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Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.5 - Beta 1)


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[…] It looks like the values Arial Black returns are simply wrong. For example, 4cm/x does not give an 'x' that is 4cm high. There's not a lot we can do about that.

 

This would mean that many fonts like Arial Black, Gill Sans, Palatino, Futura, Big Caslon, etc. return wrong values in Affinity Designer.

 

In other Apps we get the correct results. Please, please improve.

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You said "In other Apps we get the correct results". Which other apps were you referring to?

 

Just one example: VivaDesigner. But why do you ask? We just want correct results.

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I was hoping for some insight into what it was doing. Because if it gives different results to Affinity, it isn't use the font's own metrics.

 

Big sorry: Don’t know what you mean. Do you think other apps have a database with some 100000 font values and don’t use the fonts to get correct cap heights?

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Font files include both the outlines of the individual glyphs and some numbers that describe the characteristics of the font as a whole. These numbers include things like the x-height, which is what the font designer has declared the x-height to be. That's what Affinity uses. If other apps get different results, they must be doing something different. I would guess they are picking specific glyphs and measuring their outline directly instead.

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Font files include both the outlines of the individual glyphs and some numbers that describe the characteristics of the font as a whole. These numbers include things like the x-height, which is what the font designer has declared the x-height to be. That's what Affinity uses. If other apps get different results, they must be doing something different. I would guess they are picking specific glyphs and measuring their outline directly instead.

 

Perhaps some apps and extensions do it the way you describe. But this does not explain why we get the wrong results in AD. Example: Arial and Arial Black have the same needed values for calculating the cap height. We calculate the same correct result, but AD fails with Arial Black.

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When you say, "the values of the fonts", which values do you mean? When you say "calculate", what is the calculation that you are doing? I'm also not sure who you are referring to with "we". I get that Arial Black is getting the wrong size, but I don't follow the other points you are making.

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Latest beta: Still not able to load fonts properly. Guys this is really a show stopper for me. The last 3 betas of AD have not been able to work with my font library. Adobe apps use the same fonts no problem. I[ve reported this for a while and it's really the main issue I've been having with seriously working or recommending Affinity to other designers. Fonts HAVE to work seamlessly using PROFESSIONAL  font manager software (not apple's rickety old Font Book — I've been using Lynotype's FontExplorer pro for years. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fix this for 1.5

2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Ventura 13.6

2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17

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When you say, "the values of the fonts", which values do you mean? When you say "calculate", what is the calculation that you are doing?

 

As far as I can see, Arial and Arial Black as installed on my system have indeed different values for ascenders, descenders, and caps height. I believe these fonts came with the standard installation of El Capitan or a previous version of OS X. I cannot imagine that I ever consciously purchased any version of Arial …  ;)

 

Indeed, Arial Black has a positive descender value, which is kind of weird. So I assume there is something wrong with the font files themselves, provided Oval is using the same versions as I do … or rather, I do not …  ;)

 

 

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When you say, "the values of the fonts", which values do you mean? When you say "calculate", what is the calculation that you are doing? I'm also not sure who you are referring to with "we". I get that Arial Black is getting the wrong size, but I don't follow the other points you are making.

 

When we (purchasers of your apps) tell you what has to be calculated with which values of the fonts to get the correct results like in other apps, do we get an Affinity Publisher at no charge?

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It's the way Oval likes to try motivate us - only it's not very motivating.

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
  • Software engineer  -  Photographer  -  Guitarist  -  Philosopher
  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
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We purchased the app with our money and took our time to tell Serif that there is something to improve, because the app provides wrong results (eight from ten, in other apps: zero from ten). We got the answer that Serif (Dave Harris) will not change it, which does not motivate purchasers to help Serif with further purchases, warm-hearted recommendations, bug reports, feature requests, answering questions …

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Oval, we do appreciate bug reports. Mostly in this thread I've been trying to understand what you have been saying.  Especially your mysterious #159 post. I explained why I thought other apps might be getting different results, and you said it didn’t explain it, and then went on to say you were calculating some value that it sounded like you thought Affinity should be using instead. Never mind. I will look at fixing this. If the font metrics are unreliable, then we can use the method I described in #158 instead. There are drawbacks to that, which is why I didn’t do it that way in the first place, but it won’t be the first time we’ve had to work around problems with font files.

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That gives hope. Thanks!!!

We just wanted correct results and you wrote you will not improve themNo occasion for US citizens for legal actions as in the case of VW values. ;-) We don’t think that (many) font metrics are unreliable. But our thoughts don’t count. Perhaps paolo.limoncelli will tell the correct formula. Other apps deliver the correct values for all fonts. AD delivers correct cap heights for Geneva, but not for Optima, Gill Sans, Palatino, Calibre, Futura, Big Caslon, …

 

Oval, we do appreciate bug reports. […] I will look at fixing this. If the font metrics are unreliable, then we can use the method I described in #158 instead. There are drawbacks to that, which is why I didn’t do it that way in the first place, but it won’t be the first time we’ve had to work around problems with font files.

 

The use of points: not forbidden in GB, but in the EU?

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Oval - why do you always refer to yourself as "we"?  It's freaking me out a bit.

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
  • Software engineer  -  Photographer  -  Guitarist  -  Philosopher
  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
  • MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300
  • iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB
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Oval - why do you always refer to yourself as "we"?  It's freaking me out a bit.

I understand. Some people are like one because they are grown together. This was said before. We were/are four/two people.

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I understand. Some people are like one because they are grown together. This was said before. We were/are four/two people.

 

...and that response is freaking me out even more.

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
  • Software engineer  -  Photographer  -  Guitarist  -  Philosopher
  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
  • MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300
  • iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB
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I´ll be sending some popcorn to your office for your team reading all that  :D

 

Never mind. I will look at fixing this. If the font metrics are unreliable, then we can use the method I described in #158 instead. There are drawbacks to that, which is why I didn’t do it that way in the first place, but it won’t be the first time we’ve had to work around problems with font files.

 

I´m not that sort of typography specialist that Oval claims to be but I don´t really see a big issue when having two words, one being Arial Black and one being Arial and both set to the same size.

If the font seems to be to big, I just lower the size of it.....

 

.....and if it was that big of an issue for as many fonts as Oval claims it to be I´m sure there would have been other designers round here talking about it as well.

 

Your RAW approach in AP is also to just display what the camera records and not crop anything out/ modify anything and I really appreciate that.

The same approach on typography seems reasonable to me.

arial.pdf

 

 

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Honestly, Oval, I also have a hard time to understand how you were reaching your results.

 

I fear you have to provide more information about the fonts you are using in order to help the developers make sense of your remarks. I am sure you are aware that there are so many different versions of Optima, Gill Sans, Palatino, Calibre, Futura, Big Caslon around, that it simply does not help to name these fonts without providing more details. What you are doing does not count as a reasonable bug report, in my humble opinion … sorry …  :(

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