFlex_12opsz_400wght_0GRAD_100wdth_0slnt_96XOPQ_79YOPQ_468XTRA_712YTUC_514YTLC_750YTAS_-203YTDE_738YTFI

so subsequently Font Manager sees this as a missing font in the same way it would see a static font as missing were it not installed...

Just my best speculation...