Adding bold to font in XXP4

[ss-kalm]

The "pulldown" is there ....... it's just that it's a "flyout"

[Rhanna]

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

[sgiff]

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.

[colin_e]

Just one thought on what Charles said-

...
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.
...

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?

[RTK]

If synthetic fonts are an aberration, presumably MM fonts are the work of Satan?

Multiple Master Fonts are by name - not one font, but several versions of the same font, no?

(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

[amoore]

Is Multiple Master technology still available? I thought Adobe had sunset it.

[standay]

I'd suggest making this switchable within the app if possible. Let the user decide if they want to switch it on or off...

[wW]

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.

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?

[MEB]

I'd suggest making this switchable within the app if possible. Let the user decide if they want to switch it on or off...

I don´t agree. The way it´s 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 shouldn´t have existed in first place.

There´s 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. It´s an ugly solution, but the fake bold wasn´t elegant either.

[standay]

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.

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.

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.