Publisher 2 double t (tt) error on exporting to PDF

[Dave_I4W]

Currently using Publisher v2.4.2 on Windows 10.

When exporting any text from publisher to PDF that contains a double t (eg the word battle) the tt is replaced by a strange symbol 􀀓.

The tt appears as tt in the PDF. It is only when you copy the text from the PDF to another application (eg Notepad) that the symbol becomes apparent. eg battle becomes ba􀀓le.

[walt.farrell]

That is a ligature, which is enabled (by default) in the Affinity applications. You can either:

1. Turn off the Standard Ligature setting in the Typography section of the Character panel or the Text Style:
   
   (make sure you have the text selected when you do that); or
    
2. When Exporting the PDF, disable font subsetting:
   

[Dave_I4W]

OK, thanks, I'll try that. I always disable subset fonts anyway, so that did not cause the issue.

A pain that I have to find and turn off ligatures for all occurrences of "tt" in my 300-page document - there will be hundreds of them. Surely this should not be enabled by default.

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, Dave_I4W said:

A pain that I have to find and turn off ligatures for all occurrences of "tt" in my 300-page document - there will be hundreds of them.

If you're using Text Styles, just change the setting there.

If not, just select all the text (easy if you have Text Frames linked together; just click in one and Ctrl/Cmd+A) and change it in the Character panel.

If you had Font Subsetting disabled I'm surprised you had the problem, but perhaps it depends on the font or the application, or maybe there's something else going on I haven't thought of.

[kenmcd]

18 minutes ago, Dave_I4W said:

Surely this should not be enabled by default.

Standard Ligatures are supposed to be enabled by default.

What is somewhat unusual is that the font designer included the tt ligature in Standard Ligatures.

What font is it?

 

[Dave_I4W]

It's Palatino Linotype.

[Dave_I4W]

I've fixed the problem now, but it took time as each page is a table. I had to select each of the 300 tables, one by one, then turn off ligatures. It would have been so much easier if ligatures were disabled by default. Is there a way to do this in the settings?

I noticed while doing it that there are other ligatures in this font, including ff and sometimes when using apostrophes such as in o'clock.

Maybe I need a better font, but this is the 23rd annual publication of this document and it's become traditional. Ligatures were never a problem when I used PagePlus.

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, Dave_I4W said:

It would have been so much easier if ligatures were disabled by default. Is there a way to do this in the settings?

As @kenmcd mentioned, Standard Ligatures are supposed to be enabled by default, as specified in the standards. There is no way to disable this in the Settings.

Using a Text Style would allow you to set it once, though.

19 minutes ago, Dave_I4W said:

Maybe I need a better font, but this is the 23rd annual publication of this document and it's become traditional. Ligatures were never a problem when I used PagePlus

I think there may be a bug in the way that the Affinity applications construct one of the glyph tables (ToUnicode?) in the PDF files, but that is usually fixed by not subletting fonts. Since you say you don't subset fonts, unless you just made a mistake this time you may have some other issue.

[kenmcd]

8 hours ago, Dave_I4W said:

Maybe I need a better font, but this is the 23rd annual publication of this document and it's become traditional. Ligatures were never a problem when I used PagePlus.

I did not mean to imply the font needs to be better - that is a very nice font.
It is actually better than many of the commercial versions in some cases.

The problem is in Affinity.
As @walt.farrell mentioned above the ToUnicode table is incorrect.
When you copy-and-paste text from a PDF, this is where the Unicode character codes come from, so when you paste that text you get the correct character.

With ligatures there are actually codes there for both/all characters (mostly).
This is where Affinity gets it wrong.

These are the ligatures available in Palatino Linotype:

I made a document in LibreOffice and in Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 on Windows 10.
The image above is from the LibreOffice PDF.
The Affinity Publisher PDF looks the same, but the underlying codes are not.

Copy-and-Paste from the LibreOffice PDF gave me this:

Palatino Linotype – Ligatures
Standard Ligatures (liga)
ffb ffh ffi ffk ffl fb ff fh fi fj fk fl tt tz  >
ffb ffh ffi ffk ffl fb ff fh fi fj fk fl tt tz
Discretionary Ligatures (dlig)
IJ Qu SS Th ck ij c/o ?! !? !!  >
IJ Qu SS Th ck ij c/o ?! ?! !!
Historical Ligatures (hlig)
ct sp st ſſi ſſl ſb ſh ſi ſk ſl ſt ſſ   >
ct sp st ſſi ſſl ſb ſh ſi ſk ſl ſt ſſ

Which is exactly what I would expect.

Copy-and-Paste from the Affinity Publisher PDF (with font sub-setting Off) gave me this:

Palatino Linotype – Ligatures
Standard Ligatures (liga)
ffb ffh ffi ffk ffl fb ff fh fi fj fk fl tt tz  >  
� � ffi � ffl � ff � fi � � fl � �
Discretionary Ligatures (dlig)
IJ Qu SS Th ck ij c/o ?! !? !!  >  
IJ � � � � ij ℅ ‽ ‽ !!
Historical Ligatures (hlig)
ct sp st ſſi ſſl ſb ſh ſi ſk ſl ſt ſſ   >  
� � st � � � � � � � ſt �

Which is not what we would expect.
Looks like some of the ligatures (two codes) got replaced with an alternate single character.
This is not good, because you do not know if that character exists in the target document font.
The safe thing to do is copy exactly what was in the original text - the two character codes.
If that ligature is present in the new font, then the two codes will again become the ligature.

So your font is fine.
The work-around is to turn-off Standard Ligatures.

And let us hope that one day, the sun will rise, and this will be fixed...

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, kenmcd said:

The work-around is to turn-off Standard Ligatures.

And, perhaps, this time we can get this bug logged so it might be fixed someday.

[kenmcd]

10 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

And, perhaps, this time we can get this bug logged so it might be fixed someday.

That made me think of "It could happen."
And it took me a minute to remember who always said that - Judy Tenuda.
She was funny.