NRSI: Computers & Writing Systems
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Short URL: http://scripts.sil.org/FontDownloads
SIL Fonts for downloading
Released fonts
IPA
Unicode encoded fonts
Abyssinica SIL 
Andika
Arabic Script Unicode Fonts
Charis SIL
Dai Banna SIL
Doulos SIL
Ezra SIL Hebrew Unicode Font
Galatia SIL
Gentium
Padauk
SIL Entity Unicode Fonts
SIL IPA Unicode (beta)
SIL YI
Unicode BMP Fallback
Legacy fonts
Encode Numbers
Nastaliq Navees
SIL Apparatus
SIL Encore Fonts
SIL Greek Font System
SIL Hebrew Font System
SIL IPA
SIL IPA93
SIL Tai Dam
SIL Tai Lue
SIL Vai
Zaghawa Beria Font
Namdhinggo SIL L
Fonts in Development
Tai Heritage Design Review
Page History
Released fonts
IPA
IPA Transcription with SIL FontsSIL International has produced several font sets over the years that allow for the transcription of linguistic data using the International Phonetic Alphabet. This page should help the user to decide whether to use Unicode fonts or whether to use the SIL IPA or SIL IPA93 fonts. It provides links to many relevant resources with regard to the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Unicode encoded fonts
Abyssinica SIL
Abyssinica SIL Font Home
Home page for the Abyssinica SIL font. Abyssinica SIL supports all Ethiopic characters which are in Unicode including the Unicode 4.1 extensions. Some languages of Ethiopia are not yet able to be fully represented in Unicode and, where necessary, we have included non-Unicode characters in the Private Use Area.
Andika
Andika Font
Andika is a sans serif, Unicode-compliant font designed especially for literacy use, taking into account the needs of beginning readers. The focus is on clear, easy-to-perceive letterforms that will not be readily confused with one another.
Arabic Script Unicode Fonts
Arabic Script Unicode Fonts
Scheherazade and Lateef are extended Arabic script fonts designed by SIL International for modern Unicode-based systems using either OpenType or AAT (Apple Advanced Typography) for complex-script rendering.
Charis SIL
Charis SIL Font Home
2008-05-16: Version 4.104 now available!!! This version supports Unicode 5.1.
Charis SIL is a Unicode-encoded serif font. Besides having a comprehensive inventory of glyphs needed for almost any Roman- or Cyrillic-based writing system, it also contains the entire inventory of the International Phonetic Alphabet. It has built-in “smart-font” capabilities, so diacritics are properly placed.
Charis is similar to Bitstream Charter, one of the first fonts designed specifically for laser printers. It is highly readable and holds up well in less-than-ideal reproduction environments. It also has a full set of styles - regular, italic, bold, bold italic - and so is more useful in general publishing than Doulos SIL. Charis is a serif, proportionally-spaced font optimized for readability in long printed documents.
Dai Banna SIL
Dai Banna SIL Fonts
The Dai Banna SIL Fonts are the Unicode version of their predecessor, SIL Dai Banna Fonts. Apart from a few additional characters such as Chinese punctuation marks, the design is the same and represents a new rendering of the New Tai Lue (Xishuangbanna Dai) script, which was first added to Unicode 4.1. These fonts include a complete set of New Tai Lue consonants, vowels, tones and digits, along with punctuation and other useful symbols. A basic set of Latin glyphs, including Arabic numerals, is also provided. Chinese punctuation used in New Tai Lue texts are included as well. Two font families, differing only in weight, allow for a wide range of uses.
Doulos SIL
Doulos SIL Font Home
2008-05-16: New Version 4.104 available!!! This version supports Unicode 5.1.
Doulos SIL is a Unicode-encoded serif font similar to Times New Roman. Besides having a comprehensive inventory of glyphs needed for almost any Roman- or Cyrillic-based writing system, it also contains the entire inventory of the International Phonetic Alphabet. It has built-in “smart-font” capabilities, so diacritics are properly placed.
Doulos is very similar to Times/Times New Roman, but only has a single face - regular. It is intended for use alongside other Times-like fonts where a range of styles (italic, bold) are not needed.
Ezra SIL Hebrew Unicode Font
Ezra SIL Hebrew Unicode Font
Home page for the Ezra SIL Unicode fonts.
2007-10-03: Version 2.5.1 now available! This version fixes a few minor bugs.
Galatia SIL
Galatia SIL Greek Unicode Fonts
For displaying and printing Biblical Greek texts in the Unicode encoding.
Gentium
Gentium is a typeface family designed to enable the diverse ethnic groups around the world who use the Latin script to produce readable, high-quality publications. It supports a wide range of Latin-based alphabets and includes glyphs that correspond to all the Latin ranges of Unicode.
Padauk
Padauk Font
Padauk is a smart font capable of rendering Burmese and the Myanmar script.
SIL Entity Unicode Fonts
SIL Entity Unicode Fonts
These fonts are based on SIL Fonts (currently only Charis SIL and Doulos SIL). They have been modified for use in a specific region (using TypeTuner) with default glyphs which are used in that part of the world.
SIL IPA Unicode (beta)
The SIL Unicode IPA beta font was a Unicode-encoded font for Linux®, Macintosh® or Windows® systems. The Doulos SIL font has a more extensive character inventory, and replaces the IPA Unicode font beta font.
SIL YI
SIL Yi Font
The SIL Yi Font is a single Unicode font for the standardized Yi script used by a large ethnic group in southwestern China. It can be used in certain Windows applications that support Unicode.
Unicode BMP Fallback
Unicode BMP Fallback Font
Intended for debugging, this font contains a glyph for every character in the Basic Multilingual plane (including Private Use Area) of Unicode 5.1, each glyph consisting of a box enclosing the four hex digits identifying the Unicode scalar value.
Legacy fonts
Encode Numbers
Intended for debugging, the glyphs in these legacy fonts show the decimal character code for each character from 33 to 255.
Nastaliq Navees
The Nastaliq Navees ("Nastaliq Writer") font package provides the capability to render Arabic, Urdu, and related languages in the Nastaliq style of calligraphy. Shareware, $75 USD.
SIL Apparatus
The SIL Apparatus Fonts were designed to provide most of the symbols needed to reproduce the textual apparatus found in major editions of Greek & Hebrew biblical texts.
SIL Encore Fonts
A library of over 1600 phonetic characters and linguistic symbols that can be used to create customized, scalable fonts. This package was formerly available as a purchased package. It is now downloadable without cost.
SIL Greek Font System
The SIL Greek Font System is designed to be an integrated system for entering, displaying and printing Biblical Greek texts.
SIL Hebrew Font System
The SIL Hebrew Font System is a font package for displaying and printing Biblical Hebrew text.
SIL IPA
The SIL IPA Fonts are scalable outline fonts for both Macintosh and Windows systems.
SIL IPA93
The SIL IPA93 Fonts 2.0 include the 1993 revisions.
SIL Tai Dam
The SIL Tai Dam Fonts are regular and bold versions of the traditional Tai Dam script and are closely based on handwritten letters.
SIL Tai Lue
The SIL Dai Banna Fonts are a new rendering of the New Tai Lue (Xishuangbanna Dai) script.
SIL Vai
The SIL Vai Fonts are regular and bold versions of the African Vai script.
Zaghawa Beria Font
Zaghawa Beria Font
Zaghawa Beria is a font developed from an alphabet which is based on camel branding marks in western Sudan and eastern Chad.
Namdhinggo SIL L
Namdhinggo SIL L font for the Limbu script
Namdhinggo SIL L is a font for the Limbu, or Kirat Sirijonga, script used by around 400,000 people in Nepal and India. The current version uses a pre-Unicode encoding.
Fonts in Development
Development status
Please note that the materials offered in this section are still in development, and are made available for testing purposes only. Final releases may vary substantially from pre-release versions.
Tai Heritage Design Review
Tai Heritage Design Review
The Tai Heritage typeface is designed to reflect the traditional hand-written style of the Tai Viet script. This design review adds 15 new characters to the font. It uses Graphite rendering with PUA encoding.
Page History
2008-05-05 AO moved Andika from "Fonts in Development" to "Released Fonts / Unicode encoded fonts"
2008-02-21 JB added Tai Heritage Design Review
2007-06-16 VG added Limbu font
2007-06-04 LP added Zaghawa Beria font
2006-08-08 LP added Andika and Debian logo to Gentium, Doulos and Charis
2006-05-25 LP added Abyssinica
2006-02-03 BH added Encode Nums legacy font
2005-06-09 LP added ABS
2004-08-11 JW added SIL Vai
2004-04-15 LP changed IPA Unicode beta link to point to Doulos SIL
2004-02-04 KW Changed EzraSIL link
2003-10-17 JG Changed Gentium link
Backlinks (20 most popular; affiliated sites and popular search engines removed)
http://www.gottwein.de/Grie/Gr.Schrift.htm http://linguistlist.org/sp/Fonts.html http://cf.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/sp/Fonts.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-user-german/2004/debian-user-german-200401/msg... http://www.geocities.com/sudan_dinkanet/ http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/toc/set_eresource.htm http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search?invocationType=topsearchbox.%2Faol%2Fjsp%... http://coursesites.blackboard.com/bin/frame.pl?item=my_inst&m=nzWYWgQpDRrjsqPc http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-user-german@lists.debian.org/msg66648.html http://tenser.typepad.com/tenser_said_the_tensor/2004/04/doulos_sil.html http://www.gottwein.de/Cap/Mythologie.htm
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Note: the opinions expressed in submitted contributions below do not necessarily reflect the opinions of our website.
Reply
"SAlih Brandt", Mon, Jun 12, 2006 13:58 (CDT)
Naves Nastaliq
This looks like its going to be a good font. but the linkages do not work in OSX when using text edit which seems to be hte premier programme for writing in unusual languages.
Any hints from anyone?
Reply
"Jonathan", Thu, Jun 15, 2006 09:05 (CDT)
Re: Naves Nastaliq
The Nastaliq Navees font was developed for Apple's QuickDraw GX technology, part of Mac OS versions 7.x and 8. This system is now obsolete. It would be nice to update the font for current technology (Mac OS X, Unicode, AAT), but we have not had the time and resources to work on this; therefore, it will not work with today's software.
Reply
"pervaz khan", Wed, Aug 9, 2006 15:49 (CDT)
Re: Naves Nastaliq
dear sir is this font is for windows
Reply
jonathan, Wed, Aug 9, 2006 15:54 (CDT)
Re: Naves Nastaliq
No. See the System Requirements page.
Reply
"Khaled Hosny", Sun, Nov 18, 2007 20:00 (CST)
Re: Naves Nastaliq
Any chance this font (or at leaset the glyphs composing it and some documentation about has this font was designed) got released under a free software lisence? so that free comunity can pick it and, hopfully, port it to modern font technologies like AAT and graphite. I'd personally like to work on such font.
Reply
"Marcis Yarlyk.ru", Tue, Mar 20, 2007 22:11 (CDT)
Quallity
The fonts are really well-done.
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