I came across a behavior in GWS that i would like some help with. When i am creating a watch face, i usually design everything in Illustrator or Photoshop and when i am happy with the result, i start working with the design in GWS adding all the functionality.
In my latest watch face, i used a font that is bold semi-condensed in Illustrator however, when i add the font in GWS it appears to read the regular font.
While i am aware of the bitmap font options in GWS, i have tried it and found out that there is a loss of quality in this particular font and i wouldn’t like to use this path.
Has anyone faced this before? Is there any way to separate a specific font variation and save it as .ttf?
Is there any plan that GWS could in the future support font variations?
Hi @MKWatchface,
As far I understand your concern, I can not say why GWS is reading the regular font instead of yours but you need to provide more information about how you are trying to use your font.
However, of course you can use a specific font for your design but there is no option in GWS to save your font as .ttf rather you can create your font as .ttf using any other mean and then use this in GWS.
I did not understand what do you mean by font variation.
Thanks for your reply… Let me share some screenshots to make it more clear perhaps. I am sharing a screenshot of the original design in Illustrator (not styled yet) with the original font (semi-condensed) on the digital clock:
To make it more clear to you, this is a font family. The same ttf file contains variations of the same font. Here is a screenshot of how windows 10 categorize the font variations:
All the above variations are included in the same ttf file. What i am looking for, is a way to save the variation i need as a separate ttf file since GWS doesn’t give you the option to select between variations.
I am not sure why they show all the same on my PC, but this page says it has 15 styles of the mentioned font that can be download https://www.cufonfonts.com/font/bahnschrift. They came in a package, but I cant see any difference.
Hi Peter, yes that’s correct… It’s a font family… There is a difference between the variations… If you install the ttf and you open illustrator you will see…
Also look at the pictures above… In my design I used the semi-condensed (it looks taller)… Using it in GWS appears to be the regular…
Thanks for your nice explanation and now I got it properly. As in your first screenshot, you used the semi-condensed font which works fine but I can’t say anything about Illustrator as I don’t have this software. However, you mentioned that you inserted the same font in GWS and here it is not working instead showing the regular font but I am wondering how did you insert this font in GWS? I tried to add this font from the path you showed in the last screenshot in GWS but failed because of access permission.
Later I downloaded the font family from the link Peter has provided, observed the same as Peter. I hardly found any differences between the variations but this time I was able to add the font in GWS as they came in separate ttf files.
Finally, it remains vague to me that how did you insert that specific variant (semi-condensed) in GWS? Apparently, I am conjecturing that your Illustrator and GWS are using different font. I could be wrong .
Hello again,
just out of curiosity I have searched more around it, and could not find a way how to convert/“extract” any of the variations from the OpenType variable font into a legacy ttf font. It seems this new definition of fonts is nice for web designers. Some graphic programs support them already too, but until GWS does not support variable fonts (and no idea whether tizen on watch supports them too), maybe would be better not to pick them as a source.
@azad, i normally selected the font via GWS, as i always do. As Peter mentions in his comment these type of fonts are supported by some graphic programs while not supported by others. Here is a view of illustrator. Notice that next to the name of the font it is written (15). It means that it has 15 variations of the font:
@Peter: i have also done some research before posting here trying to understand if there is a way to split the ttf file. I opened the font with windows explorer and tried to simply copy/paste the semi-condensed file to another location and then add it to GWS but no luck… It pastes all the variations.
Then i tried to use bitmap font by exporting all the numbers 0-9 from illustrator but i ended up with very bad quality that affected the look of the watch face. Unfortunately, Photoshop doesn’t support font families as well.
Anyways, thank you very much for your help i think i will refrain from using such font types in the future.
Thank you for the time you have spend researching this with me!
@MKWatchface, Yeah currently there’s no such option in GWS like in Illustrator. Apparently, you may submit this as a feature request to the support team so that they can add it in near future.
Therefore, all I can think of a solution to be able to create that specific variant as ttf file and then add it to GWS. Unfortunately, what Peter and I have found from online that all the variants of that font family look similar with no difference and also it does not match to your variant.
I think someone needs to create a Support Request Vote for support of OTF fonts in GWS. It seems like a reasonable justification as these are getting more popular. TTF were designed for printers while OTF is for web and seem more suitable for watch designs.
If it is a feature request I can submit it to the GWS Developer team for consideration.
Ron
Samsung Developer Program
I guess there is not so many separate variations contained in the ttf file it self. That is the main purpose of the variable fonts. The variations are not all written in the file, but rather calculated from few base variations in it by definition for interpolation. They were meant for web designers to save some file sizes and offer more adjust ability in CSS. Maybe somebody who uses them, could request for their support in GWS and Tizen.
Sorry your way of relating the GWS abbreviation to google web designer makes no sense, same as coming here with lecture 3 years later.
GWS in this topic stands for galaxy watch studio - tool for making watch faces usable on older galaxy watches running on tizen OS, which was discontinued and GWS is no longer developed.
They like to hide them under punctuation in their diatribes
Easy to find, click on the poster name, then click on their name in the popup. In their Activity Summary you can see all the links they post. Easier to check than wasting time trying to provide a response to spam!
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