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Sorry to nag about an esoteric issue that is probably of no concern to the vast majority of DTP users -- to me, however, it is highly important that the automatic typesetting of long s in Gerhard Helzel's open type fonts function properly - which is still not the case with build 1.7.0.133 (win). If the automatic long s-function can't be implemented in Apub for some reason, I would have to continue to use Word, where this function works flawlessly, even as Word is rather clumsy to use in so many other aspects of DTP.

But if this particular function works so well with Word, why can't it be done in Apub? Would seem to me that a skillful programmer could solve this quickly. However, as I am no programmer myself, I may be making an inference that is way beyond the scope of my knowledge, so please pardon me if I'm mistaken in this regard.:68_sleeping:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/67933-opentype-support/&tab=comments#comment-351320 

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Hi Fahneflycht,

Would you be willing to upload one of his offending fonts to our internal Dropbox account using the link below please. Also as it is U+0073, I presume typing an 's' character using the font on a UK keyboard is sufficient to reproduce the issue? If possible could you attach a screenshot showing the difference between Word and Publisher please?

Thanks!

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54 minutes ago, Sean P said:

Hi Fahneflycht,

Would you be willing to upload one of his offending fonts to our internal Dropbox account using the link below please. Also as it is U+0073, I presume typing an 's' character using the font on a UK keyboard is sufficient to reproduce the issue? If possible could you attach a screenshot showing the difference between Word and Publisher please?

Thanks!

Hi Sean P,

As you requested, I've attached the "Mars-Fraktur OT", which is offered by Gerhard Helzel free of charge. Presumably the OpenType engine is the same as in all his other fonts, so of this one can be brought to function properly, the others ought to work as well. I've attached screenshots using this font in Word 2016 and with APub build 1.0.7.139, respectively. The ordinary ligatures like f+i and even c+h are set correctly by both programs, but the automatic setting of "s" work with Word 2016 but not with APub beta. As I prepared the screenshots it occurred to me that APub beta is not yet available with German language support and that this might be part of the problem. However, Gerhard's automatic s works even with an English text in Word, but not in APub beta. As I understand the OT-functions in Gerhard's fonts, a long s is always set automatically in any language as a round s can never occur at the beginning of a word. The more complicated rules would not work in English, as they are specifically programmed by Gerhard to work with German words but not necessarily with other languages.

Thanks for looking into this issue and please let me know if you need any additional information from me

Best,

Fahneflycht

 

MarsFrakturOT-Normal.otf

Screenshot Mars-Fraktur by Gerhard Helzel in Affinity beta build 1.7.0.139.JPG

Screenshot Mars-Fraktur by Gerhard Helzel in Word 2016.JPG

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This is broken also in AD.

I just took a look in the font again. The problem should be simple to resolve.

For @Dave Harris

The reason this is breaking in APub & AD is due to the presence of both the dflt & latn language declarations.

Here's one of my standard strings for test long s in Ad after altering the font.

capture-002263.png.42f7e36b21123fd7fbbe23941c41607d.png

(I also replicated the contextual lookups to the hist feature.)

This works in APub as well--except that there is the spacing bug present in it that has been reported several times.

Mike

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Hm. I believe the Adobe documentation is rather clear on declaring scripts and languages in an OpenType font. It is highly recommended to add at least the first of the following two lines. The second is optional, but very common in latin fonts.

languagesystem DFLT dflt; # Default default
languagesystem latn dflt; # Latin default

The first line is there to tell the application that anything that's not declared as language-dependant is valid for those cases. The second line defines that everything marked as valid for the Latin script is to be used regardless of language. After that one can define further, for instance:

languagesystem latn DEU ; # Latin German

This way the German language can be used in a feature to get a localized form of a letter or to NOT get a certain substitution.

I think these declarations should not result in a font not functioning properly.

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Languages other than dflt seem to be working with localization. But if not, do be sure to do a bug report. 

I'm pretty sure fonts with both dflt combined with the latn tag worked at some point in the past on an English system. But I may have been working with a developer for other software and so mistaken.

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I just tried to open the original font in FontLab VI and export it as an OpenType PS font without altering anything. The resulting font works as it should, whereas the original font doesn't. I then exported the features from both the original and the newly exported font. In both the languagesystem definitions are present. The difference is just a few extra substitutions:

  sub s by longs;
  sub longs by s;
  sub f_f by f f;
  sub fl by f i;
  sub l_l by l l;
  sub t_z by t z;

FontLab added these at the beginning of the GSUB table. These lines correspond to the 6 lookups, that are only referenced in chain substitution rules. Inside of FontLab the original font is working as it should. My guess is that the font is okay.

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Thank you very much for your efforts, Sean P.

Fyi some further comments on this.

I'm no expert when it comes to programming, yet it seems to me that Gerhard's fonts should be ok, since they work flawlessly with Word 2010 and later. Curiously, some of Gerhard's fonts work with Microsoft Publisher 2016, whereas many of them (maybe 4 out of 10 or so) do not work at all (i.e., with MS Publisher it's an all-or-nothing proposition). With the sole exception of a minor feature (viz. the automatic dissolution of certain ligatures that is required in certain words) all of them also work perfectly in QuarkXPress 2015. If the font design itself were to blame, it would seem to me as a layman that the fonts would not work with Word or QuarkXPress, either, or am I perhaps just overlooking/misunderstanding something about OpenType programming here?

 

 

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