Translation of Font Weights – not good at all!

[Lorox]

Getting into Publisher lately I noticed that – like everything else – even the designations/names of the font weights (i.e. "Condensed", "Extended" etc.) are being translated as well when using the German language localisation for the app's UI.

This may be well meant but for any designer with a bit of typographic experience this is utterly irritating! By years of daily use of any layout or design application we are so used to the "normal" english designations which – after all – have also been applied to the fonts in the font design software used to generate the font files. Accordingly it does make absolutely NO sense to suddenly find a font weight called "Gedrängt" (or other strange, in daily practice completely unusal designations) in the menu, while you're actually looking for the "Condensed" style you're expecting to see listed in the menu.

I really, really urge you to change this behaviour of the Affinity Apps by expressively exempting font weight or styles from the diverse translations of the applications UIs. I'd really like to see my fonts and font weights/styles listed exactly as I see them listed on MyFonts, FontShop or wherever I usually choose to purchase them.

Apart from this it makes collecting the actual font files used for a document unnecessarily difficult if the the (translated) names/styles in the font menus don't allow for clear and unmistakeable identification of the corresponding (naturally untranslated) font files. So PLEASE leave the font names and styles as they are (english) – regardless of what localisation is used with the apps !

Apart from that do keep up the great work so far and keep evolving!

[TIG]

Hello,
I'm a graphic designer from Italy, sorry for my poor english 😁

I'm trying Affinity Publisher and I've noticed the same issue of Lorox: the font weights names are translated. This is a big issue for me and I think that Affinity have to resolve this problem in order to make Affinity Publisher a professional product. 
It is very hard to set the right font and when you have a font substitution issue it is harder to identify what font is missing.

Please, resolve this issue!

 

[Lorox]

Is this still an issue? As I have set all the Affinity Apps’ UI to English some time ago to be more in tune with most tutorials (which tend to be in English most often) I actually didn't think of it anymore...

Nevertheless I'm completely with you here: this is a serious issue – not only for convenience – but for the very practical and important reasons you mention. It's absolutely unnerving.

Truth be said I‘ve actually never experienced something like it with any other design program I've worked with in 30 years! So if this strangeness is still there it has to be amended immediatly as it is a true pain in the a** for any serious designer (and typographer) who is working with a localized non-English version of the apps.

[TIG]

Thanks Lorox!
So now I have set too Affinity Publisher UI to English, as usual the original is better then the traslated program interface.

Do you use Affinity for professional use?
I want to switch from Adobe to Affinity, but I'm afraid to have serious issues when I send pdf files to the print service.

Thanks a lot!

[loukash]

On 8/2/2019 at 7:51 PM, Lorox said:

a font weight called "Gedrängt"

Huh?!
It would be really funny if it weren't completely nuts. As in, you know, Nüsse.

1 hour ago, Lorox said:

I have set all the Affinity Apps’ UI to English some time ago

Yeah, I'm running my Macs in US-English since at least 10 years, with the exception of stuff like Adobe CS that were sold in one language only, i.e. German in my case.
So I've never noticed this until now.

1 hour ago, Lorox said:

It's absolutely unnerving.

If not to say sehr fett schräg.

1 hour ago, Lorox said:

I‘ve actually never experienced something like it with any other design program I've worked with in 30 years!

Same here.

I think I have a bunch of old Swiss type foundry specimen books which have font names like this in German. Really nice letterpress. Found them in a garbage can on the street where I used to live back in the early 1990s. Beautiful!

[loukash]

3 minutes ago, TIG said:

I'm afraid to have serious issues when I send pdf files to the print service

Before we get off topic in this thread:
Please search the forum for existing threads on this topic or start a new thread in https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/5-affinity-on-desktop-questions-mac-and-windows/

thanks!

[Lorox]

2 hours ago, loukash said:

If not to say sehr fett schräg.

Wenn nicht gar ausgedehnt (extended)...

[Lorox]

2 hours ago, TIG said:

Do you use Affinity for professional use?
I want to switch from Adobe to Affinity, but I'm afraid to have serious issues when I send pdf files to the print service.

Yes, I do use Affinity Publisher* for new projects (beginning with smaller jobs, however). I plan to use InDesign (still CS5) only for updating legacy stuff which has been created in InDesign (if it doesn't seem really worthwile to migrate the files to Publisher via IDML export from ID) or if I'm forced to exchange design files on some collaboration with others who cannot deal with Publisher files.

* meaning: of course I also use Designer and Photo as well but the final output will be via Publisher.

Not turning to Adobe Illustrator again seems hardest for me, as the program has so many features I'm still missing with Affinity Designer – some special ones but also a few I consider quite essential for a professional vector graphics program (like Image Tracing or creating Blends between two vector objects). And well, there still are some features in Photoshop (even CS5) as well, which Affinity Photo doesn't offer...

But you got to think positive: the Affinity apps are not even version 2 and you already can do so much!

As to PDF files for print you just have to be careful and take your time to find the right settings that will work with your printing service. It definitely helps if you have access to Acrobat Pro to preflight check your PDFs before sending them off. There is a topic on this forum in connection with this:

That being said I can assure you that you CAN output print ready PDFs for commercial printing from Publisher. I've done so and the results were absolutely OK! However, as I said: take your time, doublecheck you PDFs with Acrobat Pro or another suitable app (there aren't many, though...) and possibly already take some precautions while still working on your files in Publisher (e.g. be sure to always use 100% K Black for type rather than "rich" RGB black...)

I'd say it's all worth the effort, if it gets you out of Adobe's fangs eventually...