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Include Variable Fonts


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Why should it not show up? Technically it's just an OpenType font. But the innards have instructions that Affinity applications do not yet understand. 

Affinity applications asks the OS for a list fonts that the OS in turn sends it. That AD is not coded to adjust the axes contained in it isn't important. 

I suspect that eventually Affinity products will support these types of fonts.

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  • 3 years later...
38 minutes ago, voom said:

Is the support for variable fonts on the horizon yet? 

We will know it is on the horizon if/when we see it in a beta.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Font-Technology is developing. Make Variable- and Color-Fonts available, please.

Greetings from Germany

Micha

Please excuse my bad english. I learned it at school over thirty years ago. If you don't use it (regularly), you'll loose it.

Windows 10 & iPadOS: Affinity Suite (v1 and v2), all Workbooks (v1, german language), some content-packages

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21 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

You have stated that you do not use and know nothing about variable fonts

I have never stated that. I have stated that I cannot find a use case for Affinity. Neither can you, apparently, because you cannot come up with one example of how Affinity would use them. Variable fonts are aimed squarely at web development, for use with CSS. 

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4 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

one example of how Affinity would use them. Variable fonts are aimed squarely at web development, for use with CSS. 

They may be aimed there, but are you saying that if Affinity supported them, they could not be used in generating PDF files or in printing directly from Affinity? That is, that the only place they work is on the web?

If they were supported, would it perhaps make font management easier for the users who need/want to use them for other purposes? And for users who would not need to worry as much about which version of a font they install?

Or for users who use them in other applications, such as LibreOffice, and want to import the .docx files they created there?

Aren't all of those, in some sense, "use cases"?

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

they could not be used in generating PDF files

PDF does not support variable fonts.

6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

printing directly from Affinity

Printing directly from Affinity is often discouraged in these forums.

10 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

in other applications, such as LibreOffice, and want to import the .docx files

Great. So you bring them into Affinity apps, and where do you output them to? Unless you wish to encourage the use of printing directly from Affinity apps I don't see what you are going to do with them.

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7 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

PDF does not support variable fonts

Thanks. I missed that.

7 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Unless you wish to encourage the use of printing directly from Affinity apps I don't see what you are going to do with them.

I'm perfectly happy printing at home, and I'm sure many non-commercial users are, too.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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  • 5 months later...

Also really wanting support for variable fonts.

My use case is I have a lot of variable fonts installed and I'd like to be able to choose them from inside Affinity Designer and then choose from the various axis parameters (e.g. bold, slant, whatever) and have it render properly in Affinity so I can convert to curves.

Right now I'm limited to whatever pre-set combinations of static fonts were exported by the variable font vendor which I then have to install probably to find it's not the combination I want.

If the axis work is too much then at a minimum listing the variable fonts correctly with the various weights calculated correctly like Wordpad, Paint, Notepad would be something. Right now Affinity packages show the same font name X number of times but with "Light" over and over unlike those apps mentioned which correctly show a number of preset weights for the variable font.

Edited by DamienG
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  • 2 months later...

Have to put my two cents in here. This issue is at least 4 years old, judging from the first report. Other programs work, most notably Photoshop and various word processors. Therefore: 1.) Either Serif doesn't know how to fix it, or 2.) They don't want to. So, Serif should acknowledge such & let everyone know, as in, "We can't fix it, and don't care". Just live with it people. End of story. 

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  • 4 months later...
  • 11 months later...

One year later still waiting for this:

Variable fonts allow users fine control over typographic  properties such as weight and width, beyond what regular fonts can do. 

I hope Affinity can finally support them. 

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28 minutes ago, kemie said:

 

Variable fonts allow users fine control over typographic  properties such as weight and width, beyond what regular fonts can do. 

 

Can you show us an example in both variants? I can't judge the importance of the variable font feature.

24" iMAC Apple M1 chip, iPad 8, MACOS Sonoma & iPadOS, Affinity V2-Universallizenz 

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J3rry, 

In both weight and width, variable fonts allow you to control those values beyond the presets, so if you think the bold is to bold and the semibold too thin, you can set the weight somewhere in the middle. But variable fonts allow you to control more things, such as optical sizing, the length of serifs.

 

Recursive Sans is a great example of what can be done: IT allows you to control weight, slant, "casualness" and "monospaceness"

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