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Best choice(s) as replacements for missing fonts?


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As most Affinity users know, when you open a file that includes fonts not installed on your system, you have the option of choosing a replacement font family & style for the missing ones. From what I can tell, the Affinity apps don't offer users much help with making the best replacement choices, nor do I expect them to.

 

Consequently, I am curious about how other users make these choices, & if or when they decide to add fonts to replace the missing ones.

 

For example, as mentioned in this post, I installed the Calibri font family included in the OP's .rar file so I could see if I could duplicate his issue. According to Wikipedia, this is a proprietary font family that I am not licensed to use so I deleted it from my Mac. That left me wondering what font family would be the best replacement for it. Wikipedia mentions that the Google "Crosextra font" Carlito is "metrically compatible" with Calibri, so it seems a good choice. I could download a version of Carlito with a SIL Open Font License from here if I that was important to me, which it is not. Otherwise, I could download Lato from Google fonts or just make do with some other sans-serif font I already have installed that is roughly the same.

 

That is all well & good but the point is the research to discover the above took a fair amount of time, & it would likely be the same or longer for any other font. So ... any suggestions on how to avoid that?

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
Affinity Photo 
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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Personally? I usually obtain the source files which includes fonts.

 

I don't open (for editing) a PDF if I do not have the proper fonts & those fonts are important to the job. I'll either purchase the fonts (and bill the client) or have the client supply those fonts. The preceding also applies to applications that do utilize embedded fonts.

 

If the client doesn't care what fonts are used per se, I'll more or less do what you have done in sourcing compatible fonts, run the choices by the client and use what they pick. As for the choices I come up with, that depends on the font(s) in question. If there are unique characteristics about the font(s) in question, it takes a bit more time to make selections. But otherwise most fonts used in copy have similar traits to others and that makes the task easier.

 

If I need to correct something in the PDF that is non-font related, I'll use pdfToolbox to convert the type to curves, then import the PDF into whatever I am using to make whatever corrections/changes are needed. The preceding also applies to applications that do utilize embedded fonts. (This repetition is intentional.)

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