About the "B", "I" & "U" buttons for font selection.

[MichaelG]

This was a big problem with PagePlus and Affinity Publisher looks like it has the same problem.

My argument is that the "B" and "I" control buttons are unnecessary. We have a drop down to select the font family, and another to select the required member of that family. That is all that is required. The "B" and "I" buttons are not only unnecessary, but will potentially will cause problems.

For example, In Affinity Publisher I set some type in Avenir Next LT Pro Regular and then I perform the following sequence:

• Select one or more words that I want to be in italics.
• Press the "I" button.
• My selected text is changed to Avenir Next LT Pro Condensed Italic. It is unlikely that I will want the condensed variant.
• If I then click on the "I" button again, the text is changed to Avenir Next LT Pro Condensed, and not back to Regular which is what I started with.
• I then change all my text to Avenir Next LT Pro Condensed Italic.
• Select some text and press the "B" button.
• The selected text is changed to Avenir Next LT Pro Bold Italic, and it is no longer condensed.

So it seems that the "B" and "I" buttons are making the wrong choices, which is hardly surprising. They will probably work with simple font families like Arial, but for professional OpenType fonts it will end in frustration. In the case of the Avenir Next LT Pro font family, there are a total of 24 fonts. Myriad Pro has 50, and Minion Pro has 74. Two buttons will never make the correct choice with so many variants.

The big problem with PagePlus is that there is no dropdown to select the member of a font family. Therefore one had to use the "B", "I", "U" & "O" buttons, and the results are always unpredictable with large font families. Now we can choose the member of the font family with Affinity Publisher, we don't need the buttons.

I'm coming at this as a long time InDesign user. My preferred approach is:

• Set all the type in the required font, say Avenir Next LT Pro Regular.
• Create a paragraph style based on that.
• Select a one or more words that I want in italics.
• Change the font for the selection to Avenir Next LT Pro Italic.
• Create a character style called Emphasis Italic and apply it as required.
• Now select some text that I want to be bold.
• Change the font to Avenir Next LT Pro Bold.
• Create another character style called Emphasis Bold, and apply it as required.
• If necessary, additional text styles can be created, such as Emphasis Bold & Italic to combine both text attributes.

This approach eliminates all the guesswork, and once you have created the styles, everything else is easy. InDesign does not have the "B", "I" or "U" buttons for this reason.

Thanks,
Mike.

 

[walt.farrell]

Some of the fonts I use don't come with variants, and therefore the B and I buttons are critical for me. Edit: As @αℓƒяє∂ reminded me below, in that case B and I don't work at all. I had forgotten about that, and my intention to submit a suggestion to allow that, as other programs do

[jrkay]

I think that this is an improvement on PagePlus. If you haven't got an italic font loaded in your Fonts file it blanks out the option, this saves all the hassle of having the text shown as a problem when you send a document to PDF. 

[Alfred]

31 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Some of the fonts I use don't come with variants, and therefore the B and I buttons are critical for me.

If they don't work for you, can't you simply ignore them?

Aren’t the B and I buttons disabled in the Affinity apps for font families which don’t include those styles?

18 minutes ago, jrkay said:

I think that this is an improvement on PagePlus. If you haven't got an italic font loaded in your Fonts file it blanks out the option, this saves all the hassle of having the text shown as a problem when you send a document to PDF. 

At least in recent versions of PagePlus you can tell whether faux fonts have been used, but the conversion is often less than ideal.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

Aren’t the B and I buttons disabled in the Affinity apps for font families which don’t include those styles?

Thanks. I'd forgotten that.