hello open font library,
i think this might be of interest of this list...
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?
site_id=nrsiitem_id=Gentium_basic
best,
- gustavo.
ps: i wonder why this has not been annouced here?
Begin forwarded message:
Date: 15 de novembro de 2007 5h50min53s PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Tipografia] [Gentium] Update #5 - Gentium Basic and
Gentium Book Basic available for testing
Reply-To: Lista de discussão de Tipografia e Caligrafia (em
português) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Gentium-Announce List
Update #5 - Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic available for testing
- - - - - - - -
Dear friends of Gentium,
Great news! We have been hard at work to complete the first
versions of
Gentium that include bold and bold italic. For the first time in
many years
we have a major release for you - in a preliminary test version.
We have two new font families in the Gentium clan: Gentium Basic
and Gentium
Book Basic. Each has a complete set of four weights: regular,
italic, bold
and bold italic. Gentium Book Basic is generally heavier than the
original
Gentium and better for some publishing uses. Both families also
include a
few OpenType and Graphite smart font features, including optimized
diacritic
positioning. I've appended parts of the Gentium Basic FONTLOG below
to give
you more detailed information on these fonts.
The new fonts are called 'Basic' because they support a smaller set of
characters than the full Gentium fonts. They only support basic
Latin and a
handful of extended Latin characters. There is no Greek or
Cyrillic, or even
full IPA. The purpose is to provide early versions of the new
weights that
meet the needs of most Latin script users.
Never fear - we haven't abandoned the main Gentium fonts. Our next
task will
be to return to them and complete an update of the existing regular
and
italic to add extended Cyrillic, ancient Greek glyphs, Unicode 5.1
updates,
and smart font capabilities. We'd hoped to have this completed by
now, but
wanted to get the new weights to you as soon as we could. After
that we plan
to expand the main Gentium family to include these new weights and
smart
font code.
The new Basic fonts are only available in beta test right now. They
contain
known bugs, so we don't yet recommend them for everyday production
use, or
as the source for derivative versions. The most serious one is that
the
lowercase 'z' has too much space in the heavier italic weights. We
plan to
release a fixed, final release of the Basic fonts in a month or
two, once
initial broad testing is done. So we welcome your bug reports and
general
opinions on the design of the heavier faces.
The beta test fonts are available at:
http://scripts.sil.org/Gentium_basic
A few requests:
- please note the limitations and known problems
- please do not ask us to expand the Basic character set, as those
needs
will be met by the complete Gentium font family
- please report problems to me at the email address below, not via the
download feedback form on the main Gentium download page
Thanks again for your interest in Gentium, and the many encouraging
emails
you have sent.
Victor Gaultney
Gentium /at/ sil.org
==
FONTLOG
Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic v1.1b1 (test release)
==
This file provides detailed information on the Gentium Basic and
Gentium
Book Basic font families. This information should be distributed
along with
the Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic fonts and any derivative
works.
NOTE: These fonts are intended only for preliminary testing, as
they contain
bugs. Many aspects of the fonts, including glyph metrics, may
change before
the final release.
Basic Font Information
--
Gentium (belonging to the nations in Latin) is a Unicode typeface
family
designed to enable the many diverse ethnic groups around the world
who use
the Latin script to produce readable, high-quality publications.
The design
is intended to be highly readable, reasonably compact, and visually
attractive. Gentium has won a Certificate of Excellence in
Typeface Design
in two major international typeface design competitions: bukva:raz!
(2001),
TDC2003 (2003).
The Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic font families are based on
the
original design, but with additional weights. The Book family is
slightly
heavier. Both families come with a complete regular, bold, italic
and bold
italic set of fonts.
The supported character set, however, is much smaller than for the
main
Gentium fonts. These Basic fonts support only the Basic Latin and
Latin-1
Supplement Unicode ranges, plus a selection of the more commonly used
extended Latin characters, with miscellaneous
