optical alignment

[Oval]

The beta version of Affinity Publisher has no automatic option, the beta of the font alignment does not work as expected and the beta of the manual alignment is too demanding (need of great typographic experience / knowledge for correct results) for many users. Will we get a real/better optical margin alignment in Affinity apps?

[NCTQ]

Wow. Nobody else cares about "Optical Margin Alignment"? That's discouraging.

[walt.farrell]

What about the current Optical Alignment settings don't you like?

It looks like you should just be able to pick your Text Style (or make your own, or setup things using the Character panel) and set the Optical Alignment to Font to get a basic set of alignment rules defined.

[Fixx]

Setting Optical Alignment to Font in style settings looks quite convincing to me. Though sure I don't quite get what is the difference of those selections (no change v. none, manual vs font).

[Oval]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

What about the current Optical Alignment settings don't you like?

The beta version of Affinity Publisher has no automatic option, the beta of the font alignment does not work as expected.

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, Oval said:

The beta version of Affinity Publisher has no automatic option, the beta of the font alignment does not work as expected.

It seems to work fine as I see it. And the "Font" setting for Optical Alignment looks pretty automatic to me.

What do you see, and what did you expect?

Specific examples, please. Screenshots and a sample .afpub file would be helpful so the rest of us can understand your issue.

[Oval]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

It seems to work fine as I see it. What do you see, and what did you expect?

“it seems” does not mean that it does what typographers would expect. For example, use uppercase and lowercase letters and you will see.

[Oval]

5 hours ago, NCTQ said:

That's discouraging.

So true. It’s just as sad as this:

All letters are optically unbalanced. For example, I and N should never stick together so tight! 

[MikeW]

That issue has nothing to do with optical margin alignment. That is kerning. Whatever font that is has substandard kerning. 

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Oval said:

All letters are optically unbalanced. For example, I and N should never stick together so tight! 

Your example does not show an optical alignment, as it is called in layout applications. Instead, the kerning of the font type is illustrated. This is defined in the font file. Some fonts contain more sophisticated kerning than other fonts, good kerning is a matter of font quality. The layout application user may change the character spacing, but uses the kerning options, not the optical alignment.

The optical alignment, or optical MARGIN alignment, as you call it, only applies to the left or right margin, the edges of lines of text (which you don't show in your example). The optical alignment does effect only the first letter of a line and has no effect to the characters spacing within words.

You can see that it works when you switch between different fonts. Serif typefaces often show bigger effects.
Here is a sample with 3 different fonts; Optical alignment: left: "None", right: "Font". See some glyphs vary their position and are moving out of the text frame (grey):

 

[Fixx]

And to make it clear: optical kerning is not available in Publisher. It may be added later, but not yet in release version.

[Oval]

12 hours ago, MikeW said:

That issue has nothing to do with optical margin alignment

We did not say that it is the same but it showed that Serif even ignores typographic musts in his own corporate design elements. Full stop.

 

HTH

[Oval]

11 hours ago, thomaso said:

You can see that it works

And it shows that even when using only caps it does not work correctly and has nothing to do with professional optical margin alignment. Very critical, because laymen think that it works correctly.

 

HTH

[fde101]

51 minutes ago, Oval said:

Serif even ignores typographic musts

Wrong.

This is defined by the font, not the application, as others have mentioned.

If you are seeing problems like that then switch to a better font.

[Oval]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

If you are seeing problems like that then switch to a better font.

Wrong. This is the mistake of the user not of the font. No kerning table can do the work of a graphic designer or typographer. If you see those kerning mistakes in word marks like “AFFINITY” where some old people may think it is “AFF N TY”, the creator has not understood basics of typography.

[MikeW]

2 hours ago, Oval said:

We did not say that it is the same...

It's best not to confound two different issues in the same thread. It wasn't clear to me you were switching topics.

2 hours ago, Oval said:

...but it showed that Serif even ignores typographic musts in his own corporate design elements. Full stop.

I run across corporate examples like this all the time. Yes, Serif's graphic should be better kerned. But it isn't. Not that Serif couldn't do a better job of it, but they didn't. So what?

[fde101]

10 minutes ago, Oval said:

Wrong. This is the mistake of the user not of the font.

Fair enough, but in any case it is not a problem with the application.

[Dave Harris]

19 hours ago, Fixx said:

Setting Optical Alignment to Font in style settings looks quite convincing to me. Though sure I don't quite get what is the difference of those selections (no change v. none, manual vs font).

Font means that we use numbers from the font file, if available, otherwise we fall back to the Manual numbers. In practice very few fonts actually define optical alignment, so there's no difference between Font and Manual. We hope that Affinity will encourage font designers to add this feature to their fonts. In the meantime you can set your own numbers in the same text style that sets the font face. (No change is a text style option which means the style either inherits its setting from the style its based on, or else does not affect the text it is applied to at all.)

In theory it is possible to do automatic optical alignment (or kerning), based on the geometry of the glyphs. I think this is what Oval wants. We have no current plans for this.

[MikeW]

31 minutes ago, Dave Harris said:

Font means that we use numbers from the font file, if available, otherwise we fall back to the Manual numbers. In practice very few fonts actually define optical alignment...

It should be noted that APub doesn't optically align if only the opbd feature is used. APub requires either the lfbd or rtbd (for left/right optical alignment respectively). In my tests in my own font, APub does work properly when the lfbd is defined and the setting is to font. (Left bounds is all I tested).

What would be a good future addition is if one uses the Font setting, if a character is not defined that the entries would kick in.

[Oval]

1 hour ago, MikeW said:

It's best not to confound two different issues in the same thread.

It is the same issue: Serif, which ran into many problems because developers seems to be not informed about basic graphic knowledge.

[Oval]

1 hour ago, Dave Harris said:

We have no current plans for this.

But you call it optical alignment, but it is not a bit of that. Laymen think that it works correctly.

Hoped the letters would at least be oriented to the outer margins and Serif would do it properly and better than others. But even that does not seem to have been implemented. So texts are too far inward in APu.

[Oval]

14 hours ago, thomaso said:

You can see that it works when you switch between different fonts.

Wenn wir im Studium so schlecht gesetzt hätten, wären wir geflogen. 

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, Oval said:

Wenn wir im Studium so schlecht gesetzt hätten, wären wir geflogen. 

Again and again: Spacing within words is NOT what you call "optical margin alignment".

Heute sind "setzen", "Satz" und "Setzer" obsolet in ihrem ursprünglichen Sinn. An deren Stelle ist bezüglich Buchstabenabstände das digitale Kerning getreten, das vom Font-Designer in die font-files integriert wird. Schon im Bleisatz waren "Kegel" und "Fleisch" vom type-designer vorgegebene Größen ("beard", "bevelled feet", "shoulder" – dependent to the source of text), die durch den Setzer nur erweitert, nie verringert werden konnten. Daraus entstand z.B. der sogenannte "gesperrte" Satz, der oft als Beleidigung fürs typograhische Auge des Schriftgestalters galt.

Today, the german "setzen", "Satz" and "Setzer" are in their own sense. In their place, the digital kerning has stepped in terms of letter spacing, which is integrated by the Font Designer into the font files. Even in lead type-set, "Kegel" and "Fleisch" of the type designer were predetermined sizes (comp. "beard", "beveled feet", "shoulder" - depending on the text source), which are only augmented by the typesetter, never diminished. From this emerged the so-called "gesperrte" type setting, which was considered an insult to the typographical eye of the typeface designer.

You talk about no. 3 in the following pic:

 

Play around with a physical typewriter + so called monospaced fonts to get closer to this topic.

[MikeW]

7 hours ago, Oval said:

But you call it optical alignment, but it is not a bit of that. Laymen think that it works correctly.

Hoped the letters would at least be oriented to the outer margins and Serif would do it properly and better than others. But even that does not seem to have been implemented. So texts are too far inward in APu.

What Serif has implemented, Optical Margin Alignment, does work and it works properly. The samples in the Manual adjustment section, when the method is set to Manual, are just that, samples. You can add to them to your heart's content.

What Dave Harris has said is that Optical Kerning, ala InDesign, is not going to be implemented at this time, or maybe never. But that again is a separate issue from what your thread is all about.

As a test, I added my uppercase classes to a font I've designed for using the optical bounds OpenType Feature. If I were intending on actually implementing this feature in what will be the release version I would take also add in the appropriate lowercase character classes as well. The result when the Optical Margin Alignment is set to Font is in the screen shot below.

It works as advertised.

I have not made a final decision whether I will actually add this feature or not as the only software that can make use of it currently Affinity applications and perhaps one or two applications I won't use for production (like Scribus).

InDesign's implementation of Optical Margin Alignment (OMA) is ill conceived in both implementation and control (and in fact is not on by default). QuarkXPress' is superior, but, like APub's, requires more user input due to the fact font support is poorly represented and so I feel the Manual setting will be the most used. However, I have worked for many publishers, from small to large, and none of them have OMA as a house style. None. Most newspapers don't. While I have typeset some books with OMA, only one ever went to print with it on.

As regards Optical Kerning, with a decently kerned font, this setting is generally not even a good one to set. No matter how I am using type, ID makes decisions with its Optical Kerning I would never make. Small type can be crowded together, large type can be set too loose for my tastes. And that's kinda the point—we all most often see type different and would make different decisions. Again, here is where QXP shines as one can change the kerning pair values for a given font and so will always use the edited values for that font without ever actually editing the font. This is how this issue should be resolved. At least, in my opinion. Which is worth every penny you paid for it.

Mike

[Oval]

All the pictures show that even users that seem to know what they do, do not get correct results.

Mike even had no time to set only four letters visually correct. So how should this be economical, if you have to work out huge tables for every font, every used letter and finally different styles and sizes?! Impossible! Especially not for laymen. This optical alignment does not work in real life! (The letters are not even based on pictures and graphic elements that are in the grid.)