Emoji and Symbols

[bgeal]

When I select Emoji and Symbols from the edit menu I get the table tool rather than seeing the Emoji and Symbols window. Having done that, if  I then select Emoji and Symbols from the Mac Finder window I also get the table tool.

If I then close and reopen the app and select the Emoji and Symbols from the Finder menu I do get the Emoji and Symbols window menu. 

 

[bgeal]

If I then try and insert an Emoji I get a blank space.

[fde101]

By default the "Emoji" are inserted using a color font which is not currently supported in the Affinity apps, thus the character renders as a blank space.

Select the invisible character, change the font to a "normal" non-color Emoji font and it should show up.

[bgeal]

I’ll give that a try tomorrow. Have you been able to replicate the first issue - i.e. selecting Emoji and Symbols from the edit menu gives you the table tool instead of the Emoji and Symbols window? 

[fde101]

That wasn't happening when I last tried it but it has probably been a beta or two since then and I don't have it in front of me at the moment.

The question on the "emoji" characters not appearing has shown up previously on the forums.

[Chris_K]

Hi bgeal

We do not support emojis or other picture fonts for typography I'm afraid

Cheers

[fde101]

3 hours ago, Chris_K said:

We do not support emojis or other picture fonts

I'm kind of getting tired of reading this as it doesn't make any sense...

ALL fonts are picture fonts; some of them have pictures of letters and others have pictures of faces.

This is like claiming that you don't support fonts at all.

 

I've tested with "picture" fonts that work just fine... as long as they are not color fonts.  Those don't currently work, which is rather sad, but it is what it is for now.

The "emoji" feature of the OS is just typing a character which happens to be an emoji instead of a traditional letter; the reason they don't show up right away is that it is selecting a font which is in a format that does not work with Affinity (color font) - switch to a more traditional font that offers that same character and it shows up.

 

Also, some of the other categories in that "Emoji and Symbols" window are tied to normal fonts but show pictures, and most of those work perfectly fine (math symbols, pictographs, dingbats, technical symbols)

[Old Bruce]

9 hours ago, fde101 said:

ALL fonts are picture fonts; some of them have pictures of letters and others have pictures of faces.

 

Wrong. So wrong.

[fde101]

10 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Wrong. So wrong.

How so?

Most fonts fall into one of two categories: either they are bitmap fonts (common at one time, now somewhat rare) having bitmap/raster images of each letter, or outline fonts, which are in effect vector images (similar to pen tool) of the letters, along with some extra metadata about when to use each one, etc.  PostScript Type 3 fonts contain PostScript code that "draws" the glyphs, and SVG fonts are basically collections of SVG images, again along with the metadata.

The fonts do contain more than just the pictures of the letters, but in the end, they are pictures (or programs to produce pictures) of the letters in some form or another... with the possible exception of metafonts, but that is a whole other ball game, and I have yet to see support for those in the Affinity products (or most other major "modern" applications for that matter).

What we think of as "picture" fonts (dingbats, emoji, etc.) simply have those pictures as glyphs instead of what we think of as letters/text, but they "draw" them the same way that text would be created by that same type of font.

[Afrowave]

On 11/15/2018 at 11:35 AM, Chris_K said:

Hi bgeal

We do not support emojis or other picture fonts for typography I'm afraid

Cheers

To just to get this emoji support issue clearly. Even with the Tool bar showing that we are to expect emojis and symbols,  Affinity does not and WILL NOT support emojis in the future? I find that kind of interesting, considering Publisher will be used to replace a lot of the things people use Word® for, such as internal corporate reports.

And emojis are right at the heart of it nowadays. 

[fde101]

8 hours ago, Afrowave said:

Affinity does not and WILL NOT support emojis in the future?

First of all, I don't see anywhere that they said they will never support them, just that they don't support them right now.

Secondly, that panel, as the Affinity team has pointed out a few times, is added by the MacOS - it is not something they seem to be able to control.

Thirdly, if you do use that panel, it does in fact "type" the characters into a text box or other location.  Some of the symbols in the panel do work.

The issue seems to be that they panel "types" the characters using a color font, and the Affinity apps do not support color fonts (nor is this limitation unique to these apps - others have trouble with it also).  If you have a "traditional" font that displays those characters, selecting the "unsupported" text and changing the font of the selection to the more traditional one does allow those characters to display; I have tested this in the Affinity apps and it does work.

Getting color fonts of the format that Apple is using for these emoji characters to work in the Affinity apps would very likely resolve this issue, and open up other potential use cases.  Personally, I would rather have SVG color font support in the Affinity apps, but given the noise on the whole emoji topic, getting the Apple-formatted ones to work would certainly not be unwelcome either.

 

Color font support would definitely be a nice feature to have implemented and I would certainly hope support for these is somewhere on the drawing board:

https://www.planetquark.com/2018/02/24/color-fonts/

[Steps]

I downloaded a nice SVG smily set from freepik and integrated that into my assets panel. Works for me. 

[fde101]

3 hours ago, Steps said:

I downloaded a nice SVG smily set from freepik and integrated that into my assets panel.

Only problem is you can't anchor them to the text yet when you do it that way.  

[Steps]

7 minutes ago, fde101 said:

Only problem is you can't anchor them to the text yet when you do it that way.  

Ok, but this is a matter of time as I Interpret that pinned graphic anchor thread.

I managed it the cheap way: I left free 4 spaces in text and moved the image there. 

[Afrowave]

On 1/14/2019 at 3:52 PM, fde101 said:

First of all, I don't see anywhere that they said they will never support them, just that they don't support them right now.

Secondly, that panel, as the Affinity team has pointed out a few times, is added by the MacOS - it is not something they seem to be able to control.

Thirdly, if you do use that panel, it does in fact "type" the characters into a text box or other location.  Some of the symbols in the panel do work.

The issue seems to be that they panel "types" the characters using a color font, and the Affinity apps do not support color fonts (nor is this limitation unique to these apps - others have trouble with it also).  If you have a "traditional" font that displays those characters, selecting the "unsupported" text and changing the font of the selection to the more traditional one does allow those characters to display; I have tested this in the Affinity apps and it does work.

Okay, I will assume your position as an "official" reply which is what I am looking for as  a "we are working on it" kind of reply.  That was I was asking for.

Secondly, I like the unsupported fonts "hack". Let me try it.

[fde101]

11 minutes ago, Afrowave said:

I will assume your position as an "official" reply

I don't work for Serif so that is an invalid assumption.

 

13 minutes ago, Afrowave said:

a "we are working on it" kind of reply

I have seen no indication of this from Serif, and I doubt it is a top priority for them right now, but I would hope they will get to this eventually.

[orangehead911]

and it still doesn't work... version 1.8.1...well and truly beyond beta...

[orangehead911]

On 11/16/2018 at 8:43 AM, fde101 said:

How so?

Most fonts fall into one of two categories: either they are bitmap fonts (common at one time, now somewhat rare) having bitmap/raster images of each letter, or outline fonts, which are in effect vector images (similar to pen tool) of the letters, along with some extra metadata about when to use each one, etc.  PostScript Type 3 fonts contain PostScript code that "draws" the glyphs, and SVG fonts are basically collections of SVG images, again along with the metadata.

The fonts do contain more than just the pictures of the letters, but in the end, they are pictures (or programs to produce pictures) of the letters in some form or another... with the possible exception of metafonts, but that is a whole other ball game, and I have yet to see support for those in the Affinity products (or most other major "modern" applications for that matter).

What we think of as "picture" fonts (dingbats, emoji, etc.) simply have those pictures as glyphs instead of what we think of as letters/text, but they "draw" them the same way that text would be created by that same type of font.

Bitmap fonts != vector fonts. Vector fonts are not pictures of the glyphs.  

[fde101]

2 hours ago, orangehead911 said:

Vector fonts are not pictures of the glyphs.

Most of them are - they simply contain vector images of the glyphs instead of raster ones.

That includes TrueType/OpenType fonts, Type 1 fonts, SVG fonts, etc.

TrueType/OpenType/Type 1 fonts can contain additional code for "hinting" the images when rendered at small sizes.

Type 3 fonts contain programming code to generate the images rather than containing the images themselves...  but those seem to be quite rarely used these days.

[David Edge]

Quick +1 for emoji support. I use a lot of both tables and emojis in designing forms so have abandoned Affinity which is poor at both (and for that matter still struggles with printing) for Apple Numbers which excels at all those things.

Emojis are not just smileys - and indeed never were. They are more-or-less universal colour symbols.

[Plonkitron]

+1 here too.