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Character Variants not Working


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I added character variants to some of my fonts such as Odana. They work fine in PagePlus X9, but not in Affinity Designer. 

 

The other OpenType features seem to be working, but Character Variant cv01 is the only set available. The feature uses a "one to many" glyph substitution. 

lookup CharacterVariants {
  sub asterisk -> [asterisk asteriskmath uni2051 uni2042 uni203B];
  sub plus -> [plus uni2795 uni271A uni271B uni271C];
  sub at -> [at uni260E uni260F uni2121 uni213B];
  sub copyright -> [copyright uni2117 uniF000 estimated uni2139];
  sub multiply -> [multiply uni2715 uni2716 uni2717 uni2718];
  sub dagger -> [dagger uni2622 uni2623 uni26A1 uni2620];
  sub daggerdbl -> [daggerdbl uni26A0 uni2691 uni26B0 uni26B1];
  sub bullet -> [bullet uni204D uni2023 uni2767 uni2712];
  sub blackcircle -> [blackcircle newmoon waxingcrescentmoon firstquartermoon waxinggibbousmoon];
  sub circle -> [circle fullmoon waninggibbousmoon lastquartermoon waningcrescentmoon];
  sub uni2600 -> [uni2600 sunrise uni26C5 uni2602 uni2603];
}

Frame Text.afdesign

AMD A10-6800K, with Radeon HD Graphics 4100 GHz

8 Gb on Windows 10 64-bit build 17763.316 •  My Free OpenType Fonts

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Is or was there a version of this font which uses Stylistic Alternates instead of Character Variants? We have sometimes seen that appearing on Mac.

 

Not supporting multiple options was an oversight. Few fonts use CV at all, and since there are 99 variants I kinda expected fonts to use different variants instead. I agree the specification does imply that multiple choices should be supported, so we will fix this, but I don't know if it will make it for 1.5.

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Is or was there a version of this font which uses Stylistic Alternates instead of Character Variants? We have sometimes seen that appearing on Mac.

 

Not supporting multiple options was an oversight. Few fonts use CV at all, and since there are 99 variants I kinda expected fonts to use different variants instead. I agree the specification does imply that multiple choices should be supported, so we will fix this, but I don't know if it will make it for 1.5.

 

When I first designed my fonts, I used the Initial Forms feature for Decorative Drop Caps.

 

Microsoft changed the description of this feature, so although they still work in PagePlus, etc., they are enabled by default in Affinity Designer and cannot be disabled. 

 

I therefore replaced the Initial Forms with Stylistic Alternates. I tried Contextual Alternates, but that is also enabled by default. The Stylistic Sets were already in use, so I changed these to Character Variants. These are disabled by default, which is better than calt. 

 

This discussion on High-Logic refers.

AMD A10-6800K, with Radeon HD Graphics 4100 GHz

8 Gb on Windows 10 64-bit build 17763.316 •  My Free OpenType Fonts

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Thanks. You should be able to disable Initial Forms now; you can on Mac, and if Windows isn't the same it's an oversight. We also fixed a bug that meant they weren't detecting word ends correctly. They are still enabled by default, I think, so are still best avoided.

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  • 2 years later...
  • Staff

This issue has been addressed in the current beta build. Thanks for reporting this.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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