Typography (Ctrl + Shift + T) options Disabled

[walddys]

Hello, i am doing the tutorial OpenType Typography and in the moment i play with the options Typography (Ctrl + Shift + T) appear disabled to modify, watch the picture pls.

 

the first picture is the basic option that the program show me and the second picture is the advanced option active, but all the advanceds option appear disabled that i cant modify.

[MikeW]

That font has several versions out on the web. The screen shot below is using the 0.760 version. Note that the only features in the font that pertain to what most people do are the discretionary and standard ligatures. But AD only sees the standard ligatures as being available. I would need to look at how the features are implemented to see why that is.

 

Mike

 

[MikeW]

You can get the latest version from their web site:

 

http://www.glukfonts.pl/font.php?font=FoglihtenNo06

 

Mike

[MikeW]

OK. Discretionary ligs can be turned on. The text frame or text string needs to contain characters that discretionary ligatures can act upon. Which I think is fairly silly in the larger scheme of things.

 

By not displaying the DL is even available in the font can lead to confusion. In the case of this font, it has discretionary ligatures. If the text string doesn't have a letter combination that is handled by the DL, then it is not even shown as available--unless one clicks on the Show All Font Features check box. Then yep, all possible features are displayed whether or not the font in question really has those features.

 

The DL feature looks/appears no different than the Stylistic, etc., features. The discretionary ligatures feature is disabled, just like features that this font really doesn't have.

[R C-R]

Considering that the Affinity apps may be running on small screen laptops, I don't think the implementation is silly. There is only so much screen space available for everything, so I would prefer it not to be cluttered with anything not usable or necessary for the task at hand.

[MikeW]

R C-R,

 

I believe you misunderstood what I wrote. Or, perhaps I wasn't clear..

[R C-R]

Mike,

I was referring mostly to the 'All Font Features' panel being separate & opened with a button, rather than trying to cram everything related to ligatures into one panel. Even on my 27" iMac screen it is often hard to find the screen space for everything without all the panels obscuring the canvas. On a 13" laptop screen it would be much worse.

[MikeW]

Hi R C-R, yes, I thought that's what you were referring to.

 

And I wasn't. I was only referring to how AD reports what features are in the font.

 

Take care, Mike

 

(Though I do believe that the whole paragraph, character, typography and text styles thing does need a reworking.)

[R C-R]

So am I correct in assuming you would want something showing info about discretionary ligatures even if they were not any in the current font?

 

I am just trying to get an idea of how you would like to see ligatures handled in general, given the variability in the amount of screen space available on different systems & in the different windowing modes the two supported OS's can support.

[MikeW]

Nope, not at all--but that is currently how AD works. In other words, if--and using the font from the thread--if I have text typed out that includes say the Standard Ligatures, which the text string below has, then only the Standard ligature feature is displayed like this (the two standard ligatures are in a red box):

 

 

The screen shot doesn't show that there are indeed Discretionary Ligatures available in this font (and there are).

 

If I click on the "Show all font features: check box the Typography is expanded and then the Discretionary Ligatures is displayed like so:

 

 

The problem, to me, is that it shows all OT features possible (even if not in the font, like this font). There is no distinction between features that a particular font has (even if not application tot he characters that have been typed) and features that are not applicable at all.

 

If I happen to type characters that are in the Discretionary Ligature feature, then AD will change the disabled feature to one I can enable:

 

 

And enabling does activate the feature:

 

 

However, like I mentioned above, that the font does have Discretionary Ligatures in it is not apparent at all and there is no distinction between valid and invalid features until such time as one just happens to type something in that uses a particular feature.

 

To me, this is a dumbing down of the UI in an attempt to help users. But it isn't helpful. I get what Serif is trying to accomplish here (I think). And to me it is fine if the intent of only showing pertinent OT Features is the goal. But I believe that there is a happy middle ground.

 

I think that all features in the font should be displayed initially that are valid for the font. Heck, they have already read in all the features available when a font is selected. I believe I should be able to check the box for discretionary ligatures (in this font's case) even if I do not happen to currently have text in a frame that is part of that feature. It just saves time.

 

Other applications behave as per my thoughts above. And it does save time. I do not want to keep the Typography panel open nor do I want to reopen it every now and again to check if a feature is now available.

 

Mike

[R C-R]

I think that all features in the font should be displayed initially that are valid for the font.

I guess this is where we differ. I would prefer that the Character panel be as simple & uncluttered as possible, & for the app not try to show me everything the font includes in the Typography panel, particularly if the character combinations I have entered have no ligatures or other alternative forms. For that, I would prefer a separate panel (or a separate utility) that just displayed any alternate glyphs, ligatures, or other alternate forms on a per font basis.

 

One reason for this is I sometimes use mixed fonts in Art or Frame text & I think it would be very confusing (& require a lot of screen space) to cram all the features for each of the fonts into one panel. Another reason is I think neither AD or AP is the place for this; it would be more appropriate in Publisher. (Yes, I know opinions differ on that.)

[MikeW]

No, it (the present Typography panel) would not require more space than it presently does now. In fact, with typical fonts it would take less.

[walddys]

I guess this is where we differ. I would prefer that the Character panel be as simple & uncluttered as possible, & for the app not try to show me everything the font includes in the Typography panel, particularly if the character combinations I have entered have no ligatures or other alternative forms. For that, I would prefer a separate panel (or a separate utility) that just displayed any alternate glyphs, ligatures, or other alternate forms on a per font basis.

 

One reason for this is I sometimes use mixed fonts in Art or Frame text & I think it would be very confusing (& require a lot of screen space) to cram all the features for each of the fonts into one panel.

Hello, thank you for your answers, new opinions and features about this great tool about fonts, i agree about a diferent panel that displayed any alternate glyphs, ligatures, or other alternate forms on a per font basis in this case would can be the Typography panel in self, because we have the character tab with some iconic function that bring the Typography panel.

 

And about the ligature, i find that are only work with uppercase words.

 

 

No, it (the present Typography panel) would not require more space than it presently does now. In fact, with typical fonts it would take less.

That's true.

[MikeW]

As regards the character case, that is how the font is designed. Nothing to do with AD.

 

A glyph panel would be good and has been requested before. There are some drawbacks about a glyph panel as well. But in general it is needed.

[R C-R]

No, it (the present Typography panel) would not require more space than it presently does now. In fact, with typical fonts it would take less.

I guess I am still a bit confused about what you want the Typography panel to show. Earlier you said, "I think that all features in the font should be displayed initially that are valid for the font." I took that to mean that every discretionary ligature & every other alternative form in the font should appear in the panel, even if none of the Frame or Art text includes any character combination that could use any of them.

 

This suggests to me that for many fonts the panel would have to include lots of these items, most of them not useable with the text, & the panel would either have to grow in size to display them all or require a lot of scrolling to find anything that is usable.

 

What have I got wrong about this?

[MikeW]

I guess I am still a bit confused about what you want the Typography panel to show. Earlier you said, "I think that all features in the font should be displayed initially that are valid for the font." I took that to mean that every discretionary ligature & every other alternative form in the font should appear in the panel, even if none of the Frame or Art text includes any character combination that could use any of them.

 

This suggests to me that for many fonts the panel would have to include lots of these items, most of them not useable with the text, & the panel would either have to grow in size to display them all or require a lot of scrolling to find anything that is usable.

 

What have I got wrong about this?

 

Simple. I want the Typography panel to show the OT Features the font has. I neither want the panel to lie to me about what features a font has nor what it doesn't have. As it is, the Typography panel is not telling one the truth.

 

The font in this thread has precisely four OpenType Features. Two of these features are not exposed in any UI. One is kerning. The second one is a mark to base feature. Neither of these are exposed in the UI. Therefore they do not take up space.

 

That leaves two OT features and these two features are exposed in every application UI that are OpenType-aware. These are the Standard Ligatures, the other is Discretionary Ligatures. Just how much room is required to show these two features? They each take up a single line in the Typography panel.

 

Look again at the screen shots above.

 

There is one before the Typography panel has had the Show all font features checkbox checked. What I am saying is that whether or not I happen to have text that uses one of the 30 discretionary ligatures checked, I should see that the font has it. Further, I should be able to check that box at any time and have it act upon any letter combinations that match the rule involved for DLs.

 

As it is, AD lies to me. First, it doesn't actually report there are discretionary ligatures prior to entering one of the 30 letter combinations that it acts upon. Second, When I click on the Show all font features checkbox, AD then shows all sorts of features that do not ever apply to the font in use in this thread.

[R C-R]

That leaves two OT features and these two features are exposed in every application UI that are OpenType-aware. These are the Standard Ligatures, the other is Discretionary Ligatures. Just how much room is required to show these two features? They each take up a single line in the Typography panel.

Maybe I am missing something but are not the standard ligatures shown in the Characters panel?

 

As for the discretionary ones, I don't want any shown unless the text I have entered can use them. Otherwise, to me that is just useless clutter I would prefer to avoid. Also, what about fonts that have multiple discretionary ligatures that an entered character combination could use? Would not they all have to be displayed somewhere so I could choose which one(s) I wanted to use? Standard ligatures are generally no problem because (usually) there is just one for each character combination but that isn't always true for some of the fonts with a more extensive set of glyphs.

[MikeW]

Maybe I am missing something but are not the standard ligatures shown in the Characters panel?

 

As for the discretionary ones, I don't want any shown unless the text I have entered can use them. Otherwise, to me that is just useless clutter I would prefer to avoid. Also, what about fonts that have multiple discretionary ligatures that an entered character combination could use? Would not they all have to be displayed somewhere so I could choose which one(s) I wanted to use? Standard ligatures are generally no problem because (usually) there is just one for each character combination but that isn't always true for some of the fonts with a more extensive set of glyphs.

 

Are we talking about the Character Panel?

 

No, the discretionary ligatures are not individually shown. It is no different than the entry for the Standard Ligatures--it is one line with a checkbox and is on or off.

 

And like the standard ligatures, one can highlight a word or a ligature pair and turn off the feature.

 

I really have no idea why you are exhibiting such resistance to AD actually, and properly, reporting what features a font contains. Do you have any font examples where there is confusion? Are you playing along at all to see the effect (or lack thereof) with various fonts that have OT Features? Or is this all just theorizing and conjecture on your part?

 

Mike

[R C-R]

Are we talking about the Character Panel?

I think we are sometimes talking about different things, causing confusion. I don't know if it will help with that but please consider the following:

 

Regarding the Character panel, it allows you to enable or disable standard ligatures, along with other common stylistic forms, without having to open the Typography panel. I like this -- it is in keeping with the idea of keeping things simple & compact.

 

Regarding the Typography panel, it behaves almost identically to the same named panel in the word processors I use (like the venerable Mac standby, Nisus Writer Pro) & follows the same Mac conventions mentioned here. Maybe this is just a "Mac thing," but it is what I have been using for many years & what I am accustomed to. I don't think it is silly; I think it is a reasonable, tried & true approach to the very complex problem of supporting all kinds of font features, whether they be Open Type, True Type, or whatever.

 

In general, I am trying to consider how best to access all font features, not just discretionary & standard ligatures but also for example alternate style sets, ordinals, & so on; across all font types (OT, TT, etc.); & across all platforms (Windows, OS X, & eventually iOS) Affinity does or will support. It is not obvious to me how best to do this, or even how much of it Affinity should try to support in each of the apps in the Affinity range.

 

I am interested in hearing suggestions about better ways to do this, but I think all the above considerations have to be a part of it; otherwise it is somewhat pointless.

 

Make sense?

[MikeW]

All I am yammering about is the Typography Panel. I am not talking about the Character Panel.

 

Thank you for the link. The Typography Panel at the link is a positive example of what I have been saying.

 

Notice in the screen shot below from the link, that while the text frame has no numerals in it, one could turn on the Old Style Figures. Now, it would not format anything until one typed numerals. They would then be OSF numerals as you type them.

 

 

As well, one could turn on one or another of the stylistic sets, but until one of the characters typed was present in that chosen stylistic set, there would be no difference in characters. The same applies to the subject of this thread, the discretionary ligatures (called a silly term, Special Ligatures on that panel).

 

The point is, those features when the Typography Panel is opened doesn't rely upon the text string containing those features. It reads the font and allows choices. This is exactly how InDesign for the Mac or PC works. (And CorelDraw, And ...)

 

Which makes sense because who wants to open the Typography Panel after setting text just to see if there are any OT features available and then scan through all the text to see what feature(s) do what to their text?

[R C-R]

I need to do some more testing but I think what you are talking about are bugs in the Typography panel, not its intended design. At least on my Mac the panel is very buggy -- for example, turning on superscript for a selected word in the Character panel works fine, but doing the same thing in the Typography panel only superscripts some but not all characters in the word.

 

As for the silly term "special ligatures," I think that choice was made because (as I understand it) "discretionary ligatures" is an Open Type term, but the Apple panel historically applies to all font types, for example to Zapfino, which as supplied on Macs is a TT font.

[MikeW]

I am referring to how it functions--or not. But not about bugs such as you mention.

 

Just compare the two. The screen shot from your link I reposted and AD's Typography Panel The are similar but function differently in that the one I reposted list all possible OT features in the font and one can activate them whether or not the particular text string has those features in it.

 

This is my last post in this thread.

 

Mike

[R C-R]

Just compare the two. The screen shot from your link I reposted and AD's Typography Panel The are similar but function differently in that the one I reposted list all possible OT features in the font and one can activate them whether or not the particular text string has those features in it.

It does not work like that on my Mac. When using the Apple Typography panel, I have to select the text for the feature to show up in the panel & give me the option to apply it to the selected text. Note in the Apple article that it says, "Select the text you want to modify, then select the option you are looking for from the Typography window." It is not 'global' across all of the text, if that is what you mean, & the feature list does change depending on what text is selected.

 

This is the same way the Affinity panel works except that sometimes a feature (not just ligatures) does not show up when I have selected text that could use it, or it does not apply it correctly when it does show up & I try to apply it. This seems to vary depending on the font, but I am not certain of that.

[Alfred]

It does not work like that on my Mac. When using the Apple Typography panel, I have to select the text for the feature to show up in the panel & give me the option to apply it to the selected text.

 

Are you saying that the screenshot in your link does not correspond to what you see on your Mac? Do you only see an 'Oldstyle Figures' option if your text sample includes numerals?

[R C-R]

Are you saying that the screenshot in your link does not correspond to what you see on your Mac? Do you only see an 'Oldstyle Figures' option if your text sample includes numerals?

Initially, the Apple Typography panel always shows all applicable feature sections collapsed for the currently selected font, but yes, if the font includes Oldstyle Figures & I expand the appropriate category (which could be "Number Case" or simply "Oldstyle Figures" depending on the font) it shows that option, whether or not the text sample includes numbers. Clicking that option applies it to any new text I type & to apply that style to any existing numeric text, I have to select the text & click the option again.

 

This is the same way the Affinity panel works with the "Show all font features" box checked, except there is no Glyph Variants sections and it is very buggy -- trying to change fonts hangs the app for up to 10 or more seconds at a time, the feature may be applied to selected existing text erratically or not at all, & sometimes features that the font does include are greyed out & can't be enabled or disabled, whether or not I have selected any text they could be applied to. It also does not behave the same way every time for any specific font.

 

Also, the Apple panel seems to have a few bugs of its own: if the text includes multiple fonts & I have selected a sample containing both of them, the panel just collapses & says "Multiple fonts are currently selected." That's OK but it also does that when I select two adjacent words & a single space between them, all using only one of the fonts. The Affinity panel does not collapse & show a 'multiple fonts' message in that case, but it still applies selected features erratically.

 

There was a 'jitter' bug in the Affinity font select feature which they corrected for the Font selector in the Context toolbar, but they have acknowledged that it still exists in the Character panel. Together with the various erratic behaviors in the Typography panel & the hangs when selecting fonts when it is open suggest to me that all this is is due to bugs in the Affinity typography implementation (& possibly in the underlying Apple implementation), not because of poor design choices.