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This being a thread with some traction and very recent posts, and on a generic “Affinity Desktop” forum, no less, I believe it's the best place to discuss this matter.

The last objective feedback we had on this feature was by Dave Harris himself, and it doesn't bode well. It seems variable font support is not in the cards at all at this moment, which, considering the current variable font support landscape, is a shame.

You see, all of Adobe's former “Design Standard” apps (Ai, Id and Ps) already support them via this teensy button that opens up any and all variable parameter sliders that type designers may have put in their own fonts. Adding support for them may be hard, but necessary, at least if Serif wishes for their digital typography support to be best-in-class.

I commended Serif before for offering proper OpenType support, and I expect nothing less from them. The same goes for SVG fonts, but those could be discussed in a different thread and are an entirely different beast (they are strictly appropriate for artistic work, whereas variable fonts can also be used for finer adjustments in DTP projects).

And now, for something completely different (because I never thought that Serif should just ape Adobe; they should try to one-up them at every step of the way and, if that wasn't the case, I'd be writing this on an Adobe forum instead):

As I've said on this thread, I just came back from 10ET, in Porto, where one of the hot topics was precisely variable fonts.

One of the issues Peter Bilak raised was the excessive choice provided by them, a factor which apparently also doomed the Multiple Master format before… Being a great fan of Barry Schwartz's “The Paradox of Choice” talk, I concur in thinking that too much choice can do more harm than good.

Fully featured variable fonts can, at the very limit, allow for really, really stupid choices, which make you wonder what good they are for, after all. And that's where one of the suggestions I made to Bilak during Q&A comes in: constraints.

I.e., there should be a standard method, in font editors such as Glyphs.app, FontLab, RoboFont, etc., to add certain rules that limit specific stupid/illegible combinations as per Bilak's own “design space” concept. Basically, when drawing one slider all the way up or down, others might be limited in their range and vice-versa; also and as a consequence of that, you might be able to lock them selectively in design apps so as to prioritise certain parameters over others.

Alternatively, because choice can be good, there might be a special mode akin to the current anarchy where anything goes, which would accordingly disable said constraints altogether; we could call it “sandbox mode” or some other playful term that emphasised that it should not be the default setting (kind of like Affinity apps do not allow optical deformations of text along a single axis, come to think of it).

What do you think? If this idea gains enough traction, I'll be sure to put it into an actual paper and propose it to the powers-that-be.

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Hi JGD,

I support the  constraints approach. For most projects limits make sense. I also support the idea of an 'anarchy' option for the odd occasion where 'cutting loose' will aid a project. I have a book on graffiti in the works and the ability to do the occasional truly weird heading simply, using variable fonts in extreme mode, would also be great.

 

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2 hours ago, JGD said:

Adding support for them may be hard, but necessary, at least if Serif wishes for their digital typography support to be best-in-class.

Variable fonts will not, cannot, make Affinity applications to be best-in-class without the much more needed non-Western language support. 

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On 12/1/2019 at 9:53 PM, MikeW said:

Variable fonts will not, cannot, make Affinity applications to be best-in-class without the much more needed non-Western language support. 

Make no mistake about it, @MikeW: I fully agree with you. RTL support should definitely be higher up the priority list for “best-in-class” in a classical sense, as is a multi-line composer equivalent.

But the way I see it, Designer is very much focused on digital illustration, so I can certainly accept that typography in general is probably not a priority there. On the other hand, Serif is no stranger to going for flashy, low-hanging-fruit features, and maybe these are just easy enough to implement for them to make the cut. It's not that I think that's the best way to go about it, but I'm biased toward typography (so sue me xD ) and considering just how harder it might be to implement the support you mentioned, I wouldn't mind at all seeing at least those features in Designer a bit quicker so that they become an industry standard ASAP.

Full disclaimer: you mustn't forget that, as a type designer, I do have a vested interest in seeing certain things become standard so that I might commit to them (and, of course, reap the benefits, both creative and pecuniary ;) ).

As for Publisher, well… Being a DTP app, it must allow for some “boring” stuff, as in manuals, packaging, labels, etc. And even as a western designer, you can't do many of those without RTL, I'm afraid, so you're absolutely right in that it should be a top priority.

Still, that doesn't preclude us from discussing the possible implementations of this thing, am I right? We could certainly create a dedicated RTL thread or post on an existing one, even if it was just for +1 posts (because there's not much to it when it comes to the UX, is there? It's basically standardised at this point). Also, it's hard to ascertain just how big that market is, as the lack of said support is a complete non-starter and will make most potential customers self-exclude from the user pool.

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Along with rtl, there is also need for complex ltr scripts and both horizontal and vertical Japanese support needed before flashier variable or color font support. 

These are needed for at least APub, but surely needed in the others too.

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1 minute ago, MikeW said:

Along with rtl, there is also need for complex ltr scripts and both horizontal and vertical Japanese support needed before flashier variable or color font support. 

I agree.

Unfortunately, it may be easier to produce the support for variable or color fonts, so they may come first (if they come at all), unless Serif is secretly close to having their RTL implementation finished (which I doubt, as they have said it will be a significant time before they can do that). Their previous statements indicate that handling RTL will require a pretty complete rewrite of their entire text layout system.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
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1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

...Their previous statements indicate that handling RTL will require a pretty complete rewrite of their entire text layout system.

I blame that on the decision to write their own shaping code. (So writes the armchair quarterback...xD)

If the decision was to have used Harfbuzz for shaping, the Affinity applications would already have shaping for complex LTR & RTL scripts. Even Adobe has finally gotten behind this OpenSource project and, as of ID 2020, are using it in their World Ready composer.

But the good news is it isn't too late to include it.

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6 hours ago, MikeW said:

I was just reading the announcement post on the Adobe ID forum concerning variable fonts and thought I would share it here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/variable-fonts-in-indesign/m-p/10720582#M159607

So basically, according to one Adobe employee, variable fonts are not (yet?) ready for prime time?

Anyway, I replied mostly to mention that the Adobe About fonts help article the announcement one links to is probably the best article I have seen for a summary reference for the features of all the different font types/kinds that at least some apps support. Well worth a bookmark, I think.

Thanks!

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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@Lagarto I totally agree. First of all that Freehand was way ahead of its time. In my opinion it was the top notch app from its era. Much much better than Adobe Illustrator was.

But secondly, Affinity SHOULD have Variable Fonts support for sure. Come on, it's the future of typography. All other apps have it by now.

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