Overline not centered above numbers

[St John]

The combining overline glyph does not center above numbers, but works perfectly with letters. All text is the default Arial and I'm using ver 2.5.3 on windows 11. Any workaround or alt strategy to get an overline centered above numbers would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[Hangman]

Hi @St John and welcome to the forums,

I believe non-centred diacritics is a known bug in the Affinity Apps though I can't locate the bug reference...

The only way I could get anywhere close was to use a Combining Macron in another app (in my case Pages on Mac but you could likely do the same in Word on Windows), then copy and paste into Designer...

Far from ideal so very much a workaround until the bug is fixed...

[kenmcd]

6 hours ago, St John said:

The combining overline glyph does not center above numbers, but works perfectly with letters. All text is the default Arial and I'm using ver 2.5.3 on windows 11. Any workaround or alt strategy to get an overline centered above numbers would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

The 2 does not have a top anchor point for the mark to attach to, so the overlinecomb mark actually follows the two character, and since the combining mark has no advance width it aligns with the right side of the 2.

The P has a top anchor point for the combining mark to attach to so it works as you expect.

Out of curiosity, what is the usage here?

Have you used this combination in another font where it works?
I am curious if this is supported in other fonts.

[NathanC]

Based on what Ken's mentioned above and also checking Arial over in InDesign I don't think Affinity's completely at fault here.

InDesign Arial Regular, exact same Glyph:

 

I'm not certain but perhaps it's anchor position is following so it's central with 2/3/4/etc. digit values. Publisher: 

 

However, as Hangman has demonstrated it does work in Pages for individual digits, there is a similar Diacritic bug logged, but I've logged this one separately with the devs as it's possible that it's by Design.

[kenmcd]

@NathanC  I think some text shapers may automatically place a following combining mark over the preceding character (even without the correct anchors).
That could explain why it appears to work in Pages (with the Core Text shaper).

Fairly easy to test that theory (with Arial and other fonts).
Affinity may want to consider doing the same.

  

9 hours ago, NathanC said:

Based on what Ken's mentioned above and also checking Arial over in InDesign I don't think Affinity's completely at fault here.

You could also test in ID with the World Ready Composer.
That would test the alternate ID shaper, and you can set it to alternatively use the Harfbuzz shaper too. (I think that is how it still works).

 

[St John]

Wow, thank you all so much! I didn't expect such great help from my very first post! It seems like windows and/or perhaps common fonts all suffer from this bug because copy and pasting from word (from a variety of fonts) and notepad into Designer 2 keeps the overline as a separate character.

 

This project will require the overline quite often because I am designing a chart which displays all 230 crystal space groups (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_groups#) using the common point group naming scheme. An alternative to the common scheme would be using the Schoenflies notation, which only uses sub and superscripts, but that is less common -- and the idea for the table is a student-friendly, approachable poster lol

[St John]

21 hours ago, kenmcd said:

The 2 does not have a top anchor point for the mark to attach to, so the overlinecomb mark actually follows the two character, and since the combining mark has no advance width it aligns with the right side of the 2.

The P has a top anchor point for the combining mark to attach to so it works as you expect.

Out of curiosity, what is the usage here?

Have you used this combination in another font where it works?
I am curious if this is supported in other fonts.

It works with Dejavu Sans!

[kenmcd]

 

34 minutes ago, St John said:

This project will require the overline quite often because I am designing a chart which displays all 230 crystal space groups (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_groups#) using the common point group naming scheme.

That's interesting.
On that web page they are using TeX and mathml to display all that stuff.

Good luck.

25 minutes ago, St John said:

It works with Dejavu Sans!

It has the required anchors on the figures (just checked it).
So it works as you expect.
Is that everything you need now in the font?
(for this "common point group naming scheme")

[St John]

1 hour ago, kenmcd said:

 

That's interesting.
On that web page they are using TeX and mathml to display all that stuff.

Good luck.

It has the required anchors on the figures (just checked it).
So it works as you expect.
Is that everything you need now in the font?
(for this "common point group naming scheme")

Yeah I think that's it!