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I just discovered, to my chagrin, that PagePlus X9 doesn't support ligatures, those special characters which, in Open Type fonts, "stand in" for certain letter combinations, usually those involving 'f'. See the png below for an example.

ligature_example.png.4ac10a4d74b015fb319e72335c7c51ce.png

Now, I know that only old-school has-beens like me care about such things, and I also know that there's nothing to be done about (legacy) PagePlus. But InDesign does it with elan, and it would behoove the Affinity team to at least consider doing it in Publisher. It's a nice touch that veritably screams professionalism.

Beginning to believer be, in all things Affinity.

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PagePlus has had good OpenType support ever since X5. Standard, discretionary and required ligatures are certainly supported in PPX9, and I think historical ligatures are as well. Support for OpenType features in the Affinity apps is at least as good as in the ‘Plus’ range.

Alfred spacer.png
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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On 4/11/2018 at 4:58 PM, Alfred said:

Standard, discretionary and required ligatures are certainly supported in PPX9, and I think historical ligatures are as well.

Alas, would that that were true. I've just spent most of the day trying to get PPX9 to save historical ligatures to styles to my great frustration. They just won't "stick." The "Normal" paragraph style will accommodate standard ligatures just fine, but when I base a "Normal OldStyle" paragraph style on it and specify historical ligatures (and Old Style numeric figures) they won't work. The only workaround is to create a new character style based on "Default Paragraph Font" (called "OldStyle Paragraph Font" for what that's worth) with the historical ligatures and old style numerals set, pick either Normal or Normal OldStyle for the paragraph, then select all the text and set it with one of the two character styles. Every time.

I did notice at the very top of the Text Styles dialog a "Styles" link that takes me to a dialog where I can match Paragraph Style to Character Style…but it doesn't work.

I tried with four different Open Type fonts, one by a private party, one Bitstream, one Microsoft and one Adobe. All slightly different configurability, but all with the same results.

I sure hope Publisher does better.

 

Beginning to believer be, in all things Affinity.

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4 hours ago, Leslie Richelle said:

Alas, would that that were true. I've just spent most of the day trying to get PPX9 to save historical ligatures to styles to my great frustration. They just won't "stick."

 

That’s interesting, Leslie. Thanks for sharing the results of your frustrating experiments!

Alfred spacer.png
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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Though I generally do not use the Normal paragraph style for anything in a publication (there's a reason I don't), I just created a new publication and modified Normal to use the hlig, osf and other OT Features and they work as expected just fine here. 

 

Created some other styles, hlig, osf and others "stuck" as part of the definition just fine.

 

May I ask what font you were using, Leslie?

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5 hours ago, MikeW said:

May I ask what font you were using, Leslie?

Libertinus Serif, from Philipp H. Poll; Adobe Caslon Pro, from Adobe; something from Bitstream; and couldn't-possibly-remember-it-was-4:00 am from Microsoft. All current standard Open Type and all had full OT features, like historic ligatures.

I finally un- and re-installed the program; no change on the problem document. Took your tack and started from scratch--so far so good. At some point something will break, or I'll end up importing text/images from the delinquent doc (which will probably break something but might be educational).

This would all be fascinating and entertaining if I weren't trying to write something!

Beginning to believer be, in all things Affinity.

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Sounds like something funky in the original document. 

 

I just about never copy/paste directly from one doc to another, especially if one document has funk. Instead I'll copy to a plain text editor, then copy that to my working document. That can remove bugaboos.

 

Thanks for humoring me with the fonts.

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26 minutes ago, MikeW said:

I just about never copy/paste directly from one doc to another, especially if one document has funk. Instead I'll copy to a plain text editor, then copy that to my working document. That can remove bugaboos.

Oh yes, I like that. Copy to Notepad++, then to the new doc. Thanks for the tip.

Beginning to believer be, in all things Affinity.

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1 hour ago, MikeW said:

Thanks for humoring me with the fonts.

 

For what it’s worth, I particularly appreciated the humour of this bit:

 

2 hours ago, Leslie Richelle said:

couldn't-possibly-remember-it-was-4:00 am from Microsoft

 

Alfred spacer.png
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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9 hours ago, MikeW said:

Though I generally do not use the Normal paragraph style for anything in a publication (there's a reason I don't), I just created a new publication and modified Normal to use the hlig, osf and other OT Features and they work as expected just fine here.

But you have to use Normal as the "top" of the hierarchy, correct? I mean, you can't get rid of it and all other styles are ultimately derived from it. (I wonder if corruption in that style is the root of my troubles.) BTW, might I inquire the reason you don't apply Normal to any paragraph in a pub?

Beginning to believer be, in all things Affinity.

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I would have to fire up PP to make sure but even if paragraph style all derive from Normal they are separate style and do not need to be controlled by it.

 

I have Normal set to use Magenta simply for when I import a Word document. It stands out well and I can easily see what needs reset.

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According the the Help utility, Serif had a Better Idea and forced styles into hierarchies (paragraphs under Normal, characters under Default Paragraph Font) so that modifying a style high up the tree will automatically change those under it. I personally find the setup creates far more confusion than it cures, and hope it won't be in APub.

In any case, once I created "Body" (based on Normal) and used that for all my derivatives it seems to be not-yet-broken.

Beginning to believer be, in all things Affinity.

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Yeah, I do a body and others based on it for various styles. I mostly adhere to html designations, like body, h1, h2, etc.

 

I do that mostly because most of my text comes from CMSs. It comes out as tagged text for automatic styling in QXP & ID. It's a pity PP is more hands on. 

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