Will Affinity Publisher include bundled fonts please?

[William Overington]

Will Affinity Publisher include bundled fonts please?

This is important because when using a product such as PagePlus or Affinity Publisher to produce a PDF to be published on the web, there can be concern over which fonts can be lawfully used for embedding within a PDF. This as contrasted with embedding fonts in a PDF just to print or send to a printshop for printing.

Thus I have tended to use fonts bundled with Serif products and fonts that I have made myself when a PDF is to be published on the web.

The End User Licence Agreements for many rather nice commercial fonts available individually seem to indicate that embedding the font in a PDF for publication on the web is only allowed for an extra fee. Thus although I often like the designs I have felt unable to get them for my own use.

So, is Serif going to bundle fonts with Affinity Publisher and if so are there any ideas which fonts to bundle and is Serif open to suggestions?

Will Serif make sure that any fonts bundled are able to be used clearly lawfully for embedding in a PDF that is to be published on the web please?

William Overington

Thursday 31 January 2019

 

[fde101]

I would not expect this, it is not a common practice for a professional application.

There are a number of good fonts available under the Open Font License which could be freely used, and many of these can be found on fonts.google.com among other places (not all fonts on that site are OFL but many are).

To help with installing the fonts on that site there are a few font managers around that will do that and update them automatically - I am using FontBase for example.

 

Check out this thread also:

 

Personally I have found Fira Sans to be one that I particularly like for body text.  A few others on my favorites list right now are Cinzel Decorative, Dancing Script, Great Vibes, Lato, Space Mono, and Taviraj..

 

[William Overington]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

I would not expect this, it is not a common practice for a professional application.

 

That is interesting.

So it will be interesting which way Serif goes with this. Will Serif provide some bundled fonts with Affinity Publisher?

I suppose that it might cost Serif money to do so, but having some fonts included would greatly help people getting started with desktop publishing - just install the program and some fonts are installed.

I found with Serif PagePlus that font installation is optional. Apart from early versions going back to PagePlus 9 I choose not to install the fonts but save them in a folder on the hard disc so that they are readily accessible if I want to use one or more of them.

For example, recently, I wanted two fonts to convey the idea, the impression, of handwriting by two different people and so I had a look through what Serif had available. I chose two to use, one I had used before (Firenze SF) and the other I had not, as best I remember, used before.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/localizable_sentences_the_novel_chapter_075.pdf

Old Serif discs are worth keeping for the fonts on them, because sometimes the choice got changed. For example, Sea Monster was available but then went in later versions.

Incidentally, I am wondering if one will be able to get Affinity Publisher on a disc - maybe I need to ask about that in a new thread.

William

 

[MikeW]

2 hours ago, fde101 said:

I would not expect this, it is not a common practice for a professional application...

If one considers CorelDraw to be a professional application (as I do) then this is not entirely true. Up until CS6, Adobe also included fonts, fewer of them in CS6 versus previous versions (same with templates. Last version that included templates was CS4 if I recall). Xara products still include a few, but is also hooked into Google fonts.

But I agree. Between Google fonts (which typically include a use for everything type of license), FontSquirrel and fonts free fonts available from a multitude of other sites (usually via signing up for their newsletters), there is a plethora of fonts available.

As a matter of course, I never install the free fonts any application ships. If a client specs a font I do not have, I buy it.

[Alfred]

4 hours ago, William Overington said:

Will Affinity Publisher include bundled fonts please?

I very much doubt it, William.

Quote

The End User Licence Agreements for many rather nice commercial fonts available individually seem to indicate that embedding the font in a PDF for publication on the web is only allowed for an extra fee. Thus although I often like the designs I have felt unable to get them for my own use.

I don’t recall ever having seen an EULA like that. In general if you are permitted to embed a font in a PDF file, it’s up to you how you subsequently publish or distribute that PDF. Where there is a separate webfont licence, it’s intended to cover use of the font directly in web pages (i.e. not in embedded PDFs or Word documents).

[William Overington]

There was a font that I liked and considered buying but upon checking the EULA seemed to mean that if I wanted to publish on the web a PDF with the font embedded that that would be considered a commercial use and that would need special commercial licensing. I just wanted to have the font and to be able to use a bit of it now and then. So I did not buy it.

William

 

[Alfred]

1 minute ago, William Overington said:

There was a font that I liked and considered buying but upon checking the EULA seemed to mean that if I wanted to publish on the web a PDF with the font embedded that that would be considered a commercial use and that would need special commercial licensing. I just wanted to have the font and to be able to use a bit of it now and then. So I did not buy it.

William

 

What was the font? 

[William Overington]

Well, I'll drop you a private note.

William

 

[MikeW]

Just now, William Overington said:

Well, I'll drop you a private note.

Why? Perhaps others (like myself) would like to know.

[William Overington]

 

+]

13 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Why? Perhaps others (like myself) would like to know.

Well, because publicly saying so might open me up to claims of criticising a business and risk having trouble as a result.

William

 

[MikeW]

28 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Well, because publicly saying so might open me up to claims of criticising a business and risk having trouble as a result.

Well, no it won't. But that's fine as it is your choice.

[William Overington]

On ‎1‎/‎31‎/‎2019 at 11:06 AM, William Overington said:

So, is Serif going to bundle fonts with Affinity Publisher and if so are there any ideas which fonts to bundle and is Serif open to suggestions?

Will Serif make sure that any fonts bundled are able to be used clearly lawfully for embedding in a PDF that is to be published on the web please?

I am wondering if someone from Serif will reply please?

William

 

[AdamW]

Hi William,

Thank you for asking. There are currently no plans to bundle any fonts with Affinity Publisher at initial launch.

[iMatt]

I very much doubt Affinity products to include bundled fonts. There is the issue of the cost of licencing to Serif for a start. And then the fact there are some very fine fonts available from a reasonable to low cost and in many cases FREE. You can build up a decent font library with high quality free and low-cost fonts. CorelDraw has been mentioned as an example. Be aware that CD which used to come with 1,000 fonts and 10,000 clipart imaged directly on the DVD/download, from X8 onwards forces users to download these assets as they are no longer included in the bundle.

[William Overington]

The discs of old Serif legacy products are worth keeping because of all the fonts on them. Not the same selection on every disc.

William

 

[Alfred]

40 minutes ago, William Overington said:

The discs of old Serif legacy products are worth keeping because of all the fonts on them.

Well, the fonts are worth keeping, anyway (although I’ve kept most of my discs, too).

Quote

Not the same selection on every disc.

The last few versions of PagePlus came with exactly the same set of 123 fonts.

[William Overington]

27 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Well, the fonts are worth keeping, anyway (although I’ve kept most of my discs, too).

Well, there is no need to throw them out. I have a lot of old discs too. Though some old discs have software that I am still using, such as ImpactPlus 5.

27 minutes ago, Alfred said:

The last few versions of PagePlus came with exactly the same set of 123 fonts.

Thank you for the list. That is helpful.

There are some nice fonts in there.

Yet not Sea Monster

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/seamonster.PDF

and not Firenze

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/leonardo.PDF

and not Frankenstein

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/strudel.PDF

though Excalibur is there.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/excalibur.PDF

So the older discs have some gems in them!

I have found that with some of the fonts supplied by Serif the file name is often mostly numerical so, given the font name of the font, some are hard to find on the disc, though in practice I do not look at them from the disc, having copied the whole disc to the hard drive before installing the software, so I just need to look in a folder on the hard disc.

William

 

[Mithferion]

Thanks for linking to my Topic.

Fonts Licenses tend to be tricky, and if you want to publish an ePub, you get something like this:

• The price of an ePub license depends on the number of publications you intend to embed the font into: one issue of a magazine requires one license, just as one electronic book requires a one-time license purchase.

Or like this:

• An ebook license allows you to embed the font files in your ebook code allowing you to use beautiful typography in your ebooks with only a small cost in file sizes. Ebook licenses are limited by “ebook titles”, but one license covers unlimited platforms, sales and upgrades. All Fontspring licenses are perpetual, which means you pay once and use it forever.

So yeah, go with Open Source licensed Fonts for eBooks, if your budget doesn't allow you to buy a License for each publication. In my case, I tend to use the Fonts I buy for Logo Design, so a Desktop License (as they are usually called) is enough (some Foundries ask for an extra fee for this specific use, so read carefully).

This is one fo the reasons why I made the Topic on good free Fonts.

Best regards!

[Alfred]

47 minutes ago, William Overington said:

So the older discs have some gems in them!

They do indeed. Firenze was distributed with DPX8, but for Frankenstein and Sea Monster you need to go much further back: both of the latter were on the DrawPlus 7 (not X7!) Design CD, an optional item including many fonts and other material which were not included on the main Program CD.

Fonts included on the DP7 Design CD