Totally occupied with other work I had no chance to use inkscape this year. But today I installed the new version 0.92.4 on ubuntu 19.10 (via software center). Yet, my installation doesn't offer bold font faces any more. From Ultra-Ligth to Medium I can find all. But no Bold or Extra Bold! Is this intended or a bug?
Yeah, starting back a couple of versions ago, Inkscape dropped the automatic bolding and italics options. Now you have to actually draw them. So for bold, you need add a stroke to the text, and make it as wide as you need, to look bold. (For italics, use the Selection tool and give it a tiny skew.) (And of course, we've always had to draw in underlines.)
As far as I understand, sometimes if you get a font in a package, it has a bunch of different weights. So you can find fonts with bold weights, and that should show up.
Or if you need to make a very text heavy file, you might use a word processor or desktop publishing program. Scribus supports SVG.
Just some additional info: What Brynn calls 'automatic bolding and italics option' is faked italics and bolding, so not something that comes with the font and thus matches the font makers intention, but a kind of 'poor man's bolding / italics' achieved by slanting letters and adding strokes.
As this gives suboptimal results, the option has been removed from Inkscape. You can now only use the font weights that a font actually has.
What's problematic is that there's also a bug that, for some fonts, does not show all their available font weights. That one is fixed now, in the beta version, as far as I know.
... What's problematic is that there's also a bug that, for some fonts, does not show all their available font weights.
That's my impression, too. On my Ubuntu System are definitely installed all faces of the font called "Ubuntu" by default. But I am still missing "Ubuntu Bold". So I guess: If I would download some fonts with bold faces from Google Fonts, nothing will change (my disk drive is full, so I don't like to try thinks that will not work).
Thanks for the feedback, glad to know that the issue is solved for 1.0 .
If you do need to remove the AppImage because of disk space issues, you can use the ppa (which will replace your old Inkscape version) for the development version (note that that may contain additional new things that will not be in 1.0, but in 1.1): https://launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/+archive/ubuntu/trunk
As you can see I have asked my question about bold fontfaces 10 month ago. Now I have installed a fresh system (Ubuntu 20.04) and downloaded Inkscape 1.0.1 (via Synaptic). And, once again Inkscape is not offering all fontfaces what are installed on my system. For the font "Ubuntu" Inkscape is just offering: weight=250(what ever this is), light, light italic, Nomal, Italic, Medium and Medium Italic, nothing more. How can I become all installed fontfaces this time?
Just another data point: on my 18.04 Ubuntu Mate with Inkscape 1.0.1 installed from a snap package I'm also not seeing Ubuntu Bold. The Mate Font Viewer, as well as other programs, shows it's definitely installed, and the font file ("Ubuntu-B.ttf") is in /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ubuntu/
Looks like the font names are scrambled up in the Ubuntu font packaged with my Mint 19 MATE 64. Deserves looking into before filing an Inkscape bug? Just one example attached.
The Ubuntu Bold font appears to work in LO, and also in Scribus.
I checked TD's findings via FontForge and 'ttfdump' (command line) and found the same issues as he did with the name tables in 'Ubuntu Medium' (Ubuntu-M.ttf). Note that I know very little about font internals, so I'm just presenting this as confirmation of his findings, not some insight into the cause of the problem.
Ubuntu Medium doesn't appear in LO. But then none of my fonts appear to have a 'Medium' weight in there, so that doesn't provide much concrete information. It does appear in Scribus, and functions as expected.
@TylerDurden In LO I've been checking using the Paragraph Style dialog, via a right-click on an entry in the Styles and Formatting panel. In there is a Font tab which has separate columns for Family and Style. Based on the Style entries for other fonts, I think this is showing real styles rather than synthesised ones, but can't be 100% certain.
i hadn't written a report about this issue because I only thought, that I had installed via Synapitic. But, the truth was, that I had the same snap like Xav. I uninstalled it and installed a fresh ppa. Now I have all fontfaces installed on the system, even Ubuntu Bold. By the way: Meantimes (no more sufferiing) I have installed Inkscape 1.0.1 on a Windows 10 and a MacOS. No problems. All fonts available.
Beginners' Questions bold font faces
Inkscape.org
Totally occupied with other work I had no chance to use inkscape this year. But today I installed the new version 0.92.4 on ubuntu 19.10 (via software center). Yet, my installation doesn't offer bold font faces any more. From Ultra-Ligth to Medium I can find all. But no Bold or Extra Bold! Is this intended or a bug?
Welcome to the forum!
Yeah, starting back a couple of versions ago, Inkscape dropped the automatic bolding and italics options. Now you have to actually draw them. So for bold, you need add a stroke to the text, and make it as wide as you need, to look bold. (For italics, use the Selection tool and give it a tiny skew.) (And of course, we've always had to draw in underlines.)
As far as I understand, sometimes if you get a font in a package, it has a bunch of different weights. So you can find fonts with bold weights, and that should show up.
Or if you need to make a very text heavy file, you might use a word processor or desktop publishing program. Scribus supports SVG.
Just some additional info: What Brynn calls 'automatic bolding and italics option' is faked italics and bolding, so not something that comes with the font and thus matches the font makers intention, but a kind of 'poor man's bolding / italics' achieved by slanting letters and adding strokes.
As this gives suboptimal results, the option has been removed from Inkscape. You can now only use the font weights that a font actually has.
What's problematic is that there's also a bug that, for some fonts, does not show all their available font weights. That one is fixed now, in the beta version, as far as I know.
Many thanks to both of you!
That's my impression, too. On my Ubuntu System are definitely installed all faces of the font called "Ubuntu" by default. But I am still missing "Ubuntu Bold". So I guess: If I would download some fonts with bold faces from Google Fonts, nothing will change (my disk drive is full, so I don't like to try thinks that will not work).
If you can update to the 1.0beta2 (AppImage available here: https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.0/?latest=1 ), you can test if it is solved (I think it could be). I'd be interested in knowing, to be honest.
Well Maren, 97.7 MB! Yet, simply great! All installed font face are appearing automatically, and there is more to discover.
Thanks for the feedback, glad to know that the issue is solved for 1.0 .
If you do need to remove the AppImage because of disk space issues, you can use the ppa (which will replace your old Inkscape version) for the development version (note that that may contain additional new things that will not be in 1.0, but in 1.1): https://launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/+archive/ubuntu/trunk
As you can see I have asked my question about bold fontfaces 10 month ago. Now I have installed a fresh system (Ubuntu 20.04) and downloaded Inkscape 1.0.1 (via Synaptic). And, once again Inkscape is not offering all fontfaces what are installed on my system. For the font "Ubuntu" Inkscape is just offering: weight=250(what ever this is), light, light italic, Nomal, Italic, Medium and Medium Italic, nothing more. How can I become all installed fontfaces this time?
I don't know. My Ubuntu font contains all weights, including Bold.
Maybe there's a regression in one of the libraries that Inkscape uses, or maybe the font delivered with your system is broken?
Please test whether the font works correctly in other software, e.g. LibreOffice.
If it does, please check the know issues at https://gitlab.com/groups/inkscape/-/issues
And if you cannot find that this is already reported, open a new report at https://inkscape.org/report , please.
Just another data point: on my 18.04 Ubuntu Mate with Inkscape 1.0.1 installed from a snap package I'm also not seeing Ubuntu Bold. The Mate Font Viewer, as well as other programs, shows it's definitely installed, and the font file ("Ubuntu-B.ttf") is in /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ubuntu/
Can you add that to the report on GitLab (when there is one), please, Xav?
Sure. I'm really busy lately though, so if I don't spot the issue and add the note in a reasonable time, feel free to copy and paste it on my behalf.
Looks like the font names are scrambled up in the Ubuntu font packaged with my Mint 19 MATE 64. Deserves looking into before filing an Inkscape bug?
Just one example attached.
That's why I asked to check in other software. Does the broken font work in LO?
The Ubuntu Bold font appears to work in LO, and also in Scribus.
I checked TD's findings via FontForge and 'ttfdump' (command line) and found the same issues as he did with the name tables in 'Ubuntu Medium' (Ubuntu-M.ttf). Note that I know very little about font internals, so I'm just presenting this as confirmation of his findings, not some insight into the cause of the problem.
Ubuntu Medium doesn't appear in LO. But then none of my fonts appear to have a 'Medium' weight in there, so that doesn't provide much concrete information. It does appear in Scribus, and functions as expected.
I'll have to install Scribus to Mint to see on this end. But, I'm unclear in LO (or others) how to tell if the bold is synthesized or not.
@TylerDurden In LO I've been checking using the Paragraph Style dialog, via a right-click on an entry in the Styles and Formatting panel. In there is a Font tab which has separate columns for Family and Style. Based on the Style entries for other fonts, I think this is showing real styles rather than synthesised ones, but can't be 100% certain.
i hadn't written a report about this issue because I only thought, that I had installed via Synapitic. But, the truth was, that I had the same snap like Xav. I uninstalled it and installed a fresh ppa. Now I have all fontfaces installed on the system, even Ubuntu Bold. By the way: Meantimes (no more sufferiing) I have installed Inkscape 1.0.1 on a Windows 10 and a MacOS. No problems. All fonts available.