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Gentium Basic Fonts

Victor Gaultney, 2008-04-04; 25863 reads

Download main Gentium fonts | Scroll down to download the Gentium Basic fonts

‘Many thanks. I have an aesthetic dislike of “Times” fonts and a scholar‘s budget. Now I have Gentium and I‘m pleased as punch.’

Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic are font families based on the original Gentium 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.

Supported character ranges

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 diacritical marks, symbols and punctuation. In particular, these fonts do not support:

Full extended Latin IPA
Complete support for Central European languages
Greek
Cyrillic

A much more complete character set will be supported in a future version of the complete Gentium fonts. These "Basic" fonts are intended as a way to provide additional weights for basic font users without waiting until the complete Gentium character set is finished. So please don't request additional glyphs or characters to be supported in the Basic fonts - such support will become available in the main Gentium family in the future.


C0 Controls and Basic Latin	U+0020..U+007E
C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement	U+00A0..U+00FF
Latin Extended-A	U+0100..U+0103, U+0106..U+010E, U+011A..U+0121, U+0124..U+0125, U+0128..U+012D, U+0130..U+0133, U+0139..U+013A, U+0141..U+0144, U+0147..U+0148, U+014A..U+0155, U+0158..U+015D, U+0160..U+0161, U+0164, U+0168..U+0171, U+00174..U+017E
Latin Extended-B	U+0181, U+0186, U+0189..U+018A, U+018E, U+0190, U+0192, U+0197..U+019A, U+019D, U+019F..U+01A1, U+01A9..U+01AA, U+01AF..U+01B0, U+01B3..U+01B4, U+01B7, U+01CD..U+01E3, U+01E6..U+01E9, U+01EE..U+01EF, U+01F4..U+01F5, U+01F8..U+01FF, U+021E..U+021F, U+0226..U+0233, U+0237, U+023D, U+0241..U+0242, U+0244..U+0245, U+024A..U+024B
IPA Extensions	U+0251, U+0253..U+0254, U+0256..U+0257, U+0259, U+025B, U+0263, U+0268..U+0269, U+026B, U+0272, U+0275, U+0283, U+0289..U+028A, U+028C, U+0292, U+0294, U+02A0
Spacing Modifier Letters	U+02BC, U+02C0, U+02C6..U+02C7, U+02C9..U+02CB, U+02CD, U+02D7..U+02DD
Combining Diacritical Marks	U+0300..U+0304,U+0306..U+030C, U+031B, U+0323, U+0327..U+0328, U+0331, U+033F, U+035F
Greek and Coptic	U+03A0, U+03A9, U+03C0
Latin Extended Additional	U+1E02..U+1E0F, U+1E14..U+1E17, U+1E1C..U+1E27, U+1E2E..U+1E3B, U+1E3E..U+1E49, U+1E4C..U+1E6F, U+1E78..U+1E99, U+1EA0..U+1EF9
General Punctuation	U+2011, U+2013..U+2014, U+2018..U+201A, U+201C..U+201E, U+2020..U+2022, U+2026, U+2030, U+2039..U+203A, U+2044
Currency Symbols	U+20AC
Letterlike Symbols	U+2122..U+2123, U+2126
Mathematical Operators	U+2202, U+2205..U+2206, U+220F, U+2211..U+2212, U+2219..U+221A, U+221E, U+222B, U+2248, U+2260, U+2264..U+2265
Geometric Shapes	U+25CA, U+25CC
Latin Extended-C	U+2C60..U+2C62
Modifier Tone Letters	U+A700..U+A71A
Latin Extended-D	U+A789..U+A78C
Alphabetic Presentation Forms	U+FB01..U+FB02
SIL PUA	U+F130..U+F131, U+F195, U+F197, U+F1C8, U+F1E9..U+F1EA, U+F20E..U+F20F, U+F211..U+F212, U+F218..U+F219, U+F21D..U+F21F, U+F242, U+F26A

Supported character ranges

Limitations

There are also some other limitations of the Basic fonts:

They are not completely metric-compatible with the full Gentium family (some glyphs may have different widths, although changes have been minimal)
There is no kerning
There are no "Alt" versions, or ones with low-profile diacritics
The default stacking style for some diacritic combinations does not match Vietnamese-style conventions (although this is available through a OpenType/Graphite feature)
No support for TypeTuner.

New Features

There are, however, some wonderful new features that are still missing from the main Gentium family:

Bold!
Bold Italic!
The slightly-heavier Book family!
OpenType and Graphite smart code for diacritic placement!
A few useful OpenType and Graphite features
Support for a few more recent additions to Unicode and the SIL PUA
Character assignments are updated to conform to Unicode 5.1

In particular, the Basic fonts support a subset of the smart font features that the Doulos SIL font supports. Those features are:

Capital Eng alternates
Literacy alternates
Capital Y-hook alternate
Capital N-left-hook alternate
Modifier apostrophe alternate
Modifier colon alternate
Open o alternate
Vietnamese-style diacritics

More detail on the features can be seen in the Doulos SIL Technical Documentation.

Known Problems

We know of the following problems. Please report any other problems you encounter.

logicalnot (U+00AC) appears distorted in Bold Italic and Book Italic.
Opening the fonts with FontLab 5.0.x, then closing them, crashes FontLab. We are working to get this bug fixed in the next version of FontLab. A workaround is to open the font, save as a .vfb file, close (which still causes a crash). Then restart FontLab and open the .vfb file.

License

License Details

Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic are released under the SIL Open Font License - please read it carefully and do not download the fonts unless you agree to the terms of the license:

This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1. No modification of the license is permitted, only verbatim copy is allowed. This license is copied below, and is also available with a FAQ at:
http://scripts.sil.org/OFL

SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE

Version 1.1 - 26 February 2007

PREAMBLE

The goals of the Open Font License (OFL) are to stimulate worldwide development of collaborative font projects, to support the font creation efforts of academic and linguistic communities, and to provide a free and open framework in which fonts may be shared and improved in partnership with others.

The OFL allows the licensed fonts to be used, studied, modified and redistributed freely as long as they are not sold by themselves. The fonts, including any derivative works, can be bundled, embedded, redistributed and/or sold with any software provided that any reserved names are not used by derivative works. The fonts and derivatives, however, cannot be released under any other type of license. The requirement for fonts to remain under this license does not apply to any document created using the fonts or their derivatives.

DEFINITIONS

"Font Software" refers to the set of files released by the Copyright Holder(s) under this license and clearly marked as such. This may include source files, build scripts and documentation.

"Reserved Font Name" refers to any names specified as such after the copyright statement(s).

"Original Version" refers to the collection of Font Software components as distributed by the Copyright Holder(s).

"Modified Version" refers to any derivative made by adding to, deleting, or substituting — in part or in whole — any of the components of the Original Version, by changing formats or by porting the Font Software to a new environment.

"Author" refers to any designer, engineer, programmer, technical writer or other person who contributed to the Font Software.

PERMISSION & CONDITIONS

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the Font Software, to use, study, copy, merge, embed, modify, redistribute, and sell modified and unmodified copies of the Font Software, subject to the following conditions:

1) Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual components, in Original or Modified Versions, may be sold by itself.

2) Original or Modified Versions of the Font Software may be bundled, redistributed and/or sold with any software, provided that each copy contains the above copyright notice and this license. These can be included either as stand-alone text files, human-readable headers or in the appropriate machine-readable metadata fields within text or binary files as long as those fields can be easily viewed by the user.

3) No Modified Version of the Font Software may use the Reserved Font Name(s) unless explicit written permission is granted by the corresponding Copyright Holder. This restriction only applies to the primary font name as presented to the users.

4) The name(s) of the Copyright Holder(s) or the Author(s) of the Font Software shall not be used to promote, endorse or advertise any Modified Version, except to acknowledge the contribution(s) of the Copyright Holder(s) and the Author(s) or with their explicit written permission.

5) The Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in whole, must be distributed entirely under this license, and must not be distributed under any other license. The requirement for fonts to remain under this license does not apply to any document created using the Font Software.

TERMINATION

This license becomes null and void if any of the above conditions are not met.

DISCLAIMER

THE FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT, PATENT, TRADEMARK, OR OTHER RIGHT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE FONT SOFTWARE OR FROM OTHER DEALINGS IN THE FONT SOFTWARE.

Download

If you agree to the terms of use (shown above), then download the fonts from the following links.

Gentium Basic/Gentium Book Basic

Gentium Basic 1.1 (fonts only) - Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux
Victor Gaultney, 2008-04-03
Download "GentiumBasic_110.zip", ZIP archive, 848KB [4556 downloads]

This is the standard user distribution, including fonts that can be installed on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It does not include source files.

Gentium Basic 1.1 (fonts & sources) - Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux
Victor Gaultney, 2008-04-03
Download "GentiumBasic_110_source.zip", ZIP archive, 1MB [1210 downloads]

This is the standard source distribution, including both the fonts and source files.

Gentium Basic 1.1 (fonts only) - Debian/Ubuntu package (GNU/Linux)
Victor Gaultney, 2008-04-21
Download "ttf-sil-gentium-basic_1.1-1_all.deb", Debian Linux Package, 851KB [120 downloads]

This is a Debian/Ubuntu/GNU/Linux package, including only the fonts. For more details, including further installation advice and a complete source package, see the Gentium GNU/Linux page.

Gentium Basic 1.1 (fonts only) - Windows installer
Victor Gaultney, 2008-04-16
Download "GentiumBasic_110.exe", Windows application, 711KB [413 downloads]

This is a Windows installer package containing only the fonts.

We are not preparing a Mac OS 9-specific distribution. Let us know if this is a problem for you.

Installation and Use

Detailed hints for downloading, expanding and installing can be found here. Note that these packages only include the fonts themselves. If you want to use the fonts to type languages that use special non-European letters, then you may need a separate keyboard manager. More information on this can be found on our Support page.

Information for Developers/Contributors

The source release contains FontLab source files for the eight fonts, but those files do not include the OpenType and Graphite code, as those are inserted after the fonts are generated from FontLab. These files included as a source for the PostScript-style cubic curves. You are welcome, however, to open the font files themselves to gain access to the smart font code, although most editors will not let you edit that code directly. We will provide a richer set of sources for the full Gentium fonts at a later time.

SIL will remain as maintainers of this font project, but we do not intend any further major releases. Our primary efforts will be going into the full Gentium package. Any contributions should be directed toward that project.