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Publisher unable to group fonts properly


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5 minutes ago, DarkClown said:

it's a way to express how (now be kind, Timo) "upset" I am.

I really understand your frustration.

All I can say is that I use inDesign for my day-to-day work and I try to use Publisher for smaller types of work as much as I can.

I don't consider Publisher ready for heavy lifting yet. It's inDesign 1.0 for all intents and purposes. As a matter of fact, it's way better than what inDesign 1.0 was.

Personally, I think we will need to get used to using more than just one publishing application. And I think it's a good thing. :-)

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InDesign is better at dealing with bad fonts, but it is not immune from the issues.

I have a couple thousand fonts installed, including all of the Helvetica Neue LT Std family,
and all of the Helvetica Now family.
No font issues in APub.

I would suggest you do the following ...

1. Un-install all Helvetica fonts.

2. Check the fonts folder to be sure all Helvetica font files are gone.
FontExplorer X Pro has a tool which removes all un-installed fonts from the fonts folder.
It checks Windows to see if the font is installed, and if not it moves the font files out.
This tool exists because having un-installed font files in the fonts folder can cause problems.

3. Run a tool to correct Windows registry errors regarding fonts.
MainType has a Registry Fixer tool for this purpose.
FontExpert has a Detect Font Problems tool for this purpose.
I prefer this as it seems to work better.
The FontExpert 30-day trial is fully functioning including this utility.

4. Delete the Windows font cache files (multiple)
There are many easy to find tutorials on this, and even a batch file available to automate it.
Font caches get messed-up.

FontExplorer X Pro has tools to clear the operating system font cache, and application font caches.
It will clear QuarkExpress, Microsoft, and Adobe application font caches.
These tools exist because font caches get messed-up.

Installing a bunch of broken fonts is a sure fire way to cause problems.

5. Reboot your system.
Your Windows font cache will be rebuilt.

6. Re-install the Helvetica Neue LT Std fonts.
Just highlight the files, right-click, and select Install.

7. Start APub and test.

I would expect it to be working fine.
If not, I am out of ideas.

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Very sound advise from LibreTraining. I am not sure what causes the confusion in this particular case but it could be related to having Type 1 or older TrueType fonts installed on the system along with OpenType fonts, and both using same or similar names at some level (not necessarily at the level of styling group aka. menu name, but at the level of FullName or PostScript name)..

The older fonts typically had only a minimum of font information included in meta data in order to get them listed in apps as groups of families that allow standard styling options with Regular, Italic, Bold, and BoldItalc attributes be applied to them, and no consideration on more advanced UI grouping based on common family name and sub species that allow the kind of over 50 styles listed in a group, as in Helvetica Neue. So applications need to do this kind of categorisation to some extent themselves. Most applications do not bother so e.g. latest version of Word simply lists about 25 odd instances of the 51 styles included in Helvetical Neue (OpenType PS version of Adobe FontFolio 11-1) and lets them all to be made bold, italic and bold italic without any consideration on whether there is an actual font that matches the styling attribute (this is called allowing system-generated "faux formatting").

This kind of carelessness is not acceptable in page layout application, and as far as I can tell, Affinity Publisher does not allow this, and behaves "professionally" in this respect, and tries to list only genuine fonts, and group them in families as defined by font providers.

But there is room for improvement E.g. the fonts could be listed by font technology so that e.g. professional fonts like Helvetica Neue OpenType PS fonts get listed correctly, no matter what, as it is unlikely that any third party font breaks their enumeration if certain common meta data is read when collecting the information of installed fonts. Also, it seems that the algorithm (or database) that tries to group intalled fonts meaningfully in app menus, is less sophisticated than that of InDesign, but that should be no surprise to anyone knowing this business for any longer period. QuarkXpress has been around for a few decades, and is notorious for making gross blunders in listing fonts up to the most recent versions... And as LibreTraining mentioned, InDesign has issues of its own (e.g., it is sometimes necessary to manually remove Adobe font cache to get the installed fonts correctly listed in Adobe apps).

This is the reason why many designers use font managers -- but they can also make things still more complicated, if not fully supporting the software installed on the system.

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38 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

The older fonts typically had only a minimum of font information included in meta data in order to get them listed in apps as groups of families that allow standard styling options with Regular, Italic, Bold, and BoldItalc attributes be applied to them, and no consideration on more advanced UI grouping based on common family name and sub species that allow the kind of over 50 styles listed in a group, as in Helvetica Neue. So applications need to do this kind of categorisation to some extent themselves. Most applications do not bother so e.g. latest version of Word simply lists about 25 odd instances of the 51 styles included in Helvetical Neue (OpenType PS version of Adobe FontFolio 11-1) and lets them all to be made bold, italic and bold italic without any consideration on whether there is an actual font that matches the styling attribute (this is called allowing system-generated "faux formatting").

Helvetica Neue LT Std has the style groups (R/I/B/BI) set-up properly (for the most part).
Which means applications like Word and LibreOffice on Windows can access and use all the fonts.
The problem is there is no information to tell the user how to do this.

For example in the normal width there are 2 R/I/B/BI style groups, 4 R/I style groups, and 1 R style group.
Most users will know the Bold font is available via the Bold button on the Roman (Regular) weight.
But, the user has no way of knowing that 85 Heavy is the Bold button of the 65 Medium font.
The user just sees that the 85 Heavy is missing from the font list.

Without font documentation, and without any indication in the application user interfaces, errors will be made.
Compounded by the fact that Word, and LO give no indication when fake bold or fake italic is applied.
QuarkXPress has a little icon which appears when any style is faked. Great feature.

The style groups is why you only see "25 odd instances of the 51 styles."
The fonts are available, but the user has no way to see how, and it is further masked by the faked bold or italics feature.
The user should be able to turn-off the faking, and the bold and italic buttons only available for real fonts.

 

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Yes, exactly. I like the Photoshop approach of allowing "faux" if absolutely necessary, and not allowing it by accident (simply by not graying out B and I in situations there is no real font supporting the styling), and InDesign simply not allowing it at all. QXP approach is also OK, but IMO not appropriate in page layout context (at least for printed media). Rendering of faux formatting is often misleading: you might get meaningful results on screen but barely visible change in print (e.g. based on screen output, you seem to get reasonable bold type, but on print there is practically no difference).

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When/if the B button is used in Q, and there is no B variety there will be a yellow caution sign with an exclamation symbol in it present. The user us therefore warned in the UI.

Which behavior is, or will be, moot in an upcoming release when faux styling will be disallowed. 

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The user should be able to turn-off the faking and be done with it.

Recently there was a user in the LO "forum" saying the bold fonts were not showing-up in the PDF export.
Well he was applying fake bold to fonts that had no actual Bold font.
So there was no Bold font to embed in the PDF, so it just appeared as the regular font which got embedded.

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3 minutes ago, MikeW said:

When/if the B button is used in Q, and there is no B variety there will be a yellow caution sign with an exclamation symbol in it present. The user us therefore warned in the UI.

Which behavior is, or will be, moot in an upcoming release when faux styling will be disallowed. 

As mentioned above ...

16 minutes ago, LibreTraining said:

QuarkXPress has a little icon which appears when any style is faked. Great feature.

 

Nice to know "faux styling" is going to go away.

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On 8/23/2019 at 9:06 PM, LibreTraining said:

InDesign is better at dealing with bad fonts, but it is not immune from the issues.

I have a couple thousand fonts installed, including all of the Helvetica Neue LT Std family,
and all of the Helvetica Now family.
No font issues in APub.

I would suggest you do the following ...

1. Un-install all Helvetica fonts.

2. Check the fonts folder to be sure all Helvetica font files are gone.
FontExplorer X Pro has a tool which removes all un-installed fonts from the fonts folder.
It checks Windows to see if the font is installed, and if not it moves the font files out.
This tool exists because having un-installed font files in the fonts folder can cause problems.

3. Run a tool to correct Windows registry errors regarding fonts.
MainType has a Registry Fixer tool for this purpose.
FontExpert has a Detect Font Problems tool for this purpose.
I prefer this as it seems to work better.
The FontExpert 30-day trial is fully functioning including this utility.

4. Delete the Windows font cache files (multiple)
There are many easy to find tutorials on this, and even a batch file available to automate it.
Font caches get messed-up.

FontExplorer X Pro has tools to clear the operating system font cache, and application font caches.
It will clear QuarkExpress, Microsoft, and Adobe application font caches.
These tools exist because font caches get messed-up.

Installing a bunch of broken fonts is a sure fire way to cause problems.

5. Reboot your system.
Your Windows font cache will be rebuilt.

6. Re-install the Helvetica Neue LT Std fonts.
Just highlight the files, right-click, and select Install.

7. Start APub and test.

I would expect it to be working fine.
If not, I am out of ideas.

4.5. use Font Doctor to detect and repair corrupted fonts.

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On 8/31/2019 at 5:29 AM, Tourmaline said:

What about Extensis Suitcase Fusion? Used by a lot of pro's.

Renaming fonts properly requires editing multiple fields within the fonts.
Due to the missing information it is unlikely any automated tools could do it correctly.

Renaming font files is rather simple and many font tools can do this.
I am assuming this is what ESF is doing (butIi do not remember, and their sales-pitch website has no documentation).

I tried Extensis Suitcase Fusion -- did not like it and un-installed it within days.
If you are a "professional" and only use a fairly fixed list of commercial fonts, Google fonts, and Adobe Typekit - it may work for you.
But if you are editing fonts, installing multiple modified versions for testing, un-installing, fixing - ESF quickly became a nightmare.

In regards to the issue in this forum thread, ESF does not appear to be of any help in fixing the problems.

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On 8/31/2019 at 5:34 AM, Tourmaline said:

4.5. use Font Doctor to detect and repair corrupted fonts.

Actually corrupted fonts are rare in my experience.
Usually the operating system will not even install a corrupted font file.

I have also used Font Doctor and found it of little use.
For example I know I have duplicate Calibri font files in my Font folder right now.
Ran Font Doctor just now - it found nothing.

I also ran Font Doctor on multiple folders full of the badly named Helvetica files (same as those above).
It found nothing.
The fonts are not corrupted -- the fonts are just badly constructed in a way that could lead to errors.

So I do not see Font Doctor helping in this particular situation.
It may be helpful in some other scenarios, but it did not seem to do much which was useful for me.

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On 8/31/2019 at 2:29 PM, Tourmaline said:

What about Extensis Suitcase Fusion? Used by a lot of pro's.

It won't correct your fonts, if it's able to detect problems, it'll ask if you want to import them in the database or not. As the other apps, its font cache can be compromised, and you'll have to uninstall and reinstall it (faster way to resolve simple problems with Suitcase, i.e. when fonts don't load anymore when a program need them in a document).

When it's messing royally with your fonts on the system, (not the little mess of above), it's complicated and take time to correct (but it's rare).

And last point, last versions use the same model as Adobe: account with an email by licence (need Internet access? not sure since I'm always connected), and a monthly fee.

But it's handy when managing a lot of (old) fonts and opening a lot of document that need different fonts.

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3 hours ago, LibreTraining said:

Renaming fonts properly requires editing multiple fields within the fonts.
Due to the missing information it is unlikely any automated tools could do it correctly.

Renaming font files is rather simple and many font tools can do this.
I am assuming this is what ESF is doing (butIi do not remember, and their sales-pitch website has no documentation).

I tried Extensis Suitcase Fusion -- did not like it and un-installed it within days.
If you are a "professional" and only use a fairly fixed list of commercial fonts, Google fonts, and Adobe Typekit - it may work for you.
But if you are editing fonts, installing multiple modified versions for testing, un-installing, fixing - ESF quickly became a nightmare.

In regards to the issue in this forum thread, ESF does not appear to be of any help in fixing the problems.

I've got thousands of fonts but never experience any problems with Suitcase Fusion.

Auto font activation is nice to have.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks everybody for supporting me and adding you knowledge. I'm not a font expert and never experienced any font issues until now with any other program before! I really appreciate your input to solve Affinities SW bugs. Regretfully I don't own any of the above Font products to sort out font issues. Also I would not even know what kind of problem I should look out for (I hope that's excused since even Affinity doesn't seem to know anything! about fonts and these kind of issues) - and I wouldn't even know, how to solve the problem with one of the font managers.

Frankly spoken, there are two topics:
1) Can we expect a professional Desktop Publishing SW to handle any kind of font problems that might occur - with ease (as ALL the competitors do)? I would assume since font handling is THE only thing that matters as a base competency: yes, it's something you can expect. And if a font is "bad quality" just don't integrate it (not nice - but a suitable workaround). But screwing up the complete font list is just far to much! It's like building a high performance car but only running on Shell fuel and breaking down with BP fuel while everyone else copes with all of them.

2) This is a typical bananaware issue. I assume everyone at affinity is aware of the problem (that's - again I assume - why they don't comment on this topic). I can spend another 3 days on figuring out what might be the cause of the problem. De-installing all Font managers, deleting all caches, deleting all fonts except the once installed by the system, de installing all possible additional software that might affect the system - until we finally find out what crappy sw bug caused the problem. I see absolutely no interest of affinity of solving this ESSENTIAL problem themselves or in cooperation with the users... (I do see them discussing pros and cons of new features big time). They just wait for customers to come up with a proper bug report leading to the real problem. In this case it goes far beyond "beta testing" ... (certainly since the screwed SW is implemented in the final version already) ... Feels for me like they are waiting for us to tell them where the bug is.

I currently don't have the time to reconfigure my system just for Affinity. I'll try all of the above suggestions, when my projects for my customers are finished. Projects I really tried to realise with Publisher. Got myself an InDesign subscription until the project is over ... a very painful decision. I'll get back to the topic, when i've got spare time or Affinity starts to support working on major bugs again. I'm happy to help, but hate to be ignored ...

Cheers, Timo

Thx again for all your support!

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 i7-12700KF, 3.60 GHz, 32GB RAM, SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet, Windows 11 Pro - AP, AD and APublisher V1 and V2
https://www.timobierbaum.com

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45 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

5) QuarkXPress 2018: Supports advanced OpenType font family grouping and Windows menu name style based grouping; allows faux styles with styling buttons, menu commands and shortcuts (but not as listed faux font names). Shows font technology. Groups fonts by writing system. Cannot show font previews per family in one list. Allowing careless faux formatting ...

Q2019 no longer allows faux formatting. When opening a publication that has used faux styling, the faux styling is retained and indicated by square brackets [Faux ... (whatever style)  ] and is also displayed as such in the Usage panel.

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21 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Next version then, hopefully. And preferrably as expandable/collapsible sublists as they are easier to control.

Maybe. Or not.

There was so much backlash to faux fonts that (to me) Quark had a somewhat knee-jerk reaction that began with version 2018 (if I am remembering the version correctly) that was further changed in the most recent update. At least for Windows users. Dunno about the Mac version as sub-style flyout returned for them in v.2018 but don't really know about v.2019.

I personally don't care if family styles are only accessible via a separate drop down or not. By the time I am starting a book, flyer, poster or what not, I pretty much know what fonts are going to be used. Picking them in whatever application I am using for a job, however they are accessed, isn't a big deal. What I generally never do in any application is to scroll through fonts to choose the "right" one.

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16 hours ago, DarkClown said:

1) Can we expect a professional Desktop Publishing SW to handle any kind of font problems that might occur - with ease (as ALL the competitors do)? I would assume since font handling is THE only thing that matters as a base competency: yes, it's something you can expect. And if a font is "bad quality" just don't integrate it (not nice - but a suitable workaround). But screwing up the complete font list is just far to much! It's like building a high performance car but only running on Shell fuel and breaking down with BP fuel while everyone else copes with all of them.

Adobe has an additional 20 years of dealing with clueless users who install a bunch of crap broken fonts and then complain that the application is not displaying them properly, or printing is messed-up, or the export to PDF looks wrong.
So in some cases they can guess what should be in the fonts based on partial information.
Sometimes this works, sometimes it does not work.
Just because you see some font listed does not mean they are all there, or that the export to PDF will work properly.
The only way to really know is to create a test page with all the fonts in the family on it,
and then check the screen output, the print output, and all embedded fonts in the PDF.
Then you can say the fonts are working 100%.
This "as ALL the competitors do" statement is complete nonsense.

Below is an image posted in a font forum 10 days ago showing the font list in Adobe Photoshop.
The user is asking for help because the fonts are not listed properly.
Note the four darkest Sample previews in the middle that look all the same.

Adobe-font-errors.thumb.jpg.d1dfc35e70bc87d158ba11f2cd3c12a1.jpg

What is listed as four fonts which all look the same is actually four different font families
which each contain five fonts, for a total of 20 fonts in four families.
Photoshop is displaying 20 fonts in four families -- as four fonts that all look the same.
Crap broken fonts that Adobe cannot display properly.

Does this look familiar to you? Kinda like your Helvetica mess.

I fixed the fonts, tested in APub and LibreOffice, and sent them back.
He was quite appreciative.

I have yet to see any well-made non-broken fonts which do not group/list properly in APub.

You install a bunch of crap broken fonts and are still trying to blame it all on APub/Affinity.
If you want to blame someone, look in the mirror.

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