Colour Fonts - OpenType-SVG

[lacerto]

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[Guest]

Just bumping this thread as I'm finding that both colour and variable fonts are increasingly entering my workflow. Not being able to work with them in Affinity products seems like a massive oversight for a suite of modern, professional design tools. FWIW both Sketch and Pixelmator have both implemented (albeit varying) support for both variable and colour fonts, and of course A___e still have varying support for both across their suite of applications.

[Jonatan_Ronsholdt]

Colour fonts are needed NOW! Can't be true that you can't use emojies... Come on Affinity! ☹️

[lmarcos]

Now I have some use cases for color fonts and I can't use them with Affinity. Is there any guesstimation it will be considered in a future release?

[MichaDE]

Hello Affinity, 

we're in 2021 now. 🙂 

Take a look at this great color-font: https://liebefonts.com/fonts/liebeheide

 

[William Overington]

The following thread might be of interest.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/128285-colour-fonts-and-affinity-products/

From the third post on there is a workaround such that, to some extent, one can use at least some colour fonts in at least one Affinity product.

William

 

[MichaDE]

19 hours ago, William Overington said:

The following thread might be of interest.

 

Hi William!

Thank your for your link. But it's not working for me. 😪

The Color-Font I want to use ("LiebeHeide") is not using SVG-Files inside. The designer uses PNG-Files, to make use of the ballpoint-look. Using bitmaps in a font-file is totally fine.

While Affinity is generally not supporting color-fonts at this time, other programs do... So please, Affinity, help!

 

[Alfred]

19 minutes ago, MichaDE said:

The Color-Font I want to use ("LiebeHeide") is not using SVG-Files inside. The designer uses PNG-Files, to make use of the ballpoint-look. Using bitmaps in a font-file is totally fine.

Using bitmaps means that there are no vector outlines available for display.

[kenmcd]

2 hours ago, MichaDE said:

Hi William!

Thank your for your link. But it's not working for me. 😪

The Color-Font I want to use ("LiebeHeide") is not using SVG-Files inside. The designer uses PNG-Files, to make use of the ballpoint-look. Using bitmaps in a font-file is totally fine.

While Affinity is generally not supporting color-fonts at this time, other programs do... So please, Affinity, help!

 

Probably only works in LibreOffice on the Mac.
Does not work on LibreOffice on Windows; did not test but it probably also does not work in LO on Linux.

Did you try to print or Export to PDF?
This is an SBIX font and Harfbuzz in the past did not support or even read the sbix table inside a font.
That may have changed. Dunno.
Test the Export to PDF and see what happens.

This font also includes an SVG table - which appears to only hold copies of the bitmaps, no vectors.
Do not know how many apps can actually see or use this SVG table.

The Source Code Pro fonts from Adobe recently included an experimental SVG table with colored glyphs as a test.
This broke the fonts in too many applications so they took it back out.

SBIX fonts do include vector outlines which you cannot see or use.
The outlines are used for spacing, kerning, etc. - because the character images are just basically a box.
Because these invisible vector outlines reside in the tables where the real outlines usually reside, there can be no vector fallback.

I guess we actually found another use for SBIX fonts.
So now they are good for two things - color emojis and fake handwriting.

Both of which can be, and are, done by Color-SVG fonts.

[marcisol]

Hello everyone

Just wanted to add to the voices, please can support to colour-svg fonts be included in Affinity (for Windows but also in all other platforms). I'm finding my workflow includes them more and more, and by principle I don't want to go back to Photoshop

[Nita Reed]

I would love to see this!

 

[Deluxe]

Let me say I'm surprised something like Serif isn't supporting this yet...

[William Overington]

14 minutes ago, Deluxe said:

Let me say I'm surprised something like Serif isn't supporting this yet...

Well, I remember with PagePlus that requests were sought for PagePlus X3 and OpenType support was suggested. PagePlus X3 arrived, yet no OpenType support. However, when PagePlus X5 arrived, OpenType support was included, very thoroughly done.

So, it might be that behind the scenes, with commercial confidentiality, that colour fonts are being implemented.

Maybe, maybe not. Support for the idea from customers may help it get done sooner rather than later, but we do not know.

I hope that if/when it is done that it will be possible to export in colour to PDF. That may need the Affinity software to extract layer information from the font file and produce the PDF using a stack of monochrome layers, maybe making some internal fonts for the purpose. Quite a big ask, but then Serif does have some very talented programmers on the staff.

William

 

[Deluxe]

I hope so  I can even open the free Paint.net and use the ones with complex SVG images without issues... but I would rather use on Serif. Maybe one day

Edited June 17, 2021 by Deluxe

[lacerto]

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[kenmcd]

On 6/18/2021 at 12:33 AM, Lagarto said:

Could you have a look on the attached PDF exported from macOS Word to shed some light on why exporting this font varies so greatly, e.g. succeeds when exporting to EPS but fails when rasterizing directly to bitmap formats, and fails when exporting to PDF when using LO, and is rasterized without font embedding when exporting to PDF from QXP and Pages; also: why are there OS differences, e.g. Word (latest Office 365) does not even list the font on Windows (as does not LO), but works without problems on macOS -- yet Photoshop (and probably QuarkXPress that officially supports color fonts) can handle the font also on Windows, as does VectorStyler (though currently with errors). The file also contains a sample typeset in Gilbert Color, which is vectorized, yet there is font embedded in the PDF -- why? EDIT: As the attached PDF opens just fine in Affinity apps it is obvious that embedded font is not basically needed to render LiebeHeide, either, but it just has bounding boxes showing the original font metrics (glyph boxes), so when QuarkXPress and Pages do not embed the font, they probably do the "right thing". 

Wow. Lots of questions - for most of which I have no specific answers.
There are multiple pieces of the puzzle which all have to fit together in each OS, each application, and each library for it to "work."
And I say "work" in quotes because just having something appear on the page does not mean it all actually works 100%.

For example, in your PDF the LiebeHeide is a series of images, and the Color Fonts is a series of shapes.
There is no text at all.
So there is no search, and there is no spellcheck, and there is no cut-and-paste, and there is no text import.
Is that "color font support?"

So what is happening?
Support has to be available at each point - the OS, the shaping engine, the text engine, the PDF library, etc.
So for your PDF example - MacOS supports the font type, Word on Mac is probably using its shaper and text engine, and output is via the Quartz PDF library. BUT the PDF library is only getting what the text engine is sending - images and shapes.
So it "works" kinda sorta.
To work 100% it should also have a text layer.
That is possible, but obviously not happening.
So the Apple half-solution looks like something vs. nothing.
IMO it is just a hack.
And pretending to embed the fonts is just dumb.

Contrast that with LO on Windows.
Windows does not support those font types.
The Windows DirectWrite text engine does not support those font types.
LibreOffice does not support those font types, because the Harfbuzz shaper does not support them, and it needs DirectWrite.
And probably its old PDFlib version does not support them.
So it is not going to happen any time soon.

So Affinity can use some of the pieces available on the MacOS.
And Affinity can use some of the pieces available on Windows.
And Affinity would have to make its shaper support those font types, and then feed the PDF library what it needs.
The 3rd-party PDF library may need to be updated to support more than just dumping images and shapes as "text."

Still having actual text can be done.
For example, some of the old documents on Archive.org which have been OCR'ed have an invisible text layer over the original image.
They use a special font which has no visible outlines.
So you can search the text, highlight the text, bookmark the text, copy the text, etc.
Something like this would need to be done with some of the various color formats to have actual 100% text support.

Keep in mind that the shaping engine needs to be expanded every time a new font format is added (which includes new tables).
Each color font format needs extensive programming to support its particular features.
Adding one color format would be a lot of work (done right, not just dumping images and shapes).
Multiple color font formats would multiply that work.
I would like to see SVG-in-OpenType first.

So to summarize - all of the pieces have to be available in each situation.
OS support, shaper support, text engine support, PDF library support, application support.
In each of your questions/examples above you have a different combination of these factors.
They all have to be available, and all have to come together, or "no color font support."

 

[lacerto]

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[LiebeFonts]

Dear Affinity,

I am happy to see my LiebeHeide font popping up as a reference for OpenType-SVG so often in this thread.
Please let me know if I can be of any help. I am happy to provide test files, try to find workarounds, tweaking the tables, … in order to get the font displayed in Affinity products.

Despides me being a big fan of Affinity, I also get a lot of request from customers, that would love to use my LiebeHeide font in your apps. So I am more than willing to support you in this mission! 🚀
(drop me a line ich@liebefonts.com)

[MichaDE]

@Dave Harris and @Pauls: 

Ulrike (@LiebeFonts), the type-designer of “LiebeHeide”, is offering support on this issue. Just in case you missed that thread. 🙂

[Xyphien]

On 2/8/2018 at 6:50 AM, Leigh said:

It's been requested a few times in the feature request section. We currently have no plans to support them but it could be something that's added in the future.

 

 

Of course you don't, because why would you add anything worthwhile to this program.

[R C-R]

26 minutes ago, Xyphien said:

Of course you don't, because why would you add anything worthwhile to this program.

They have added quite a few worthwhile things to the 1.9 versions of the apps.

[Daniel_S]

Is the Color fonts Support in Affinity Designer on Windows 11 yet? If yes, How can I use them?

Thank you

[Old Bruce]

3 hours ago, Daniel_S said:

Is the Color fonts Support in Affinity Designer on Windows 11 yet? If yes, How can I use them?

No they are not supported.

[lacerto]

On 6/8/2022 at 2:58 PM, Daniel_S said:

Is the Color fonts Support in Affinity Designer on Windows 11 yet? If yes, How can I use them?

OpenType-SVG is not supported in Affinity apps either on Windows or macOS, but on Windows Microsoft COLR format (which is a vector format) is supported on both platforms, and on macOS also the SBIX format (which is a bitmap format) is supported. On both systems you can use built-in color emoji fonts (on Windows Segoe UI Emoji, available also on macOS if you have Microsoft Office, and on macOS Apple Color Emoji), but I do not think that there are many useful color fonts available in these formats, or in OpenType-SVG or CBDT (Google, bitmap) color formats, either.

I have not checked, but I think COLR format is supported on Windows starting from version 8.1, Windows 10 and 11 definitely support them on system level, but not even all Microsoft Office apps (Windows versions) support color versions of COLR fonts (e.g. current Windows version of Excel only supports b/w fallback versions, but Word supports the color versions).

OpenType-SVG would probably be most useful format (supporting both vectors and bitmaps). The screenshot above shows how the COLR font glyphs (only supported on Windows version of Affinity apps) can be converted to curves and accordingly edited however wished without loss of quality.

UPDATE: Version COLRv1 (supporting vector gradients and used e.g. in the Noto Color Emoji) is not yet supported in Affinity apps. Version 1, also supporting variable fonts, actually seems to be the most promising color font technology, and Google Chrome already supports it.

UPDATE: Contary to what I first wrote, COLR format is supported also in the macOS versions of Affinity apps, corrections made accordingly in text above.