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3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

In Affinity, "passthrough" is a layer blend mode that simply sets a group layer to have no special blend properties of its own.

 

That’s true, but since we’re talking about PDF passthrough I don’t think it’s relevant here.

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1 minute ago, Alfred said:

That’s true, but since we’re talking about PDF passthrough I don’t think it’s relevant here.

What I meant was "PDF passthrough" in Adobe products has nothing to do with layer blend modes so it is irrelevant here.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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7 minutes ago, R C-R said:

What I meant was "PDF passthrough" in Adobe products has nothing to do with layer blend modes so it is irrelevant here.

 

That’s what I meant, too!

 

Are you still confused? I am!!

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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2 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Are you still confused?

Perpetually!

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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22 hours ago, Fixx said:

 

Embedded fonts editing is great, but OP needed just to have PDF as passthrough. I would think it is readily available feature in PDF code libraries as it just does not have to do anything but display a PDF as it is.

In adobeland this is solved by having two apps: if you want to edit a PDF you open it with Illustrator, and if you want passthrough you drop it to InDy. 

Maybe passthrough will come with Publisher... *wish*

As others have said, in order to draw the PDF at all we have to interpret it and turn it into the primitives that we can draw. The additional step of making it editable doesn't really lose anything in fidelity. If we do add a "Place non-editable" option, it will have the same issues with embedded fonts etc. The PDF specification is huge and there will probably always be parts of it we can't decode. We have supported embedded fonts before, with PagePlus, and we will do so in Affinity at some point, but probably not for years. Given the workaround is just to install the fonts, and we have so much other stuff to do with Publisher etc, it is not at the top of our todo list. I'm sorry, but that's the situation.

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5 minutes ago, Dave Harris said:

We have supported embedded fonts before, with PagePlus, and we will do so in Affinity at some point, but probably not for years.

 

Given that you did it for PagePlus, Dave, you obviously know how to do it! This is in stark contrast to support for RTL languages, where you had to enlist the help of Winsoft International to create a Middle East edition of PPX5 supporting Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, etc. So although it’s completely understandable that RTL support in the Affinity apps is years away, it’s very disappointing to read that the same applies to support for embedded fonts. The workaround of installing the fonts is fine if they’re free or low-cost, but I’m sure you’re aware that many commercial fonts are quite expensive and can only be shared for document revision via editable embedding.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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1 minute ago, Fixx said:

So the situation is that seemingly simple task of placing a PDF that all layout apps + Microsoft Word + Apple Pages (and Libre Office though badly) can do is not so simple after all.

 

If it were simple, there would be no reason for LibreOffice to do it badly. ;)

 

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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And would it be difficult to take the glyph information from the font embedded in a PDF and render the glyph shapes as curves into the Affinity Document when the PDF is placed? When you don’t need to edit a placed PDF, this option would at least provide a workaround for the missing fonts problem … hmm … :/

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1 hour ago, Alfred said:

The workaround of installing the fonts is fine if they’re free or low-cost, but I’m sure you’re aware that many commercial fonts are quite expensive and can only be shared for document revision via editable embedding.

Let us not forget that the licenses for some commercial fonts prohibit "sharing" them via embedding them in documents or require anyone who wants to revise or edit such documents to have purchased their own license. Considering the current uncertain state of copyright laws around the world & such things as the U.S. DMCA, it may be that Serif now has to consider the legal implications of proving software that could be used to circumvent those licensing provisions. :(

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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3 hours ago, R C-R said:

it may be that Serif now has to consider the legal implications of [providing] software that could be used to circumvent those licensing provisions

 

I don't think Serif has ever provided, and I don't imagine they would ever provide, software that could be used to circumvent licensing provisions. The PDF import feature in PagePlus and other 'Plus' software products only works with PDF files whose flags are set to allow content extraction for editing, and the 'Save as Package' feature excludes any fonts.whose embedding licensing rights are restricted.

 

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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If someone doesn't have (or desire to obtain) pdfToolbox or Acrobat, one should be able to use GhostScript to convert a PDF's text to curves. One would download and install GS, make sure it is in the search path on the computer, write a little batch file to convert the text and rewrite the PDF. I would suggest using a folder on the desktop and put the batch file into it. Any PDFs found in that folder and the batch file ran would be converted.

 

I do this for a different purpose using GS. What commands are used and what form that batch file is, is OS dependent (I think).

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7 hours ago, A_B_C said:

And would it be difficult to take the glyph information from the font embedded in a PDF and render the glyph shapes as curves into the Affinity Document when the PDF is placed? When you don’t need to edit a placed PDF, this option would at least provide a workaround for the missing fonts problem … hmm … :/

That's the same problem. The glyph shapes need a lot of work to decode them.

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2 hours ago, haakoo said:

FileTest2.pdf will load but the font will be substituted(unless you would have the font installed)

FilTest2_result will load but all will be a single image/layer

 

Is this what the OP is after?

 

If so,make an conversion before it is imported/opened in Photo with XnViewMP

 

FileTest2.pdf

FileTest_result_1.pdf

 

Your file:

FileTest_result_1.pdf

Is missing a little detail, isn't it? It's also a low-res image now.

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Yep, I know Xn can do it, haakoo...I have it installed. Nice to see you around here as well as at TG, btw. Oh, I also hadn't seen that font in use for a long time. I had to dig it out of my archive and add it to my managed fonts. No idea if/when I'll use it again!

 

If the goal is to flatten to an image, all PDF editors (and some PDF viewers) can do so as well.

 

If the OP or anyone wanting to do this and retain vectors as vectors (be they fonts or other elements) in a current Affinity product but eschew the "layers," created, they can convert the type itself to vector using GS, pdfToolbox or Acrobat (I have no idea about other PDF editors), open the converted file in say AD, group everything, then copy that and paste into the working document.

 

That is, until such time as AD/APhoto/APub can use pass-through.

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