General font issues across all beta titles.

[Kurt Lang]

First, I was disappointed to see the font selection function hadn't changed, per my notes in this topic:

https://forum.softmaker.com/viewtopic.php?f=393&t=22046

Still the same oddly grouped font names with attribute buttons to select bold and italic. I do realize the response from SoftMaker was, Thank you for your suggestion. I have forwarded it to the product management., which is nowhere near the same as, "Yes, we'll definitely make this change". But, this is something that needs to be seriously addressed.

Per any Adobe or Affinity app (and others), you should only ever see fonts that exist, and be able choose them directly. No attribute buttons should exist, or would even be needed.

Which leads back to the same previous topic. This new version still allows you to change a font to a style that doesn't exist. Such as, if I choose the font Chalkboard and click the italic button, nothing should happen as there is no italic version of this font. Only regular and bold. Instead, a fake slant is applied.

A new issue is the beta is not showing active fonts. Aargau Pro appears in the 2021 SoftMaker Office apps, but not the beta. In fact, no third party fonts you open appear.

Two issues I forgot to mention entirely before.

1. The SoftMaker Suite incorrectly only locates fonts by directly reading the three main Fonts folders in macOS (System, Library, User). It does not pay attention to any fonts activated in place. Any professional app should be able to see fonts no matter how they're activated. They shouldn't have to be in a specific folder. Apple has long provided the proper APIs to do this. Please implement them.

2. The SoftMaker Suite has no idea when new fonts have been activated. The app(s) need to be shut down and relaunched before it will recognize them. Microsoft hasn't been any better. For decades, the Office apps have done the same thing. But again, with the proper APIs being used, the suite will always be aware of fonts being activated or deactivated in real time.

[raitis.veksejs]

Thank you for your feedback and reminder about your previous request about font management! I have forwarded the information to the product management.

[Kurt Lang]

Yes! Fonts activated in place are now recognized by the suite. Thank you!

A few caveats:

1. I've been testing with two of the font sets available for download from SoftMaker in the initial beta email. Aargau Pro and Albertus MT Std. Why these two out of the bunch? Because they're easy to find at the top of the font list.

2. I mention the first point because if I have the new check box on in the preferences for, Load only fonts relevant for installed keyboard layouts, then these, and any other third party fonts will not appear.

3. Assuming the check box is off, all fonts activated in place now appear instantly in the menus. However, they remain in the list after being deactivated. Still, this is a huge, overall improvement.

[Kurt Lang]

A point I should have noticed much earlier. Like, before this beta. <sheepish grin>

I finally see your engineers are duplicating the look of the MS Office suite as much as possible. Not that it was hard to notice, but I just now see the font options are laid out the same way; with the font drop down list above, and attribute buttons below that.

Why did I overlook this before? Because I never use the attribute buttons. In MS Office, when you click the drop down list, you only see truly selectable fonts grouped by family with automatically expanded groups to show an entire family set - the same as the Adobe and Affinity suites. That's all I ever used to make sure I only selected fonts that exist.

So, this change can be a lot simpler by leaving the GUI just the way it looks now, but duplicate MS Office's/Adobe's/Affinity's method of grouping fonts by family in the font dropdown list.

[raitis.veksejs]

Thank you for your feedback! I have forwarded it to our product management team...

[Kurt Lang]

Just noting the issues I outlined as steps 1, 2 and 3 still persist in the latest beta release.

If the preference option of Load only fonts relevant for installed keyboard layouts is on, any fonts you activate, no matter how you try to activate them, do not appear in any of the suite's apps. Turn that check box off, and then your fonts appear as expected.