Why can't you add bold to any font in XXP4? I was able to do it in XXP3.0.2.
I also have .xar files that were created with bold font in 3.0.2 and I now get error message when I open them in XXP4
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Why can't you add bold to any font in XXP4? I was able to do it in XXP3.0.2.
I also have .xar files that were created with bold font in 3.0.2 and I now get error message when I open them in XXP4
You can add bold to a font, but only to a font that has a BOLD variant. Xara no longer artificially synthesizes either Bold or italic.
You can make any font appear bold by adding an outline. right click on the color line then use the drop down box at the top to set the size.
I think that this change of direction for version 4 is a massive mistake.
In all of Xtreme's previous upgrades, users have been confident that newer versions of Xtreme have been able to open all files created in older versions.
Now that synthesised bold/italic fonts have been removed, the integrity of old artwork is lost.
For example, I hold .xar files of clients' business cards - each time a new member of staff is recruited, I open up the old artwork, change the name/contact details, and send off a PDF for printing. All of the cards are identical because I use the same base file - but now v4 prevents me from doing that:
When I originally raised this in the Xara Xtreme Pro Version 4 - Issue List thread, Martin the Xara text handling coder said that it was a conscious decision to remove synthesised bold text because he didn't think it worked very well and that it couldn't be exported to a PDF anyway.
I don't buy that. While I bought upgrades for both Xtreme 4 and Xtreme Pro 4 immediately on release and before even downloading them, I see this backwards step of removing an important feature as a deal breaker and am virtually forced into sticking with v3.2.
Sure, the above error message on opening files created with pre 4.0 releases tells me that I need to substitute fonts, but I need the resulting output to be identical to that which I produced in the past! If I had just v4, how would I even know how bold a synthesised bold font was - even if it were possible to find a match in a different font?
Martin's nannying of me to make sure that I don't use features that PDF exports can't support doesn't make sense: v3.2 had a perfectly good warning on export to PDF which tells me that the synthesised bold font can't be exported...
...that works for everyone! Easily fixed if the target is a PDF: convert the offending synthesised bold text to editable shapes. Not everything is exported to PDF from Xtreme though - much is exported as bitmaps for webpages, or as webpage design mockups: in the bitmap exports, the synthesised bold exports just fine.
Tahoma is a fairly standard web font, and while it doesn't have an italic variant, if you apply italics to it on a webpage, all three major PC browsers show it. Xtreme used to - but now it can't. That is a step backwards - and now that old .xar files can no longer be opened, it's a badly planned step backwards.
Got a lot of sympathy with Daniel's point of view.
I am one of those who exports for print in bitmap format [mostly] and I will miss the synthesised fonts they were very useful - at least to me as an 'artist' rather than a 'designer'.
And pdf is not an export format for web? - Daniel had a good point in the other thread - this has not been answered as far as I can see? - are we being led by the nose here?
Its not going to cause me as much pain because I already hop between versions - because of other changes - but it is the first [for me] very positive downside to what is otherwise an excellent upgrade.
I understand xara's reasons for the change [I think] - still features have been removed and replaced before now - eg pantone color palettes removed in original xtreme version[s], since replaced - may be a case for replacing the synthesised font as an option?
On the other side, I'm happy that Xara removed the synthesized bold feature.:)
I have to send files to a printer on a regular basis and the printer requires PDF files. I find it much easier in version 4 without synthesized bold fonts. There is less type that needs to be converted to shapes, resulting in much smaller files.
If I need to make a font bold that doesn't have a bold variant I simply add an outline.
sorry not really with that first bit :confused:
there was never any compulsion to use the synthesised variants - or am I misreading :o
with you on the outlining though - that can be useful :)
My husband and I work together on a weekly publication, and he has a habit of just clicking the bold button when he's laying out advertisements Then the ads are put on to a multi page double spread document along with the rest of the content.
When it comes time to make the pdf to send to the printer it can be chock full of text that would need to be either changed or converted to shapes.
with v.4 he has to use outlines so I'm happy:D
You should be really happy that Xara has for the first time a good font engine instead of the mickey mouse one that we had in the past.
Look what happened when you tried to import a PDF file with the text still editable. What did you! sometimes numbers, sometimes symbols and the text scattered across the page. Now you still might get an error message that X font is not installed in you machine at least you now have the chance to change and yes maybe the format might still be off but at least now you have the chance of getting back. Now the one using Tiff as an export to print as suggested you have the outline and the opportunity to alter the kerning to get the effect that you want.
Yes is was a deliberate decision to remove this feature, or rather I should say to fix a serious problem.
a) You guys are not on the receiving end of the complaints we get about print jobs that go wrong, and that can be very, very expensive.
b) Synthesized fonts are fake. They are artificial, computer generated, and if you're a font designer, they are an aberration, a distortion of the font designers art. As graphic artists you should respect that.
c) The industry standard uses the same rules - to disallow fake, synthesized fonts. Adobe set the precedent, some say define, the rules in this respect. We try to work with, not against industry standards.
d) You can simulate the old behavior, i.e. work-around it by slanting fonts or emboldening by adding an outline. Yes it looks ugly, particularly slanted fonts, but that the exact point. It's not totally easy to do this (like presing a button), but that's a good thing.
e) The font code was rotten, a mess that needed cleaning up (partly as a result of trying to cope with the complexities of synthesized fonts). So the font engine has had a clean out, that has improved reliability and allowed us more easily add new things such as the the liquid text flow features, and with more to come in future releases.
Whenever I see slanted fonts being used, it's not just ugly, but embarrassing if that has been created in Xara software, because any professional can spot this a mile off, and is a clear sign of amateurs at work.
So yes, it means old documents might look different under v4, but then again if you ever print or distribute them, they will look different under v3. And, like it or not, PDF is the industry standard print format now, as well as industry standard distribution format for WYSIWYG documents on the web, email and all electronic forms.
The old system gave a warning, but that was not a solution. It didn't help people fix the issues. The regular complaint was, 'why do you allow me to make a 'illegal' font that I can't print' and 'it should be WYSIWYG'. Well under v3 and earlier it wasn't WYSIWYG, and so for that reason, and those given above, the decision was made to change, to 'fix' the behavior.
So actually the decision was relatively simple. Some may not like it. Many did not like the way it was before, and will prefer the new system. I believe it was the right decision.
That what I was trying to say Charles as usual you have explained it much better than me. This thread has given the opportunity to say thank you for a much improved programme. Still have to get my head around the Magix filters yet in Live Effects.
I really agree with Charles on this issue. One thing that would be a nice is to disable the Bold and Italic buttons on the tool bar for fonts that don't have those attributes.
Thanks Charles
you have confirmed what I thought - and yes Peter I for one am pleased that xara has a high standard font engine - of course :)
I can work round it no problem - thanks too for confirming this was standards led and to eliminate 'illegality' - I am happy with that
Ah all is forgiven - must keep those menfolk in line !:DQuote:
Originally Posted by angelize
I agree with the decision not to synthesize fonts, but am getting annoyed with this warning box coming up every time. I understand that if it does nothing then it's not available. Can you put a "Don't show me this warning again" checkbox on the warning notice, so that it's not so annoying.
I agree with Robert .... Missed his post .... If the Bold and Italic buttons are disabled if they are not available then you don't need the annoying warning box.
Did I mention that the warning box is annoying ........
Charles,
Thank you for your detailed explanation.
Congratulations to you and your team on the new version.
BQ
But, is there a way that Xara 4 could "tag" the synthesized text (perhaps automatically adding a name to the Name Gallery) so that the user could easily audit there old files when opened in Xara 4.
Oops, I see by a previous posting, there is something shown in the Name Gallery. So if I select the radio button in the gallery will it in fact select the "desynthesized" characters? Can't test this on the PC I have at the moment.
Personally, I'll miss the ease at making something bold/italic if the font doesn't have that kind of variant. Most of the work I do with Xara is with graphics that eventually end up exported as PNG's for use in software/web pages and hardly ever for print purposes.
I also totally understand the decision to remove that kind of manky code from the code base (being a developer myself) and the sense of liberation you get as a coder when you finally get to rid yourself of something that's horrible to work with, update and even understand.
What would be neat (if it were possible, and I don't know if it is) would be if options could be set up so that if you click bold for a font that doesn't have a bold variant it automatically adds an outline to the text of some thickness that you set in options. Likewise if italicizing skewed the text by some set amount that you could control. For those of us that are synthesizing ourselves (where needed) it would be a time saver for manually doing that and at the same time making sure that all bold/italic text in a given font looks the same. Both options would have a dialog box that pops up to tell you what's happening (with one of those "don't show this again") ticks at the bottom. That way the cleaner font handling remains because the synthesizing is done outside of the font layout engine.
In any case, I'd also like to get on the bandwagon to have the bold/italic buttons disabled if the current text object/selected text/font doesn't support those variants. It seems like it would be a cleaner interface. Buttons shouldn't be presented if they won't do anything when you press them (though I realize that it's probably doing that to remind people of exactly WHY the option doesn't exist).
Daniel, although I understand your trouble, using fake bold and/or italic is a practice going against basic aesthetics principles. Your business cards look nice - why not just buy the real bold variant of Futura and update your base file? It's not that expensive solution, and the bizcards will look even better.
Whilst I personally dislike synthesised fonts and would never use them, I'm surprised Xara have gone this far. Whilst they may be a no-no in Adobeland, Microsoftland is fine with them and its population (which is fairly large) expects to be able to set bold/oblique on anything.
There are also some inconsistencies, such as changing the font from one that supports bold/italic to one that doesn't. This case doesn't generate the Annoying Warning, and keeps the bold/italic markers, but silently renders them the same as the base font.
I suspect that I am not alone in never having known of the font designer's disgust that we have used a Bold button wrongly. If this is part of Xtreme's 'growing up', I'll try to grow up with it.
Adobe is not consistent: Illustrator CS3 doesn't allow synthesised fonts, but Fireworks CS3 does. Perhaps this is because Illustrator is primarily used for things going to print and Fireworks for things to be exported for webpages? Xtreme does both so is bound to upset one camp or the other.
What to do with Xtreme's Bold/Italic buttons ... it's easy to poke fun at Illustrator's interface, but I think in this respect, it is superior to Xara's: given we've learned this week that the buttons are a fabrication and merely a shortcut to selecting a different font style, Illustrator's toolbar may look uglier but it's easier to work with because only the actually-available options are presented:
If the alternative is having Bold/Italic buttons that don't 'work', or worse, that generate the Annoying Error, I'd much rather see the Illustrator-like pulldown.
The "pulldown" is there ....... it's just that it's a "flyout"
I wasn't impressed with the chage re: synthesize fonts, I was a little cheesed off. But I read most of the comments on this thread and appreciate all the contribution, particularly from the printing trade side of things. The explanation of how X4 is fixing a problem rather than deleting something is very helpful. I too will have to learn to get used to it if it means doing it right.
Rupert
I have to agree with Xara's change in the font system. This is much better imo because there have been many situations where I couldn't figure out why my text did not look the same in another app and I didn't realize that it was because my fonts were being synthesized in Xara. This is a good direction to move in. Now wouldn't it be great if they added an aliased preview of common system and web fonts that would make it easy to show people comps as they would really look for html output.
s.g.
Just one thought on what Charles said-
I'm no expert on the area, but wasn't it Adobe who created Multiple Master fonts, which offered the capability to synthesize any font variant along multiple "axes" including weight and slant? If synthetic fonts are an aberration, presumably MM fonts are the work of Satan?Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Moir
Multiple Master Fonts are by name - not one font, but several versions of the same font, no?Quote:
Originally Posted by colin_e
(Wiki) For example, the Myriad multiple master font had two axes: "weight" and "width." This font would include four separate "master designs" of each character: light compressed, light extended, bold compressed, and bold extended. Any weight or width font in between these endpoints can be produced by interpolating between the character outlines of these master designs. The addition of italics requires another four master designs.
Risto
Is Multiple Master technology still available? I thought Adobe had sunset it.
I'd suggest making this switchable within the app if possible. Let the user decide if they want to switch it on or off...
The code was cleaned up for the Font Gallery. Which means having the option in X4 is not an option... If you have to have it, Use any version of Xara up to Xara3.2.Quote:
Originally Posted by standay
I agree, having the B & I buttons grey'd out if not available. No need for the pesky warning if they are non-selectable. Oversight Perhaps...
Now if they'd fix the Clipart Galleries! Or was that optimized in X3.2? Hence the change in X3 & X4 from all previous versions?
I donīt agree. The way itīs implement in version 4 is a step ahead for all reasons explained. Besides the code is cleaner as Charles pointed out. The fake bold/italic shouldnīt have existed in first place.Quote:
Originally Posted by standay
Thereīs a quick solution for bold at least. Just add an outline with the same color as the text. You can even control the size of the outline to make the font more or less bolder. Itīs an ugly solution, but the fake bold wasnīt elegant either.
While I understand the reasoning behind the change, it is essentially a showstopper for me as it breaks too many existing files. For the most part I agree with it, but not at the cost of breaking backward compatibilty so severely.Quote:
Originally Posted by wW
For what I use Xara for I simply don't care if the fonts are "synthesized" or not. However, it IS a huge problem that v4 breaks so many of my previous files and makes about half my font library much harder to use by not allowing me to easily "synth" bold and/or italic. Yes, I can laboriously add outlines and/or skew text blocks but those are (for me) annoying workarounds.
I've upgraded Xara from the corel days onward, and I've never had a version break its backward compatibility to this degree. Because of that long history I never thought an upgrade would break something I use so much. That said, it's still my fault for not checking closely enough. If I had fully realized the ramifications of this correctly I would not have upgraded. I'll have to go back to v3 to maintain all the old files.
Count me as one who does not like it to the point of cancelling my upgrade to v4 a few minutes ago. I have too many files to maintain with "synthesized" fonts in them and I don't want to add outlines, skew and all that stuff, either to the old files I have or to new files where I want to use one of my fonts that doesn't have bold/italic faces in it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Moir
I've used and supported Xara from the corel days. This new "feature" has ended any further upgrades for me. I'm hoping you'll add the choice of using or not using synth fonts at some point.
Even a Xara template ended up with the warning.....
I have to admit I am pretty gutted as I now have hundreds of broken files.
You experts obviously know what you are on about and I agree thats got to be the way to go for the future if its industry standard.
BUT, I have to say;
* I really dont recall ANY warning of this in previous versions.
* I would have loved to have had some grace on this and had the option to override to allow rendering non-standard files say until version 4.1. But I guess that code has been stripped out now never to return.
* This apparent lack in the software has been kept pretty quiet up to now. Can't even remember much complaints on these forums. Was it really such a huge issue with the majority that had to be abolished from existence?
* Manually thickening lines and slanting is a pretty awkward option. It definitely renders slightly differently (I have overlaid one version on top of another and cannot get an exact match) but the bigger problem is that it cannot be used with text in a paragraph or with other effects added such as bevels.
* I think that this was an excellent feature which Xara software should have been be proud of.
* I love everything else about this upgrade, please keep up the good work.
I understand the problem this may cause specially in cases of logos etc, but still think itīs the way to go.
Itīs always possible to convert the text to outlines to keep the synthesized look you had (for logos or big headers). You can have both versions v3 and v4 runing at the same time to edit and copy the outlined text/logos or headers as you need.
If you have used the synthesized bold and italic fonts extensively in body text you may want to consider to select a similar substitute font. In the body text case this shouldnīt be too dificult, since no one would pick a scripted font or similar for large blocks of text.
Now that the synthesized code has been removed this problem will never appear in future versions because all text generated in Xara fully complies with the font specs (and type designer vision). Besides it will avoid problems when exported to some formats.
Meanwhile you can update the old files with substitute fonts and convert logos to editable shapes when they are needed. You donīt need to remake them all in one time. It certainly will give some work but it will pay in the end.
Steve J (Handrawn) sent me to this thread. Now that I've read all four pages, I understand and I now agree that Xara nade the right decision, and I'll gladly work around it.:)