Manipulating characters inside text?

[Petar Petrenko]

It would be really handful and time saving if Affinity apps could flip, rotate, move characters inside text. I live in Macedonia where we use cyrilic alphabet. But not all fonts support cyrilic alphabet so I have to "create" some of them using letters from the alphabets inside the fonts. For instance, to get cyrilic letter "Г" I have to flip latin letter "L". For now I have to make a lot of text frames and them rearranging them which is very time consuming process. Please, help.

[Alfred]

Interesting idea, Petar. I can see how flipping would be handy for characters like Г, И and Я (even in the US and Western Europe where we have stores with names like Toys 'Я' Us) but how would you deal with more complex characters such as Ж and Щ?

[Petar Petrenko]

You can get Ж with normal K and flipped K, but for Щ you will have to spend some time to see what you can do with other characters in a font. BTW, if some letters can't be done with flipping and rotating, it doesn't mean that the idea is bad, isn't it? :)

[Alfred]

You can get Ж with normal K and flipped K,

 

 

but for Щ you will have to spend some time to see what you can do with other characters in a font.

 

Any ideas?

 

BTW, if some letters can't be done with flipping and rotating, it doesn't mean that the idea is bad, isn't it? :)

 

No, not at all! :D

[Petar Petrenko]

 

Any ideas?

 

It depends of the font -- what characters can be used, or if not any, then you will have to draw it.  :unsure:

Maybe you can use LLL and draw just a little line bellow. :)

[A_B_C]

Well, if it was that easy …  :rolleyes:

 

No offense, but from a type designer’s point of view, this is a workaround of the sort “Should you ever find yourself on a desert island and have only Latin glyphs to send a Cyrillic message in a bottle” …  ;)

 

Seriously, I would try to get dedicated fonts with Cyrillic character sets, Petar. There are so many free and quite decent resources, and even the standard fonts that come with operating systems support Cyrillic in the mean time. I fear you will achieve only subpar results by flipping letters …  :(

[Petar Petrenko]

Well, this has nothing with type designing, just a litlle workarround to get the job (well) done. :)

[A_B_C]

Well, I see your point, of course … :)  

 

It depends on the ambition and the scope of the project, though flipping glyphs is certainly not according to the rules of the art, so to say. I am sure you will know this resource though:

 

https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/list/language/cyrillic

 

Among these are some nice free fonts that support the Cyrillic character set …  :)

Cheers, Alex

[Petar Petrenko]

Thank you Alex, I have them already, but the problem with most of them is that they support only Russian (and Bulgarian automatically), but not Macedonian and Serbian language. And, even if they support MK and SRB then they give us Russian/Bulgarian small letters "dgtp" in Italic versions of the font(s). Pro versions of some fonts like Minion, Myriad, Warnock, Arno... have these MK italic glyphs, but the other problem is the Microsoft doesn't support them well in MK keyboard.

Soooooooooo, you can see our Tantalus problems.

[A_B_C]

Oh dear, you are not to be envied, Petar. I do see your problems now. You must indeed feel like being on a desert island, as far as the font situation is concerned … it seems almost as difficult as finding a decent font for mathematics … hmm …  :(

 

I’ll keep my eyes open, and should I find a better typeface resource I’ll make sure to drop you a line …  :)

My best wishes, Alex

[Petar Petrenko]

TYVM Alex, but please don't let it be your obsesion. I will manage somehow. :)

Everything would be fine if our official script was latin. BTW, the only app which I can use for work is InDesign where I can easily change RU/BG glyphs with MK ones. Next one is QuarkXPress and after that -- none. :)

[GDPR-365024]

BabelMap has the cyrilic alphabet.

 

It's free (donation optional).

 

www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelMap.html

[Petar Petrenko]

Thank you PedroOfOz,

but BabelMap is not a font. It is an app like Windows Character Map.

[GDPR-365024]

For instance, to get cyrilic letter "Г" I have to flip latin letter "L".

 

Can you not just copy and paste the required characters from BabelMap into your text? The characters can be resized, coloured, tracked/kerned, underlined, super/sub script, deleted etc just like the text they've been inserted into.

 

Or am I missing something here?

[Petar Petrenko]

It works the same way Windows Character Map does. Yes, you can Copy/Paste any character, but if it is not inside the font you work with, you will get a rectangle -- with or w/o diagonals.

[GDPR-365024]

I'm still not quite understanding. Here's a screenshot (In DP X8 as I'm currently working in it). Each line is in its own text frame.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: Ok, I'm getting the rectangles - but only with the Chinese characters. Everything else, so far is aok.

[Alfred]

It works the same way Windows Character Map does. Yes, you can Copy/Paste any character, but if it is not inside the font you work with, you will get a rectangle -- with or w/o diagonals.

 

Or sometimes you get a rectangle with a question mark inside it. Some font designers use either their company logo or some other design for the .notdef glyph, but this is not recommended practice.

[Petar Petrenko]

I'm still not quite understanding. Here's a screenshot (In DP X8 as I'm currently working in it). Each line is in its own text frame.

 

 

BabelMap-Example.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: Ok, I'm getting the rectangles - but only with the Chinese characters. Everything else, so far is aok.

 

I can't see the name of the font you are using, but it obviously, supports cyrilics alphabet. Otherwise, you will not see any cyrilic character on the artboard.

[Alfred]

Edit: Ok, I'm getting the rectangles - but only with the Chinese characters. Everything else, so far is aok.

 

If I paste Ж as Artistic Text in DPX8 it looks fine in Times New Roman, but if I go to the Font Face dropdown on the Context toolbar and choose a font such as Tennessee SF (which happens to be immediately above TNR in the list on my system) it gets replaced by a rectangle.

[GDPR-365024]

Sorry I should have mentioned. It's good ol' Times New Roman (default in DP X8).

 

The three cyrilic lines are copied and pasted directly from BabelMap ie there is no other type inserted to support the cyrilic characters. 

[GDPR-365024]

Just tried Tennessee SF. It's aok.

 

I can upload a screenshot if you want. It would take me 15 mins or so as I'd play with typographic stuff.

[GDPR-365024]

Here's a screenshot with Tennessee SF plus one with Casablanca

 

 

 

. 

[Petar Petrenko]

Some apps like MS Office, in your case DrawPlus, and others have this problem:

 

1. you wrote cyrilic text in Times New Roman;

2. change the font which doesn't supports cyrilic;

3. the text is still cyrilic with Times New Roman;

4. only the name of the font is changed in the font menu.

 

I suppose that Affinity apps will not have this problem.

[Alfred]

Here's a screenshot with Tennessee SF plus one with Casablanca

 

If you select one of those Cyrillic characters on the DrawPlus page and look at the Font Face dropdown list on the Context toolbar, I'm sure you'll find that it's "good ol' Times New Roman".

 

Try going back to BabelMap and scrolling up or down the 'Single Font' dropdown list (just above the Edit Buffer). Some other common fonts such as Tahoma also have the characters ҖҗҒғҊҋ that you used in your example, but even Verdana doesn't have Ҋ or ҋ.

[GDPR-365024]

Thanks. That's clear now re 'Or am I missing something here'.

 

My brain (logic?) was telling me if I was typing more graphic inclined non Roman characters I shouldn't expect font flavours.

 

In other words Chinese (Mandarin) characters in Didot, Eurostyle or perhaps Caslon?   :D