Font Awesome - Not so much.

[gwpriester]

I think this was covered recently but I did not follow the thread because I did not need a Font Awful symbol.

What going on here?

[Chris M]

I've rummaged around my box of treasures:

>>> VISUAL PHARM <<<

>>> ICON SHOCK <<<

>>> COPY CHAR <<<

>>> BOX ICONS <<<

[gwpriester]

Thanks Chris. There are dozens of sources of free symbols and fonts. I was just wondering what was going on with Designer Pro+? Seems something is broke.

[Acorn]

Gary, the set of characters FA uses are not in the range of the usual ASCII set. The only one is SPACE.

All the FA symbols are instead input into a Text Area using the Insert > Symbol dialog.
You can input then as shapes if you have the Selector tool active.

If you use Character Map UWP then you can see and copy all 704 FA symbols and paste into a Text Area that is using FA.

Acorn

[MB365]

Thanks Chris. There are dozens of sources of free symbols and fonts. I was just wondering what was going on with Designer Pro+? Seems something is broke.

Nothing is broken.

If the supposed problem is the boxes then this indicates that the font doesn't have the particular characters. All of the characters in the FontAwesome font are in the "Private use" section of the unicode character range, they do not match with the "standard" characters...

[handrawn]

I don't claim to follow that so could you explain why what is seen in xara is different to what is seen in affinity designer, are the actually different fonts ?

thanks

Edit - appears they both type letters, but xara displays symbols in it's font manager... hummm, well I'm no great user of fonts perhaps there is a reason... maybe acorn's post explains it

[Acorn]

Gary, the set of characters FA uses are not in the range of the usual ASCII set. The only one is SPACE.
All the FA symbols are instead input into a Text Area using the Insert > Symbol dialog.
You can input then as shapes if you have the Selector tool active.
If you use Character Map UWP then you can see and copy all 704 FA symbols and paste into a Text Area that is using FA.
Acorn

Nothing is broken.
If the supposed problem is the boxes then this indicates that the font doesn't have the particular characters. All of the characters in the FontAwesome font are in the "Private use" section of the unicode character range, they do not match with the "standard" characters...

I don't claim to follow that so could you explain why what is seen in xara is different to what is seen in affinity designer, are the actually different fonts ?
thanks
Edit - appears they both type letters, but xara displays symbols in it's font manager... hummm, well I'm no great user of fonts perhaps there is a reason... maybe acorn's post explains it

@Gary, it has always been like this, at least back to v12.
Xara Help:

So we have included the font, and an easy way to view all the symbols, as a way to incorporate the symbols either as a font in text or as raw vector graphic.

@Matt mentions FA's Private (Use) Area. For instance 'Glass' is U+F000, Private Use Area; 'Space' is U+0020, Basic Latin. The range difference is vast so what you keyboard will never be a FA symbol.
@handrawn, can you advise how to view FA in Affinity? FA has different flavours and it may depend on what has been licenced.
FA is a version 6. I believe Xara is still version 5. v6 has 2037 free icons. Not all are in the FA font I have on my system (c.f., figma).
The FA embed operation is web-based so it would fail for PDFs, hence the use of the FA Font approach. It would be nice to access the non-TT Font symbols to use then as vector.

Acorn

[handrawn]

I am not technical with fonts, never needed to be

when I look the font list in AD this is what I see:



and in xara pro you see sybmbols

I just wondered why, that's all

edit - the (1) after the name indicate only one flavour - ie regular

[Acorn]

I am not technical with fonts, never needed to be

when I look the font list in AD this is what I see:



and in xara pro you see sybmbols

I just wondered why, that's all

edit - the (1) after the name indicate only one flavour - ie regular

Normally Fonts names can be displayed in the system font or in its own font; Xara chose the latter.
Since the lettering is not part of the Private Use Area, Xara instead has forced the this icon list (flag, Music, Search, Enveloped Outlined, Heart, Star, Star Outlined, User) in the same fashion used by Wingdings and other icon fonts.

I think Xara opted out of applying Bold & Italic styles and has only made Regular available.
You can try and install the other from https://use.fontawesome.com/releases...-6.5.1-web.zip.
I also unpacked all 2000+ SVGs from this download.

Acorn

[handrawn]

thanks

I rather thought they were alway displayed in their own font so I have learnt something