Friksel Posted August 15, 2018 Share Posted August 15, 2018 For some fonts problems arise in Designer in the font style dropdown. As you can see in the images below Windows shows the several types of the Bahnschrift-font the correct way, but in Designer there's only a list full of 'Regular's for this font. The font is included in the attachments. Bahnschrift Bold Condensed.otf uncoy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted August 15, 2018 Share Posted August 15, 2018 That is a variable font. Affinity applications have no support for variable fonts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Friksel Posted August 15, 2018 Author Share Posted August 15, 2018 1 hour ago, MikeW said: That is a variable font. Affinity applications have no support for variable fonts. @MikeW Thanks for your reaction. If that's the case here the font should not show up in the application. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted August 15, 2018 Share Posted August 15, 2018 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Sean P Posted August 15, 2018 Staff Share Posted August 15, 2018 Hi Friksel, Variable Fonts is not something that we currently support (as mentioned by MikeW!), however I'll move this to Feature Requests! Friksel, transitdiagrams and Guillermo Espertino 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voom Posted October 28, 2021 Share Posted October 28, 2021 Is the support for variable fonts on the horizon yet? ephaliate 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted October 28, 2021 Share Posted October 28, 2021 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. Quote -- 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guedes Posted January 16, 2022 Share Posted January 16, 2022 Still not supporting, dudes... it's already 2022. SmartScape, daaaaasl and ephaliate 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichaDE Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 Font-Technology is developing. Make Variable- and Color-Fonts available, please. daaaaasl and ephaliate 2 Quote 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Lynes Posted March 7, 2022 Share Posted March 7, 2022 I would support the request for Variable Font support. Its a growing trend in typography and will become essential for graphics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mordi Posted March 13, 2022 Share Posted March 13, 2022 +1 from me. Having variable fonts would be a very beneficial feature for Affinity Designer. A lot of the fonts on Google Fonts are variable now. https://fonts.google.com/?vfonly=true Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmartScape Posted March 13, 2022 Share Posted March 13, 2022 Still waiting for this feature with great patience. Hopefully it's rolling out next update, fingers crossed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted March 13, 2022 Share Posted March 13, 2022 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"? Quote -- 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted March 13, 2022 Share Posted March 13, 2022 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. Quote -- 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DamienG Posted August 17, 2022 Share Posted August 17, 2022 (edited) 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 August 18, 2022 by DamienG Phileas 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srpohl Posted November 3, 2022 Share Posted November 3, 2022 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. MikeW, Guedes and HankT 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kemie Posted March 13, 2023 Share Posted March 13, 2023 Google Fonts is working on moving their library to variable font format: a sign of the times. Can we please prioritize variable font support in Affinity? HankT 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kemie Posted March 7 Share Posted March 7 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j3rry Posted March 7 Share Posted March 7 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. Quote 24" iMAC Apple M1 chip, iPad 8, MACOS Sonoma & iPadOS, Affinity V2-Universallizenz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeTO Posted March 7 Share Posted March 7 This thread is in the v1 archive so you might want to join the active v2 thread on the same topic. kemie and j3rry 1 1 Quote Download a free manual for Publisher 2.4 from this forum - expanded 300-page PDF My system: Affinity 2.4.2 for macOS Sonoma 14.4.1, MacBook Pro 14" (M1 Pro) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kemie Posted March 8 Share Posted March 8 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" j3rry 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sascha Leib Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 (edited) Just to give my +1 to this topic: I have just encountered the problem specifically with Bahnschrift (which is a Windows standard font, by the way!) that was chosen for a project, and I can easily use that in multiple applications, including MS Office, Paint.Net, Inkscape, etc. But I can not use it in Affinity Designer 2, because whatever I chose from the font menu, I always only get the standard cut, and can't select any of the other variants. Now, I understand that this font has certain features that are not supported in Affinity – like that you can adjust parameters like weight very flexibly, ideally with a slider control. That's a great "nice to have", but in most cases, a more simplified approach would already be a big step forward to the situation that we have now. I see that Designer seems to recognize that there are multiple default variations available from the fonts list - and it shows them, but without the proper name, and selecting any of these always sets only the default font variant. In other words: it is completely broken and not usable in the way it is now. To me it seems as if Serif is not implementing a simple solution because they hope to deliver a perfect one at some point in the future - but this is not moving forward since many years, so maybe a simple, imperfect solution that could be rolled out in a reasonable time would probably be a better one. As for me, I am now using Inkscape to insert this font into drawings, and then I convert all text to paths. And that is not actually a good workflow 😞 Edit: Sorry, I just noticed that this is the v1 forum, and there is already a new discussion on this topic in the v2 forum. Apparently I can't delete my post, so I just leave this here... Edited March 16 by Sascha Leib OT, sorry about it :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 24 minutes ago, Sascha Leib said: Just to give my +1 to this topic: I have just encountered the problem specifically with Bahnschrift (which is a Windows standard font, by the way!) that was chosen for a project, and I can easily use that in multiple applications, including MS Office, Paint.Net, Inkscape, etc. But I can not use it in Affinity Designer 2, because whatever I chose from the font menu, I always only get the standard cut, and can't select any of the other variants. Please see the following post: Quote Alfred 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) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teal_B Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 Variable Fonts spec announced - 2016 This forum thread started - 2018 This forum thread still relevant - 2024 I've taken to rendering out instantiated cuts of variable fonts using the Python `fonttools` package, but really I shouldn't have to. For everyone else looking, https://fonttools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/varLib/instancer.html has everything needed to work with variable fonts and subset, instantiate, modify them etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeTO Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 3 hours ago, Teal_B said: Variable Fonts spec announced - 2016 This forum thread started - 2018 This forum thread still relevant - 2024 I've taken to rendering out instantiated cuts of variable fonts using the Python `fonttools` package, but really I shouldn't have to. For everyone else looking, https://fonttools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/varLib/instancer.html has everything needed to work with variable fonts and subset, instantiate, modify them etc. Serif announced yesterday that variable fonts support is coming. Please see this message from Serif: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/press/newsroom/affinity-and-canva-pledge/ Alfred 1 Quote Download a free manual for Publisher 2.4 from this forum - expanded 300-page PDF My system: Affinity 2.4.2 for macOS Sonoma 14.4.1, MacBook Pro 14" (M1 Pro) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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