Affinity Designer is saying some words are misspelled when they are correct (but it gets weirder)

[Horseflesh]

Today I opened an Illustrator file in Designer for Windows (1.7.1.404) and saw that a few words were incorrectly underlined as spelling errors. 

I typed the same text into a fresh Designer document, and spelling worked as it should. Then I copied the "bad" text block from the imported .ai file into the Designer document, and the incorrect underlining came along for the ride. I can copy/paste these underlined words into new text frames and the underlining persists--but if I select the word and re-type it, the spelling works correctly. 

Someone file a bug.

I can provide example files to the devs if it will help. 

[walt.farrell]

Select one of those words then look at the Character panel, Language section, Spelling, and see what language is specified. Possibly the language came across set incorrectly?

[Horseflesh]

Excellent idea! It's in English though, so that isn't the issue. Pretty weird. 

In addition:

If I Copy the text frame with this word in it, and do New From Clipboard, the new document doesn't show this error. However, I found that it shows NO spelling errors... Even if I make some deliberately! (The language is still set to US English.)

If I Copy the text frame, make a new document, and then paste it in, the weird spelling error comes along for the ride. 

I have attached such a sample file in case Serif looks in to the issue. I would be curious if anyone else who opens the file sees the same misspelling indicator. 

spelling bug.afdesign

[R C-R]

12 hours ago, Horseflesh said:

It's in English though, so that isn't the issue.

The issue is the word "Benefits" is using the fi ligature instead of the two letters f & i. Maybe the spell checker doesn't understand ligatures?

[Al S]

Check your actual keyboard language settings in your OS, it could have somehow changed to a different language. Mine flips to Dovark English or something every now and again...

[Horseflesh]

10 hours ago, R C-R said:

The issue is the word "Benefits" is using the fi ligature instead of the two letters f & i. Maybe the spell checker doesn't understand ligatures?

I took a closer look and there is definitely something different about the "fi" glyphs. You cannot put the cursor between "f" and "i" as if they were one glyph. Is that how ligatures work? I honestly don't know. But in the typography panel, there is nothing about ligatures. (The text also looks identical to the re-typed text, so if this is a ligature, it seems pretty useless!)

If I select the re-typed text, the Typography panel shows a ligature setting. 

And lastly if I look for the "fi" glyph in this font (OpenSans), it isn't there!

So this does seem to be related to ligatures, thanks @R C-R, but I don't know enough about that topic to know if what I am seeing with regard to spelling is a bug, or expected behavior for however this word was constructed.

Well, mystery partially solved anyway. 

 

[walt.farrell]

If there's a bug, it may be due to the way the text was imported from the PDF contained in the .ai file, or it may be in the way the PDF was created. I doubt it is with the spell checking.

For example, here are two versions of the word benefit:

1. With separate f and i characters: benefit
2. With an fi ligature: benefit

You can verify those by moving the cursor character-by-character through each word. Spellcheck correctly (in my opinion) objects to the second one, because there is no word spelled: b, e, n, e, fi, t

Possibly the importer in Publisher should have decomposed the fi ligature into the letters f and i. That would probably be the most intuitive handling for most users

 

[Sean P]

Hi Horseflesh,

When you imported the AI file did you enable 'Favour editable text over fidelity'? With this option enabled it will expand the ligatures it knows about on import rather than getting the seemingly misspelled words.

[Horseflesh]

Retracing my steps, I am pretty sure I did NOT activate "favor editable text." I just re-imported with that turned on and the ligatures/misspellings are gone. Looks like that explains it. Thanks @Sean P! 

(What I am now not sure of is how the ligatures got in there in the first place. I didn't create the original Illustrator file, but the typeface is Open Sans and I cannot imagine the previous designer went out of their way to place ligatures that don't even look any different than the regular glyphs... A problem for another day.)

 

[walt.farrell]

6 hours ago, Horseflesh said:

What I am now not sure of is how the ligatures got in there in the first place. I didn't create the original Illustrator file, but the typeface is Open Sans and I cannot imagine the previous designer went out of their way to place ligatures that don't even look any different than the regular glyphs...

If Illustrator works like Publisher (and I have no idea if it does or not) then standard ligatures are enabled by default for fonts that support them. That means the designer would have to go out of their way to not get ligatures

[Horseflesh]

That makes sense but then is Designer wrong for not understanding spelling with ligatures when that text is imported?

If I type the word "benefits" into Illustrator, and it automatically uses the fi ligature, that isn't a spelling error, and I'd expect the same in Designer no matter how that text got in to Designer. 

This is not a big deal as I understand what is happening now, but I'm still unclear on what's supposed to happen in Designer. Is "ligatures screw up spell checking" or "ligatures in imported Illustrator text screws up spell checking" expected behavior?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Horseflesh said:

Is "ligatures screw up spell checking" or "ligatures in imported Illustrator text screws up spell checking" expected behavior?

If you ask for fidelity in appearance when you import, rather than fidelity in editable text, then yes, that is apparently the expected behavior at least today.

Illustrator may have displayed an fi ligature (for example), but it knew it was two characters. Designer, Photo, and Publisher would behave the same way with text you enter directly. They would display/print/export the ligature, but they know it is two characters, and spell-checking works for that reason.

By importing the illustrator PDF text, and saying that appearance was more important than editability, you apparently told Designer to use an actual fi character (even though that was not obvious to you (or me)).

At that point, it's a misspelled word as far as spellcheck is concerned, exactly as it would be if you typed the word "filled" using an fi ligature character rather than using an f and an i when you typed it.

Honestly, I don't know if this is an area for a feature request, a bug fix, or simply an area for better documentation or user awareness.

For example, the Affinity applications could have a spell-checking option to automatically decompose ligatures into their component characters before performing spell-checking on the text. Or importing a PDF could give a warning message if favoring fidelity was specified and text was found that contained ligatures. Or there are probably other adjustments that could be made.

As we have @Sean P's attention, he can probably offer a Serif opinion

[R C-R]

18 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

As we have @Sean P's attention, he can probably offer a Serif opinion

Whereas we users can only offer sans-serif opinions? 

[Horseflesh]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Honestly, I don't know if this is an area for a feature request, a bug fix, or simply an area for better documentation or user awareness.

Hah, then I am not the only one who feels that way. 

My sans-serif opinion is that it should be treated as a bug because it is an inconsistency, but I will be happy if it gets put on some official list or other.

 

[Sean P]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

As we have @Sean P's attention, he can probably offer a Serif opinion

According to development the PDF itself needs to have a 'ToUnicode' table that maps the ligature glyphs to the correct characters. With this present in the PDF the ligatures are used, but for all spelling end editing purposes the two characters are used in the text.

Without this we have to make a guess based on popular ligatures (such as fi) and expand the text, but we only do that if 'favour editable text' is ticked to ensure the PDF will look correct if people prefer fidelity.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Sean P said:

According to development the PDF itself needs to have a 'ToUnicode' table that maps the ligature glyphs to the correct characters. With this present in the PDF the ligatures are used, but for all spelling end editing purposes the two characters are used in the text.

Without this we have to make a guess based on popular ligatures (such as fi) and expand the text, but we only do that if 'favour editable text' is ticked to ensure the PDF will look correct if people prefer fidelity.

No spell checking dictionary is ever going to include standard ligatures, let alone discretionary or historical ones, so for spell checking purposes it would make sense for the software to always expand fi, ffl, ct, st, etc (regardless of whether ‘favour editable text’ is ticked or not).