JanT Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 Hello, I'm new to the Affinity product base but have purchased and am starting to use Affinity Designer. One issue I am running into out of the gate is trouble accessing various characters of Open Type fonts. Particularly those not mapped to Unicode. For example, I am currently working with the Antonietta font, which is partly mapped and partly not. While many of the alternates do not show up on some character maps that I use, I am able to access them via Stylistic Sets in AD. However, there are also characters that are not assigned to Stylistic Sets, nor are mapped, that I am unable to access. I know they are there as I can see them in a glyph gallery listing, and I can see them via Glyph Mode in MainType's character map, however they have no codepoint. That, in conjunction with the fact that there is no character map in AD, means I am unable to access to them and bring them into the workspace. Is there something I'm missing that would allow me to access these unmapped characters? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted February 22, 2017 Share Posted February 22, 2017 It doesn't matter whether they are mapped or not. Each alternate glyph is stuffed into a stylistic set. So, type a longish phrase. If you open the Typography panel and move the cursor on character at a time with the arrow key(s), you will notice on some characters, what stylistic set(s) have alternate characters for the particular glyph that the cursor is at will change. so for instance, the uppercase P has alternates in 3 stylistic sets. None of those uppercase P characters are mapped but available in AD. The lowercase n has more alternates and if you highlight the lowercase n character, you will see the available alternate sets like this: But in one sense, you are luck with the Antonietta font in that all the alternates are available in various stylistic sets. That font also has the Access All Alternates OpenType feature (aalt). Some western connecting script fonts do not have all alternates in a stylistic set like Antonietta does. And in AD, aalt simply doesn't work properly--or at least my idea of properly. So using the lowercase n as an example, the possible selections appear like this in the OT code: n.ss01 n.ss02 n.ss03 n.ss05 n.ss06 n.ss08 n.ss09 n.ss15 n.ss18 n.ss19 Notice the font author was wonderfully consistent in the naming of the aternates unlike some font authors. The alternates are named according to the stylistic sets they also appear in. The text list above of the alternates aligns with the screen shot above for the available alternates in both the aalt feature and the respect stylistic sets. CorelDraw has the best method of using alternates no matter where they appear in various OT features. So in CorelDraw, if I highlight the lowercase n character, this is what CD displays: In my opinion, this is a more intuitive method. In any case, it does work as designed. Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JanT Posted February 22, 2017 Author Share Posted February 22, 2017 It doesn't matter whether they are mapped or not. Each alternate glyph is stuffed into a stylistic set. Hi Mike :) Typically what you describe would be true, however in this case it is not. As I stated in my original post, there are glyphs in this font that are not assigned to a stylistic set, nor is there a HEX code available for them, which is why I brought up the fact that they are not mapped. So, unfortunately, there is no way to access them in AD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted February 22, 2017 Share Posted February 22, 2017 What is the name of the glyph? I'll look it up. Also, which actual font from the family are you using? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted February 22, 2017 Share Posted February 22, 2017 Jan--I cannot remember whether MT displays glyph names or not. So if not, take a screen shot of the glyph in MT so I can find it. Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JanT Posted February 22, 2017 Author Share Posted February 22, 2017 MIke,I am using the Antonietta Script Pro file. Not sure why the font was set up this way, the majority of alternates are fine, but these last few glyphs were not assigned to any stylistic set. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted February 22, 2017 Share Posted February 22, 2017 Ah, thanks for your patience. I should have scrolled all the way down through the font. Yes, those few glyphs have no access in Affinity applications. Once Serif provides a glyphs panel, hopefully it will list all glyphs in a font. Of the 12 glyphs in the screen shot, 2 are accessible depending upon the OS language and or language set on text. The last one is simply a mark that gets applied under certain language situations. I am afraid you will need to await a glyphs panel to access such glyphs unless you can persuade Latinotype to edit the font. With as few in this font that are not used in a set, they could easily add the facility to swap out another character for these. Some font authors will gladly do so, others will tell you they are accessible in other applications and not edit the font. BTW, there are a total of 489 glyphs that have no codepoint in this font. It's just that 479 of them are used in an OpenType Feature and 10 of the last 12 are not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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