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Charis SIL — Download

NRSI staff, 2012-08-01; 417620 reads

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Table of Contents for this web page:

    Subscribe to Announce list
    License
    Notes to contributors
    Font Download
        Charis SIL 4.112 (maintenance release)
        Charis SIL 4.110 (official release)
    Installation and Use
    Related Packages

Subscribe to Announce list

Thank you for your interest in Charis SIL.

License

Charis SIL is released under the SIL Open Font License (OFL), version 1.1. Copyright (c) 1997-2012, SIL International (http://scripts.sil.org/) with Reserved Font Names "Charis" and "SIL".

Notes to contributors

The release of Charis SIL version 4.0.02 (Version 4.002) (and any subsequent versions) under the OFL license provides a means for people to contribute to the project. For information on what you're allowed to change or modify, consult the OFL and OFL-FAQ. The OFL-FAQ also gives a very general rationale regarding why you would want to contribute to the project.

Anyone can make their own modified version of Charis SIL (using a different name), but SIL International will continue to maintain and develop the canonical version of the Charis SIL fonts. As the package maintainer, we warmly welcome contributions. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Format: We are open to contributions in various formats, but if you want to maximise the chances of us including your work, please make it available to us (via email or a URL) as either a FontLab database (preferred) or a PostScript Type 1 (or OT-CFF) font.
• Source files: We are not yet making the source files available, because our build system is rather complex and difficult to reproduce. We hope to include an easier process in the future.
• Copyright attribution: If you submit something for inclusion in the main Charis SIL fonts, we will ask you to affirm that it is your original work, and ask you to assign the copyright of your work to SIL International. This is to ensure that future releases can be made under improved versions of the OFL without needing to track you down for further permission. This follows the same principle used by the FSF. Keep in mind that we are a not-for-profit organization committed to free/libre and open source software, and that any contributions incorporated in the fonts will always be available under the OFL or a similar license.
• Quality: Because we want to be able to guarantee a high level of quality for the primary Charis SIL fonts, we will review submissions carefully. Please don't be discouraged if we do not include a submission for this reason, or ask you to make specific revisions.
• Types of contributions: If you wish to make a contribution - a set of additional glyphs, scripts, code, etc. - please contact us before you do any work to see if it is a contribution we currently need. Every addition adds to the complexity of the project and needs to be carefully planned. This also avoids two people working on the same type of addition at the same time.
• Linux packages: Please contact the upstream maintainer of the various packages - - if you want to help package or maintain a package.
• When submissions will be included: We plan to revise the fonts when major updates are needed (eg new versions of Unicode). If you wish to make submissions, contact us on the timing.

Font Download

If you agree to the terms of use (described in the license above), then download the fonts from the following links. Previous versions can be found on the Previous Versions page.

Charis SIL 4.112 (maintenance release)

The only change in this maintenance release is a change in the Graphite feature identifiers from integers to 4-character alphanumeric tags. This was required because although  Mozilla Firefox has now implemented support for Graphite, feature identifiers only work if they are 4-character alphanumeric tags. If you would like to use these features in Firefox,  this webpage describes how to access font features. The font download contains a document (CharisSIL-features.pdf) which describes the old and new feature identifiers. Existing documents (such as those created by LibreOffice/OpenOffice) which use the old identifiers will need to be changed to use the new identifiers. Future releases will use the new 4-character alphanumeric tags.

Unless you wish to use the font features in  Mozilla Firefox, you should continue using Charis SIL 4.110. Below the download packages for this maintenance release is the official release of "Charis SIL".

Charis SIL 4.110 (official release)

Below the download packages for "Charis SIL" is the download for a font called "Charis SIL Compact". This font is the same as "Charis SIL" with the exception of a tighter line-spacing.

List of changes for this version:

• Removed the VDMX table (to resolve issues related to line-spacing and clipping)

Installation and Use

If you are uncertain what to do with a .zip file, see Decompression Utilities, Downloading & Installation Tips. Within the archive is the font file and documentation.

Otherwise, if you downloaded the .exe package you can double-click on it to install the fonts and documentation.

Note that these packages only include the font itself. If you want to use the font to type languages that use special non-European letters, or to type Cyrillic, then you may need a separate keyboard manager.

This font can be installed using standard font installation procedures for the given operating-system platform (Windows: put the font in WindowsFonts. Macintosh: put the font in /Library/Fonts). There are no additional installation steps required to use Graphite-related functionality. Note that certain applications may not see the new font immediately. You may have to quit and restart the application for the font to become available.

For tips on using the GNU/Linux package, see the Gentium GNU/Linux page.

Related Packages

Marking Tone in Unicode and the SIL Corporate PUA Lorna A. Priest, 2007-02-01 Download "PitchContours.v1.pdf", Acrobat PDF document, 515KB [26267 downloads]

This document gives an overview of most of the ways you can mark tone in Unicode. It also outlines the encoding and implementation of the 9-level pitch contours which were just added to our SIL Unicode Roman fonts.

Some tools and resources for character input 2010-11-10; 103396 reads
Links to useful tools for character input.

IPA Unicode Keyboards Lorna Evans and Joan Wardell, 2013-02-19; 206953 reads
This page contains keyboards created for typing in IPA data.
On Windows, three keyboarding options are available: an IPA Keyman keyboard and keyboards which work through the Windows keyboarding system (MSKLC) for US, UK and BR keyboard layouts. A third option is now available using the AutoHotkey program.
We also now provide an IPA keyboard for Linux as an Ubuntu package.
Installable keyboards for Mac OS X version 10.2, designed to allow entry of Unicode 5.0 IPA characters. Includes Dvorak version.

TECkit Jonathan Kew, 2008-04-07; 22102 reads
The latest release of TECkit adds support for Unicode version 5.1. TECkit is a low-level toolkit intended to be used by other applications that need to perform encoding conversions (e.g., when importing legacy data into a Unicode-based application).

Mapping Files Lorna A. Priest, 2011-11-01; 49353 reads
These are currently available TECkit mapping files. These mapping files were created for converting data to Unicode. Some, but not all, will also convert data from Unicode back to the legacy encoding. A few are Unicode to Unicode conversions. These mapping files are for use with TECkit applications.

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