Hindi font problems

[Magic Sunray]

2020 and seemingly still no solution for this minor problem. It’s just a simple question of recognizing the Devanagari ligitures.

Instead of displaying correctly (Platform: mac OS; Application: Simply every app ever on mac OS, here TextEdit; Font: Google-Fonts Baloo 2; syllable to be displayed: "kscham"):

it shows(Affinity Designer 1.8.1, late March 2020):

The problem could be identified as a false handling of Open Type implemented ligatures resp. of false interpretation or omitting of the so called zero width joiner (Unicode codepoint U+200D).

Dear Affinity Team, could you please please fix that issue after three years of users asking. Thanks a lot for your efforts in advance!

Edited March 22, 2020 by Magic Sunray
typo

[PVPVPVPVPV]

Hello, it's March 2020, over 3 years since the bug was reported.

I've just purchased Affinity Photo and that also has the same bug. Designer already does.

Do you have plans to fix this in the near future? Otherwise I'll look into another program. Thanks.

[SLMc]

I'm having the same issue and it has not been fixed. I'm having to create the correct spelling by editing the nodes which then I can no longer edit the word as text after... very time consuming. This is frustrating and disappointing to see this thread has been going on for almost 3 years and still no fix.

[Abhishek Sachan]

did anyone found any temporary fix or workaround? Its really frustrating to be limited on a bug which is open from past 3 years??

[Pranab]

These 

On 8/30/2020 at 9:51 PM, Abhishek Sachan said:

did anyone found any temporary fix or workaround? Its really frustrating to be limited on a bug which is open from past 3 years??

These guys are not at all interested in solving this bug cause it relates to certain languages. Pathetic service. No point complaining about it. 

[kenmcd]

On 8/31/2020 at 9:12 PM, Pranab said:

These guys are not at all interested in solving this bug cause it relates to certain languages.

Are you implying this issue exists because of racism?
So "you better fix this bug or you're a racist"?
Disgusting.

 

[Venkat_M]

Somebody respond to these queries with responsibility. Font is such a very important thing in creating content. By dragging this sensitive issue for so long as 3+ years gives bad impression to anybody who reads this post. You are creating product for users to use them and we who bought your product with so much trust are loosing faith when we see your hopeless silence. This doesn't look good. This is an age where new product take on other products in no time. Quality and responsibility only builds faith in users but this is not happening with you people. Totally disappointed with Affinity.

Venkat.

[Ashwin Rawat]

Its sad to see Indic languages not getting any love from dev. 

A quick workaround in affinity designer is to use View > Studio > Gylph Browser for light work. I wouldn't rely on it for heavy work. You're better off using Microsoft Publisher for Indic languages. 

[shailendramishra]

On 4/13/2018 at 2:40 PM, Chris B said:

I'm afraid not. The bug report has been 'postponed' which generally means a fix will be released for a big update or new app, such as Publisher. 

Hi Chris,
After the release of Publisher still facing the same with Hindi & other Indic fonts.

In all the three software of Affinity (Photos, Designer & Publisher)

[Nilasus]

Please add hindi or devanagari support to Affinity, there are a lot of people that type in hindi myself included and not having the ability to type the correct characters renders the software useless in those scenarios.For example typing things like वृत्तयः (vṛttayaḥ) which need the ability to merge letters. Right now we get वृततयः which is not properly written. 

Thanks

[Pranab]

Not to worry friend. This is year No.4 since the day i have been following this post. But, no resolution yet. So, dont worry about it, its not going to get resolved ever. Closed chapter. At least there was a guy Chris B who used acknowledge the issue in the beginning. Alas, seems like he has quit.

[Alfred]

32 minutes ago, Pranab said:

At least there was a guy Chris B who used acknowledge the issue in the beginning. Alas, seems like he has quit.

No, Chris is still around (and still following this thread). Presumably he simply has nothing new to say about the issue.

[Pranab]

On 9/2/2020 at 9:51 PM, LibreTraining said:

Are you implying this issue exists because of racism?
So "you better fix this bug or you're a racist"?
Disgusting.

 

I am not implying these guys are racist. I meant, since the issue only pertains to certain languages which are used by minority of the users, the developers wont pay heed.

[Pranab]

13 minutes ago, Alfred said:

No, Chris is still around (and still following this thread). Presumably he simply has nothing new to say about the issue.

At least he could try to acknowledge it in different ways.

[Alfred]

11 minutes ago, Pranab said:

At least he could try to acknowledge it in different ways.

What ‘different ways’ do you suggest? It’s clear that Serif lacks the necessary in-house expertise to solve the problems presented by Indic languages, and merely acknowledging the problem isn’t going to change that fact.

[Pranab]

24 minutes ago, Alfred said:

What ‘different ways’ do you suggest? It’s clear that Serif lacks the necessary in-house expertise to solve the problems presented by Indic languages, and merely acknowledging the problem isn’t going to change that fact.

Frankly my comment was sarcastic. But that's a great suggestion from you there. Someone could officially acknowledge that they lack the necessary expertise to solve the problem and close this thread once and for all. Sarcasm apart, i really did hope they will rectify this in due time, but unfortunately nothing has happened in 4 years.

[Nilasus]

1 hour ago, Pranab said:

Frankly my comment was sarcastic. But that's a great suggestion from you there. Someone could officially acknowledge that they lack the necessary expertise to solve the problem and close this thread once and for all. Sarcasm apart, i really did hope they will rectify this in due time, but unfortunately nothing has happened in 4 years.

I don't get it, India has 560 million internet users and the second largest population on earth, how is that not a good market for hindi support? Also I think these things are already developed in open source programs and might be easier than people think, you don't have to invent the wheel. I really hope this gets some more attention and if anyone else is interested lets request it more. I have many friends that wouldn't switch to Affinity ONLY because of this feature (they work on publishing and many on hindi texts). 

[Patrick Connor]

On 9/2/2020 at 5:21 PM, LibreTraining said:

Are you implying this issue exists because of racism?
So "you better fix this bug or you're a racist"?
Disgusting.

We absolutely did not take the comment from Pranab this way, and even if the OP had suggested we could be racist that does not make the statement "Disgusting", merely inaccurate. But as I said he was not saying that. Please temper your language and accusations.

To all readers.

I think it is fair to say we currently do not have the expertise to deal with this issue completely. However even if Serif staff had more skills in this area and understanding of the specific problems, even though you might think we would have tried to address this faster, to be honest we still may not have. We are not sitting twiddling our joint programming fingers and thumbs, and the work that is being done is important to many, many customers too. In 1.9 alone Package functionality, PDF Passthrough, Data Merge etc all appealed to many existing and new users. Serif are not ignoring you and doing everything else in preference, but we are perhaps doing more of what we have the skills to execute quickly. Sorry to disappoint.

[Nilasus]

3 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

We absolutely did not take the comment from Pranab this way, and even if the OP had suggested we could be racist that does not make the statement "Disgusting", merely inaccurate. But as I said he was not saying that. Please temper your language and accusations.

To all readers.

I think it is fair to say we currently do not have the expertise to deal with this issue completely. However even if Serif staff had more skills in this area and understanding of the specific problems, even though you might think we would have tried to address this faster, to be honest we still may not have. We are not sitting twiddling our joint programming fingers and thumbs, and the work that is being done is important to many, many customers too. In 1.9 alone Package functionality, PDF Passthrough, Data Merge etc all appealed to many existing and new users. Serif are not ignoring you and doing everything else in preference, but we are perhaps doing more of what we have the skills to execute quickly. Sorry to disappoint.

Thank you Patrick, It's understandable to you prioritize and I must say I'm very happy with the software and development overall. It's just that when working with these asian languages I have to go through many other software and do very tedious work to go around it and also I don't know of any software that has dealt with this issue properly either. You guys know if there is any software that allows to type in these fonts and then export a png file with the text only? Maybe this would help some people in the meantime. 

Thank you for taking time to reply!

PD: the racism comment was completely off topic and ungranted btw 

[Pranab]

14 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

To all readers.

I think it is fair to say we currently do not have the expertise to deal with this issue completely. However even if Serif staff had more skills in this area and understanding of the specific problems, even though you might think we would have tried to address this faster, to be honest we still may not have. We are not sitting twiddling our joint programming fingers and thumbs, and the work that is being done is important to many, many customers too. In 1.9 alone Package functionality, PDF Passthrough, Data Merge etc all appealed to many existing and new users. Serif are not ignoring you and doing everything else in preference, but we are perhaps doing more of what we have the skills to execute quickly. Sorry to disappoint.

Fair point. You have your priorities for development. And every feature you add is without a doubt useful for majority of the users, including me. But like @Nilasus pointed out, there's a huge market here in India which uses graphics designing softwares like Adobe Photoshop. But without really liking its over priced status. There are so many hobby users, like myself who don't want to buy a subscription for editing and designing in their past time. And many a times need arises to make use of Indic languages. Seems very unfortunate that affinity lacks this basic support when its an otherwise extensive and wholesome package at a minimal cost. I still hope Serif comes out with some update some day for it when they see the opportunity here. Thanks for the frank comment from you @Patrick Connor.

 

15 hours ago, Nilasus said:

I don't get it, India has 560 million internet users and the second largest population on earth, how is that not a good market for hindi support? Also I think these things are already developed in open source programs and might be easier than people think, you don't have to invent the wheel. I really hope this gets some more attention and if anyone else is interested lets request it more. I have many friends that wouldn't switch to Affinity ONLY because of this feature (they work on publishing and many on hindi texts). 

Exactly what i feel.

14 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

We absolutely did not take the comment from Pranab this way, and even if the OP had suggested we could be racist that does not make the statement "Disgusting", merely inaccurate. But as I said he was not saying that. Please temper your language and accusations.

I already clarified i didn't mean anything of that sort. And i just ignored the rest of the uncalled for comment. 

[nbarman]

This problem has to do with the text rendering engine. I believe that if Affinity were to adopt Apple's default text rendering engine, then the problem of using Unicode fonts with non-Latin scripts would go away entirely.

Note that native Apple apps do not have this problem - Hindi-language text works perfectly with Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Safari, etc. It also works across Microsoft's suite of applications. It's clunkier with Adobe's suite but it does work with InDesign and Photoshop once you have things properly set up. Even Pixelmator, which uses Apple's default text rendering engines, fully supports Hindi-language text.

 For Affinity, doing a complete transplant from an Affinity-created engine to Apple's default engine might be a heavy lift, but maybe there is a way to add a user preference or to add multiple text rendering options? Please at least look into it and come up with some strategy or roadmap...

This problem has to do with the text rendering engine. I believe that if Affinity were to adopt Apple's default text rendering engine, then the problem of using Unicode fonts with non-Latin scripts would go away entirely.

Note that native Apple apps do not have this problem - Hindi-language text works perfectly with Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Safari, etc. It also works across Microsoft's suite of applications. It's clunkier with Adobe's suite but it does work with InDesign and Photoshop once you have things properly set up. Even Pixelmator, which uses Apple's default text rendering engines, fully supports Hindi-language text.

 For Affinity, doing a complete transplant from an Affinity-created engine to Apple's default engine might be a heavy lift, but maybe there is a way to add a user preference or to add multiple text rendering options? Please at least look into it and come up with some strategy or roadmap...

[ArunJRK]

Dear Team,

Any update on this?

I am eagerly waiting for Hindi and Tamil fonts support. Same issue with that too.

[cmathiaz]

Please see my recent posts regarding how to enter Tamil unicode data in Affinity apps! This works only for certain .ttf font types, and not al unicode fontsl