Serious error: Textstyle recognises (foreign) style description incorrectly (semibold > bold)

[design punch]

Publisher V 2.6.0 / Win10  

I mostly use the font ‘Myriad Pro’ (regular and semibold).

1. demo
- Created paragraph style: ‘Myriad regular’
- Created character style: semibold (displayed as ‘halbfett’ in German version)
- The upper left field displays ‘bold’ (WRONG)
- Text style panel displays: "semibold" (CORRECT)
- The text no longer appears with ‘semibold’ set, but with ‘bold’ (WRONG)!

2. demo - already existing texts (in my case several thousand pages in books, etc.).

- In this example (up to V 2.5.7) the text style panel showed: (paragraph style) ‘+Body Block’ + (character style) ‘semibold’, i.e.
    +Body Block + semibold
    and the text passages are displayed in "semibold"

- Now (V 2.6.0) the text suddenly reads: (paragraph style) ‘+Body Block’ + (character style) ‘semibold’ + (the German translation for semibold) ‘Schriftstärke: Halbfett’, i.e.
    +Body Block + semibold + Schriftstärke: Halbfett
- At this stage the upper left field still displays ‘semibold’  (CORRECT)
- The text is still displayed in semibold (CORRECT)

- However, if the line is corrected (‘Reapply text styles’ button in the text style panel), the display in the text style panel is corrected (e.g. to ‘+Body Block + semibold’), but the upper left field now shows bold (instead of ‘semibold’) and the text is incorrectly changed to ‘bold’.

At the moment it is impossible to work with this version ... any change within a paragraph would change the character style(s) to unwanted "bold" etc.
It needs a very urgent correction/solution please ...

[design punch]

More on this (see picture):

1. new document & text ->  
     Set paragraph style: “Body Block” (with “Myriad Pro regular”)
     Set character style: none

2. selected text: Character style: “semibold”
    The character style is displayed as “semibold”, but “bold” is displayed at the top left! (WRONG)
    The text is displayed in “bold” !!! (WRONG)

3. change (manually) top left to “semibold”
    The text is now displayed in “semibold” (CORRECT)

4. the character style (is and was set to “semibold”) must now be updated !!!

5. only now (after the update under 4.) will any text be displayed in “semibold” if “semibold” has been selected as the character style, otherwise “bold” will be used.
This applies to all newly created text.
Existing text is displayed correctly, but has the wrong (additional) label in the styles panel (see description above). But it will change wrongly to "bold", if you touch the paragraph.

For testing I have now used a different font “Linux libertine O” and “Open Sans”, here it works correctly.
How can this be corrected?
I have created several thousand pages with Myriad Pro.

[4dimage]

@design punch

Hi, the developers seem to have made massive changes to the font management under the hood ?! I often use variable fonts (Robto Flex) and all my old layouts, which still look fine with 2.5.7, are destroyed when opened in 2.6.0. All occurrences of variable fonts with custom axis settings (e.g. width=25 condensed) are replaced by a standard font style without asking when opened.

Luckily I still had a current Windows restore point and am working with the latest 2.5.7 again.

This is all really bad 😞

Can you roll back your Windows system to 2.5.7 ?

[design punch]

Hi 4dimage,

thanks ... so I'm not alone with this!
Hope there will be a solution soon.
I either could go back to 2.5.7 (but what's about the future - stay with 2.5.7 forever?) or I have to correct all my work wherever there is a change.
Not funny anyhow!
 

[4dimage]

48 minutes ago, design punch said:

Hi 4dimage,

thanks ... so I'm not alone with this!
Hope there will be a solution soon.
I either could go back to 2.5.7 (but what's about the future - stay with 2.5.7 forever?) or I have to correct all my work wherever there is a change.
Not funny anyhow!
 

I have the same concerns. For the time being, I'll continue to work with 2.5.7 😞 I installed the applications via msie.exe. You have to explicitly download the updates and it's not so easy to click on automatic update in the welcome screen.

In the past, there were some major bugs that were later fixed (the first v2 version was a disaster).

What should we do? For me, there's no going back to Adobe CC on principle. And Affinity is the only professional alternative on Windows.

😶

[MikeTO]

Hi, I use Myriad Pro regularly and am not seeing any issues. Which version of Myriad Pro do you have? (Select the font files and choose Get Info.) I have version 2.106 for Regular, Semibold, and Bold.

I tried to recreate the problem following your steps. Could you please share a test document with a screen recording so that I can try to duplicate it? Here's my own test document so if you're able to duplicate it with this that would also be useful.

Myriad.afpub

Cheers

[design punch]

Hi MikeTO,

thanks for hav a view into it ...

I have Myriad Pro 2.102
And I have tested your .afpub.
At first I thought it would work with your constellation, but it's the same problem when I set my constellation.

1. paragraph format with you and with me: Myriad Pro regular

2a. (pic 1) Your character format:
    Font family: Myriad Pro
    Font style: Semibold
    Font weight: --

2b. (pic 2) My character format:
    Font family: No change
    Font style: --
    Font weight: Halbfett (German for semibold)

My constellation worked perfectly with V1 and V2 up to V 2.5.7, but no longer with V 2.6.0.
So something was changed in V 2.6.0.

What now?

[MikeTO]

I don't know, but if you change your Semibold style definition from Font Family = No Change to Myriad Pro, does that work better?

If not, I'm unsure of the differences between Myriad Pro 2.102 and 2.106 but perhaps there's a difference that would account for this.

[design punch]

Myriad Pro 2.102 and 2.016 - same problem under same constellation! Can't be the problem.

"bold" is "bold", "regular" is "regular" etc. regardless which font is used.
Why should "semibold" be "something different"? It wasn't "something different" upto V 2.5.7.

Yes, it works better if I use your constellation. But that isn't a solution.
In that case I had to rebuilt all of my work (approx. > 7000 pages) after this update (its even not a major update)?

A new version/update should never destroy existing work ...  I had a similar problem already from V1 to V2 - grouping was reacting suddenly completly different. 

I think it's rather a bug in Affinity ... it doesn't make sense, that in left upper corner "bold" is displayed, but in the character style panel "semibold" is displayed at the same time! And it makes no sense, that a change in the left upper corner to "semibold", followed by an necessary update of the character style correct that all.

[kenmcd]

Part of the problem is Myriad Pro has different names in the different platform IDs.
So it is going to act differently on Mac vs. Windows.

The Mac platform ID 1 names do it like iStupid Apple does with their in-house fonts.
Which pretty much assures that the style-linking will never work properly.

The Windows platform ID names should work properly, if APub worked properly.
Which it does not.
APub still cannot do style-linking correctly.

The Semibold is in an R/I/B/BI style-group with the Light.
The Light is the Regular in that group.
The Semibold is the Bold in that group.
So for platform ID 3 (Windows) name ID 2 is "Bold."
This is probably part of what is confusing APub (because it is dumb).

It is possible to make a version of the fonts which APub cannot ####-up.
IIRC I did this quite awhile ago with Minion (which is similar).
Last full set of Myriad I have is 2.037 (from AFF11).
I did check MyFonts and the current v2.115 appears to still have the same structure.
The differences you two are seeing probably the platform differences in the names.

Let me know if you want to make a set that works in APub.

[design punch]

hi kenmcd,

Unfortunately, I'm not that deep into the details of font management and can only guess what you mean.
Nevertheless, I have now looked deeper into it and found what you say to be frightening.
Contrary to your description, Myriad Pro looks like this for me:

bold = bold
bold condensed = bold
bold condensed italic = bold italic
bold italic = bold italic
condensed = regular
condensed italic = italic
italic = italic
light = light
light italic = light italic
regular = regular
semibold = bold
semibold italic = bold italic
black = black
black italic = black italic
 
But what is an absolute disaster is that not only are the character styles now misunderstood, but the character settings within some paragraph styles are now also being changed to the wrong ones. For example, I use the paragraph style: “Myriad Pro” + “bold (fett)” + “narrow (eng)” for the tables of contents of most books ... (bold + condensed) ... but now all this is automatically changed as soon as you “touch” something! It becomes: “Myriad Pro” + “semibold”. Complete chaotic nonsense - it is destroying the whole layout!!!

The question is: Is what's going on here intentional on the part of the Affinity team? This would mean that V 2.6.0 is no longer compatible with the previous versions and therefore much of what has already been created is only good for the dustbin! Or is this a bug that needs to be fixed as soon as possible!

It was all fine upto V 2.5.7 !!

> Let me know if you want to make a set that works in APub.
What do you mean by that?

[kenmcd]

9 hours ago, design punch said:

> Let me know if you want to make a set that works in APub.
What do you mean by that?

Some of the errors with incorrect style-linking can (could) be worked-around.
It does seem they have made some changes - but still is not working right.

One big problem is they automatically set the Bold button for all fonts above a certain weight (which is iStupid Mac nonsense).
This messes-up any font with style-linking to other than the Bold weight.
For example select some text and apply Myriad Pro Semibold.
Notice the Bold button is selected On.
Turn the Bold button Off - and the font becomes Regular (400).
Turn it On again - and the font becomes Bold (700).
Then it just toggles back and forth from Regular to Bold.
It appears to be going for the weight setting - 400 & 700.
This is not the actual style-linking - it is a hack.
Do the same thing with Avenir LT Std (from AFF11)...
Select 65 Medium - which is weight 550, and linked to 95 Black (750).
The Bold button is again engaged On.
Turn it Off - and the font becomes 55 Roman (400)
On again - and the font becomes 85 Heavy (700)

I think what is happening to you is this is error is being triggered and you get the wrong font.

So it appears to be based on the weight - which is wrong.
But they do seem to be isolating the widths - which is again probably based on the number - which is wrong.

Correct style-linking is via nameID 1 & 2 - not on these hacks.

I don't know if I can fool this error in this font.
Have to play with it more tomorrow.

Could definitely word-around it by making the Semibold a separate family.
Kinda extreme.

This should work correctly on Windows. No reason not to.
A Harfbuzz developer told me a few months ago that the Apple CoreText text engine does not have the "hooks" needed to do proper style-linking.
(which is why LibreOffice on Mac still does not have 100% working font selection)
(in LibreOffice on Windows and Linux the style-linking works perfectly)
It appears from the dumb Bold button issues, and the apparent use of weights, instead of the actual nameID 1 & 2 - they are doing this some hacky Mac-way.
No reason to not work correctly on Windows - the tools are there.

Ugh. So tired of this issue.
Ridiculous.
Fonts!!
A basic tool of design.
And it is still a headache - for years.....
 

[design punch]

Hi kenmcd,

thanks for the reply.
I understand the problem as you described it to some extent.
If the Affinity team don't restore the 2.5.7 version on this, I'll have to change all the work I've done over the last few years and change the character style definitions for the future.
An additional work-around would do nothing.
 

> So it appears to be based on the weight - which is wrong.
> But they do seem to be isolating the widths - which is again probably based on the number - which is wrong.

It looks like this, e.g. Google's Robot only has ‘medium’, but no matter whether you set ‘medium’ or ‘semibold’ as the font weight, it is interpreted as medium in both cases.

> I don't know if I can fool this error in this font.
> Have to play with it more tomorrow.
> Could definitely word-around it by making the Semibold a separate family.

Forget it! I have to change everything anyway ... one way or another ... (unless Affinity rows back) .. thanks for your effort.

[NathanC]

Hi @design punch,

So I can confirm the issue can be replicated and is a regression over 2.5.7 I'd be grateful if you could provide the following:

- A copy of your Myriad Pro Font installed on Windows

- A copy of an .afpub document containing a text style affected by this mapping issue

I've provided a private upload link below for the files.

https://www.dropbox.com/request/MEBta4mZGURxgc5mEuxK

 

Many thanks

[design punch]

Hi NathanC,

thanks for your reply ...
I habe uploaded the fonts and 2 .afpub samples ...

[NathanC]

Many thanks @design punch I've confirmed this is a regression and logged this issue with the developers for further investigation.