APhoto and ADesigner Version 2.5.0 Update broken

[SU24]

Hi,

downloaded the MSI-Installer of all three applications. First I tried affinity-photo-msi-2.5.0.exe. The intallation or inizializaton process stopped at 'loading font ...' and I was left with my windows desktop although with a refreshed aphoto application icon on the desktop.

Did the same with AFDesigner. The exact same behaviour. Initialization stopped at 'loading fonts ...' and I was left with a new 'Affinity Designer 2 icon' on my desktop.

I then didn't try publisher.

[Chills]

If it is any help 2.5 installed OK for all three on Win11, see pc spec in sig below

[NathanC]

Hi @SU24,

This is currently being looked into by the developers, please see the thread below for updates. If you're in need of the Apps ASAP I'd recommend rolling back to 2.4.2 using the links provided below (see download under 'previous versions').

• https://store.serif.com/en-gb/update/windows/photo/2/
• https://store.serif.com/en-gb/update/windows/designer/2/
• https://store.serif.com/en-gb/update/windows/publisher/2/

 

[SU24]

Thank you for coming back to me. It's good to know I'm not the only one.

So I'll wait and practice patience.

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "2.5 Windows users crashing during 'loading fonts'" (REF: AF-3190) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.5.2.2478".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Affinity Info Bot to notify us.

[Chills]

1 hour ago, Affinity Info Bot said:

The issue "2.5 Windows users crashing during 'loading fonts'" (REF: AF-3190) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.5.2.2478".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Affinity Info Bot to notify us.

just out of curiosity,  as I seems to be OK on my system,   is it a specific font or set of fonts causing a problem?

[Alurica]

I'm having the same problems.

[Dan C]

On 5/24/2024 at 7:33 PM, Chills said:

just out of curiosity,  as I seems to be OK on my system,   is it a specific font or set of fonts causing a problem?

I've provided a little information regarding this specific issue here - 

[Chills]

2 hours ago, Dan C said:

I've provided a little information regarding this specific issue here - 

Thanks for that.  

Before anyone berates these "unprofessional clowns" throwing out buggy software causing the end of the world etc, there are tens of thousands of fonts out there.  (Monotype claim 270,000 fonts)  For my work, I only have 390 fonts installed. Someone else commented here that they have over 3,000 fonts installed. I have several CDs (if you can remember what they are!) with over 1,000 fonts on each.  I could install any combination at any time.  I have never heard of the font mentioned in the linked thread above, that caused the problem, but for the user in question it is his main font. 

You can't test all the fonts out there.  Especially when there are multiple versions of a font from different suppliers, not all fonts are equal. The implementations can be very different. 

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Chills said:

I have several CDs (if you can remember what they are!) with over 1,000 fonts on each

FYI, those fonts might be too old for Affinity to support them.

[Chills]

21 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

FYI, those fonts might be too old for Affinity to support them.

Why?   What changed?

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, Chills said:

Why?   What changed?

I've read that really old fonts use technology that the Affinity applications don't support, but I have no details.

[Dan C]

Walt may be referring to "Type 1" fonts, which are slowly being discontinued across the majority of the industry - officially Adobe have discontinued support for them, and the PDF library that Affinity uses (PDFLib) has declared them deprecated within their latest release.

Further details on these fonts were discussed here:

I believe you may be able to convert old Type 1 fonts to OpenType in order to continue using them in any app going forward, but this is not something I've personally attempted and therefore YMMV

[Chills]

@Dan C  Thanks for the Info. 

As I have migrated fonts from computer to computer over the years, and moved some fonts between PC and MAC (even as far back as the PPC Macs before intel)  how do I find out if any of my installed fonts, on a Win 11 PC, are   Type 1?  

Just looked in finder and no matter what I do, Windows won't show the file extension!  It looks like I will have to go through each one individually.  Fortunately, I only have 387 fonts installed, and the majority will be current Windows fonts or OTF.

Is there a recommended converter utility for Type 1 to OTF?  I get nervous about downloading utilities from the net...

EDIT: Did some research, Type 1 fonts are basically Postscript fonts developed by Adobe 1991-1999.  The article below said that by 2005 it was becoming hard to find type 1 fonts.  As that is about 20 years ago, I am hoping I don't have any type 1 fonts on my main Win 11 PC system. Partly because OTF were done by Adobe and Microsoft from 2000.  

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/02/15/adobe-is-retiring-type-1-font-support-heres-how-to-prepare-for-the-change

 

 

[Dan C]

4 hours ago, Chills said:

how do I find out if any of my installed fonts, on a Win 11 PC, are   Type 1? 

You can edit the categories shown for your installed fonts list by following the steps outlined here, which should allow you to determine which, if any, of your fonts are Type 1 :

https://support.graphisoft.com/hc/en-us/articles/18795237927185-Finding-Font-Types-on-your-Windows-Computer

4 hours ago, Chills said:

Is there a recommended converter utility for Type 1 to OTF?  I get nervous about downloading utilities from the net...

Unfortunately as above I don't have any personal experience here, so I wouldn't want to recommend an application I haven't used.
The following stackoverflow thread has a few suggestions, but again I cannot speak for the reliability of any of these offerings:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9322635/how-can-i-convert-postscript-type-1-font-to-otf-or-ttf

[jmwellborn]

@Chills It isn't free, but FontXChange has been extremely reliable (and worth the cost) for me.  It is available for both MAC and Windows.  I had a great number of Postscript fonts among 857 total from years of yore which I successfully converted to OTF and have used ever since without a single glitch.  Also, their tech support is superb.  I hope this may help.

[Chills]

@Dan C  and @jmwellborn many thanks for that.  It seems I only have TT, OTF and Raster fonts.  Well, on my PC's anyway.  I will have to dig into m y old Mac Pro but I don't run affinity on it.  That is where my Adobe CS6 hides! I only use the CS6 for converting files to imbl and, still, using Dreamweaver!

So I am not going to need to use a font converter. (I wish I hadn't said that!)  Though If I do find any PS Type 1 fonts I expect I will be able to find an OFT version. So the End of the World (at least this one)  has been averted.
 

As someone who does non-fiction stuff, both technical and a heritage magazine, it is fairly conservative stuff and I don't need a lot of typefaces. The main ones are OFT from Monotype. So I suspect any very old documents ( MS Word or even Word-Perfect) I have that might have Type 1 fonts I can convert to a different font on loading.

 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Chills said:

So I am not going to need to use a font converter.

But note that we started out with you talking about "several old CDs full of fonts", and that's where I commented they might be too old. Have you checked them, too?

[Chills]

16 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

But note that we started out with you talking about "several old CDs full of fonts", and that's where I commented they might be too old. Have you checked them, too?

No, not checked them. So good point. I shall have to fish them out and have a look.  

[Alfred]

On 5/31/2024 at 11:37 AM, Chills said:

Just looked in finder and no matter what I do, Windows won't show the file extension!

Finder? On Windows??

How to Make Windows Show File Extensions

[Chills]

49 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Finder? On Windows??

How to Make Windows Show File Extensions

Except that doesn't work on the fonts' folder!  It behaves differently to all other folders!
There is a solution posted on the thread linked above about the depreciation of type 1 fonts.

 

 

[Alfred]

12 minutes ago, Chills said:

Except that doesn't work on the fonts' folder!  It behaves differently to all the others.

 

Ugh! Why does Microsoft insist on treating its users like babies?

The filenames of installed fonts are listed as data for the entries in the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts

[Chills]

6 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Ugh! Why does Microsoft insist on treating its users like babies?

The filenames of installed fonts are listed as data for the entries in the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts

To be fair to MS there the way they handle the fonts folder does make a lot of sense (at least in Win 11)  It can show a lot of customizable information

Once you work out how to do it, it is easy and straightforward to do when you know, but I missed any notification of the way it is handled. So I Was in the dark

[Alfred]

7 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Ugh! Why does Microsoft insist on treating its users like babies?

The filenames of installed fonts are listed as data for the entries in the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts

 

26 minutes ago, Chills said:

There is a solution posted on the thread linked above about the depreciation of type 1 fonts.

Thanks for editing your post to point that out. The ‘Font type’ option under ‘View > Choose details’ for the Fonts folder is all you need: much better than messing around with the Windows registry!