Why can’t I underline any text formatted with the Rokkitt font?

[GarryP]

Windows 10 Home 1903, Designer 1.7.1 & Publisher 1.7.1.

It might be something silly that I’m doing wrong and just not seeing things properly but I can’t seem to be able to underline text that uses the Rokkitt font in either Publisher or Designer (both artistic text and text frames). I can underline Rokkitt-formatted text in LibreOffice but not in Publisher or Designer (I haven’t tried Photo). This happens with any weight of the font.
Unfortunately I can’t remember where I got the font from.

Anyone got any suggestions? (Apart from “Don’t use Rokkitt.”) Am I doing something really stupid?

P.S. Strike-through doesn't work in the same circumstances either.

[Old Bruce]

Same here on Mac, with the addition of the Neuton font (also from the freebies). I even tried changing the colour of the strikethrough and Underline and this was picked up by the other fonts but had no effect on the Rokkitt or Neuton fonts. All weights were tested.

[Murfee]

I have seen somewhere on the forums that these fonts are not the best designed, they are missing quite a few features.

[Alfred]

8 minutes ago, Murfee said:

I have seen somewhere on the forums that these fonts are not the best designed, they are missing quite a few features.

You’re probably thinking of the RetroSupply Co fonts discussed here, but Rokkitt isn’t one of those.

[Murfee]

1 minute ago, Alfred said:

You’re probably thinking of the RetroSupply Co fonts discussed here, but Rokkitt isn’t one of those.

Thanks Alfred, I knew I had seen it somewhere, I suspect that it is a similar problem though. 

[R C-R]

Same for on my Mac with Rokkitt -- no underline or strikethrough. Also, after toggling a text block to that font & back to others a few times, I somehow end up with this in the context toolbar font dropdown. 

If close the disclosure triangle, I still get one set of weights listed there. Tested in Designer only.

At this point I think the best suggestion may in fact be not to use Rokkitt.

[MikeW]

Vernon could alter the font and it would work.

Better that @Dave Harris would look for zero values for the underline offset and thickness and make up "standard" values. At least I think this is what is happening.

[firstdefence]

Rokkitt underlines in TextEdit and Pages on Mac.

I've sent Vernon Adams some feedback on this: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Rokkitt

[GarryP]

I’ve just checked and the same thing – no underline or strike-through – is happening with Neuton on Windows 10 too (Old Bruce mentioned it on Mac so I thought I’d see what happened on Windows).
I’ve just done another test and the underline actually shows up in an exported PDF (first attached image), it’s just not shown on-screen (second attached image).

[Alfred]

4 hours ago, MikeW said:

Vernon could alter the font and it would work.

 

2 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Rokkitt underlines in TextEdit and Pages on Mac.

I've sent Vernon Adams some feedback on this: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Rokkitt

 

It seems that you two hadn’t heard: Vernon Adams died three years ago, from complications arising out of injuries received a couple of years earlier when he was knocked off his scooter while on his way home.

http://www.hyattmoore.com/egallery/2016/08/29/vernon-adams-typographer

https://chrisgliddon.com/the-tragic-story-of-vernon-and-oswald-7540fa359509

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Rokkitt underlines in TextEdit and Pages on Mac.

Same for me with Neuton & with my old 2.1.8 version of Nisus Writer Pro, so it isn't just Apple's apps that underlining in either font works correctly with.

For me, in Affinity Designer when exporting to PDF neither font retains underlining, so that is different from what @GarryP says he gets on Windows.

However, in Affinity Designer if I copy a text block in either font that includes underlining to the clipboard & paste that into TextEdit or Nisus, the underlining is retained.

All this leads me to believe the issue is with Affinity & not the fonts.

[MikeW]

5 hours ago, Alfred said:

It seems that you two hadn’t heard: Vernon Adams died three years ago, from complications arising out of injuries received a couple of years earlier when he was knocked off his scooter while on his way home.

http://www.hyattmoore.com/egallery/2016/08/29/vernon-adams-typographer

https://chrisgliddon.com/the-tragic-story-of-vernon-and-oswald-7540fa359509

Nope, I didn't hear the news. Thank you. 

[firstdefence]

8 hours ago, Alfred said:

 

 

It seems that you two hadn’t heard: Vernon Adams died three years ago, from complications arising out of injuries received a couple of years earlier when he was knocked off his scooter while on his way home.

http://www.hyattmoore.com/egallery/2016/08/29/vernon-adams-typographer

https://chrisgliddon.com/the-tragic-story-of-vernon-and-oswald-7540fa359509

Ouch, Nope me neither, bless. 

[kenmcd]

The fonts are the problem.
They have some really odd settings for Strike-through and Underline.

First for comparison let's look at Arial.
In Font Units. Which is 2048/em in TT fonts.
Position is from the baseline.

Arial
Strikeout Position: 530
Strikeout Thickness: 102
Underline Position: -217
Underline Thickness: 150

Rokkitt
Strikeout Position: 235
Strikeout Thickness: 1
Underline Position: 0
Underline Thickness: 1

Neuton
Strikeout Position: 450
Strikeout Thickness: 1
Underline Position: -361
Underline Thickness: 1

So in both Rokkitt and Neuton the Strikeout and Underline thickness is 1/2048th of an em.
In APub I set the font size to 244pt and zoomed to 800% and still could not see anything.

Apparently some applications and the PDF engine see these as errors/omissions and apply some sort of default.
Maybe "1" is some sort of old default. Dunno.

Still the Rokkitt underline position of "0" makes no sense.

The fonts should be fixed. Surprised this passed the GF quality checks.

It appears that APub is doing exactly what the fonts say to do.

 

 

[Alfred]

29 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

In Font Units. Which is 2048/em in TT fonts.

Although 2048 font units per em is recommended for TrueType fonts, other powers of 2 may be used. If the glyphs in the font include a lot of detail, the font designer may choose a higher value to allow for greater precision.

Neuton uses 2048 units per em, but Rokkitt uses the legacy Mac standard of 1000 units per em.

59 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

So in both Rokkitt and Neuton the Strikeout and Underline thickness is 1/2048th of an em.
In APub I set the font size to 244pt and zoomed to 800% and still could not see anything.

High-Logic FontCreator reports strikeout and underline thickness as 0 rather than 1 for both of those fonts, which would explain why you couldn’t see anything even after zooming in to 800%.

[kenmcd]

1 minute ago, Alfred said:

High-Logic FontCreator reports strikeout and underline thickness as 0 rather than 1 for both of those fonts, which would explain why you couldn’t see anything even after zooming in to 800%. 

Interesting. I was using the same tool. Windows v12.0.0.2539 (64-bit).
What version are you using?
It could also be different versions of the fonts.
Rokkit-Regular v3.001 (2016-12-07)
Neutro-Regular v1.560 (2016-11-07)

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

Interesting. I was using the same tool. Windows v12.0.0.2539 (64-bit).
What version are you using?
It could also be different versions of the fonts.
Rokkit-Regular v3.001 (2016-12-07)
Neutro-Regular v1.560 (2016-11-07)

I’m still on version 11.5 of FontCreator (but also 64-bit). Rokkitt Regular and Neuton Regular are reported as v3.002 (2016-12-06) and v1.560 (2011-08-19) respectively.

[kenmcd]

Update:
You had me curious so I also checked Rokkitt in FontLab.
It shows "0" for both settings.

So now I am wondering what is going-on with FC because I just re-checked both fonts and that is what it says (1). I wonder if they now have some sort of reasonableness check which does not allow a "0" value.

But as you said above - that does explain why we cannot see anything at all.

 

[kenmcd]

I was wondering where you got a Rokkitt v3.002.
Google Fonts still has v3.001.
And I found them on GitHub where I assume you got yours.
Both the OTF and TTF versions of v3.002 still show as "1" in FC.
Quite odd.

Checked Rokkitt v3.002 in OTMaster Light and it also shows "0" for both.

So what is going on with FC 12?

[Alfred]

25 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

I was wondering where you got a Rokkitt v3.002.
Google Fonts still has v3.001.
And I found them on GitHub where I assume you got yours.
Both the OTF and TTF versions of v3.002 still show as "1" in FC.
Quite odd.

Checked Rokkitt v3.002 in OTL Master Light and it also shows "0" for both.

So what is going on with FC 12?

I grabbed a copy of the (then) complete set of Google Fonts about a year ago. As you say, it would have been via GitHub.

As for FC 12, it sounds as though you’re right about the “reasonableness check”. Either that or there’s a minor bug that Erwin might want to know about!

[GarryP]

I don’t know if any of this information is useful but I’ll add it here anyway, just in case…

• I have six variants of Neuton installed: Bold; ExtraBold; ExtraLight; Italic; Light and Regular, all at version 1.560.
• I have nine variants of Rokkitt installed: Black; Bold; ExtraBold; ExtraLight; Light; Medium; Regular; SemiBold and Thin, all at version 3.001.

(I’m now fairly sure I got these fonts from the Iconic Fonts pack that came free with one of my Affinity purchases, but I don’t know which purchase.)

All of these fonts show up in Control Panel / Fonts but none of them show up in NexusFont 2.6.2.1870 (from 6/11/2015, the most up-to-date version). Could NexusFont be doing some kind of ‘sanity check’ on those fonts and assuming that there’s something wrong with them for some reason?

P.S. I was going to try and use FontForge to check these fonts but it now demands that you give your email address before you can download, which seem a little bit ‘naughty’ to me.

[kenmcd]

8 hours ago, GarryP said:

All of these fonts show up in Control Panel / Fonts but none of them show up in NexusFont 2.6.2.1870 (from 6/11/2015, the most up-to-date version). Could NexusFont be doing some kind of ‘sanity check’ on those fonts and assuming that there’s something wrong with them for some reason? 

Just tested NexusFont portable and the Rokkitt fonts show up for me.
I am on Windows 7 x64.
Is see you are on Windows 10.
The NexusFont web page has a warning about disabling the Windows 10 font cache.
That could be the issue.
Also some font managers/tools do not see fonts which are not installed in the default Windows fonts folder.
So check where the installed font files are actually located.

8 hours ago, GarryP said:

P.S. I was going to try and use FontForge to check these fonts but it now demands that you give your email address before you can download, which seem a little bit ‘naughty’ to me. 

You can download FontForge directly from the GitHub Releases page.
https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge/releases
No email required.

[Alfred]

9 hours ago, GarryP said:

(I’m now fairly sure I got these fonts from the Iconic Fonts pack that came free with one of my Affinity purchases, but I don’t know which purchase.)

You’re right, Garry. When I checked just now, I found that the AD 1.7 update came with a collection of ‘Iconic’ fonts and templates, and both Neuton and Rokkitt are included in the collection. That may well explain the versioning differences!

[GarryP]

I installed Rokkitt in the usual way: double-click on the font file and press the Install button so it should have been installed in C:\Windows\Fonts (from past experience) but I actually found it in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Fonts. (In Control Panel it still shows up as being in “Windows (C:) > Windows > Fonts > Rokkitt” so that’s not very informative for the user.) I have no idea why this font - and the others I got with the Iconic Fonts pack (Neuton, Prompt, Oswald, etc.) - have been installed somewhere differently. Maybe something to do with a recent upgrade to build 1903 perhaps? Anyway, something for me to look into later.

I can’t see an option in NexusFont to add folders to the list of places to look for fonts so I think it’s probably time for me to move on from NexusFont. No updates in almost 5 years tells me it’s probably not going to be something I will be able to rely on much in the future. It’s a nice little app but there may be better alternatives.

Thanks for giving me the link to the FontForge Releases page (I completely missed it myself). I’ve now installed it and it seems to be working fine. The Underline Position for Rokkitt-Regular - as reported earlier - shows as 0 (zero) and so does the Underline Height.

P.S. @Alfred Your sig says you're still on (slightly) old versions of the Affinity software.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, GarryP said:

P.S. @Alfred Your sig says you're still on (slightly) old versions of the Affinity software.

Thanks, Garry. I keep forgetting to update my sig: the only version number that’s currently correct on there is the one for iOS!