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Variable font support


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2 minutes ago, George Thomas said:

When in your Publisher development roadmap do you plan on supporting the OpenType Variable font format, if at all?

The last time I read a response, it was not for some time. So they are not ruling future support out but I wouldn't expect Serif to commit to any timeline, especially until release. Once release happens, there will be a roadmap for the 1.x version.

Mike

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  • 1 year later...
10 minutes ago, TomAng said:

Please, pretty please. Sooner than later?

The jury is still out on the usefulness of this in Typography. 

Certainly, Variable Fonts Technology is being adopted by Web more quickly than by the traditional media.

Even the folks at Adobe express their concerns when it comes to VF.

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  • 3 months later...

I just found out that InDesign now supports opentype variable fonts. My latest InDesign update lists it as something new, but curiously it appears to have been released at the end of last year if I am able to understand the date on this article correctly: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/using-fonts.html#variable_fonts I must have missed the update news.

Could it be that variable fonts are now gaining support to the point where it is practical to start using them? I hope Serif has them in mind for the not too distant future. It would be great to stop relying on tricks like text stroke to give body text at small sizes just a bit more bite.

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Yes, ID supports variable fonts. But I don't know whether Adobe has added support yet for other than the predefined weights in the variable fonts yet.

Pdf generation takes more time, especially when an application can make use of user defined axis controls. Variable font support hasn't been added to the pdf spec as released. So variable fonts cannot be edited in a pdf, for instance. 

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I can easily understand why there is not more widespread use of VF. In many cases it would be too much to expect users to both understand the utility and the desirability of VF. In another sense I can also see where the use of VF would be a nightmare for someone trying to match a previous use of one from another source. There certainly are pros and cons to using them.

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24 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Yes, ID supports variable fonts. But I don't know whether Adobe has added support yet for other than the predefined weights in the variable fonts yet.

It appears InDesign does truly variable weights and not just predefined weights, if understand what variable is all about. I just downloaded a random variable font from Google Fonts and tested it out in InDesign. The font I picked only had variable weight apparently, but InDesign allowed me to put in values between 100 to 900, and when zoomed in, I could tell that there was a subtle difference between 100 and 101, for example.

The PDF points you bring up may be a significant concern. I haven't experimented beyond that quick test above (and then I am intend to delete the font right away, lest I get it mixed up in Publisher unaware that support is not really there).

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  • 2 weeks later...

I really would love to have variable fonts working on Publisher. Right now I have to go into Illustrator to work with a variable font for a title. Then I save as an AI file then paste into Publisher. The Adobe ecosystem supports variables. I believe other programs do as well and I have many fonts that are variable and cannot do a thing with them in Affinity. 

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