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Short URL: http://scripts.sil.org/Andika_FAQ-KI

Andika FAQ/Known Issues

Annie Olsen, 2006-08-07; 4363 reads

Table of Contents for this web page:

    Frequently Asked Questions
        Q: Where does the name "Andika" come from?
        Q: What characters are included in this release?
        Q: What are all the stages of release for the Andika fonts?
        Q: Why is the line spacing so much looser than other fonts, such as Times New Roman or Gentium?
        Q: Does this font have straight quotes as well as curly ones?
        Q: Can I use Andika in my print publication?
        Q: Can I use Andika on my website?
        Q: Can I make changes to Andika?
    Known Issues

Frequently Asked Questions

Question: Where does the name "Andika" come from?

Answer: Andika — pronounced ahn-DEE-kah

Swahili — spoken widely in southeastern regions of the African continent, among other places. ( Ethnologue)

Meaning — "Write!"

Question: What characters are included in this release?

Answer: Andika Basic covers some 630 commonly-used (in the SIL world) Roman characters. See Supported Character Ranges for the full listing.

Question: What are all the stages of release for the Andika fonts?

Answer:

Andika Design Review — completed

Andika Basic — where we are now

Andika Regular

Andika Basic Bold, Basic Italic, and Basic Bold Italic

Andika Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic

Question: Why is the line spacing so much looser than other fonts, such as Times New Roman or Gentium?

Answer: Our SIL Unicode Roman fonts include characters with multiple stacked diacritics that need a much looser line spacing (for example, U+1EA8 ). We cannot make the line spacing tighter without experiencing “clipping” of those characters. You may be able to overcome this by adjusting the line spacing in the application. For example, in Microsoft Word select Format / Paragraph and set the line spacing to use the Exactly setting and a value more suited to your needs. For example, if the font size is 12 pt, select line spacing of Exactly 13 pt. This will give a tighter line spacing. You can adjust the value up or down depending on how many diacritics you need to stack.

Another solution would be to use SIL TypeTuner, which allows choosing a line spacing setting as well as choosing default glyphs.

Question: Does this font have straight quotes as well as curly ones?

Answer: Yes, there are both. Here are the Unicode codepoints (in order) and their character names included in this font:

U+0022 QUOTATION MARK

U+0027 APOSTROPHE

U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

U+201C LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK

U+201D RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK

Question: Can I use Andika in my print publication?

Answer: Andika is released under the SIL Open Font License, which permits use for any publication, whether electronic or printed. For more answers to usage questions, see the OFL-FAQ web version (1.1-update1). The license, along with information specific to this release, is in the release package.

Question: Can I use Andika on my website?

Answer: Yes. You can create web pages that request that Andika be used to display them (if that font is available on the user's system). According to the license, you are even allowed to place the font on your site for people to download it. We would strongly recommend, however, that you direct users to our site — Andika Download — to download the font. This ensures that they are always using the most recent version with bug fixes, etc.

Question: Can I make changes to Andika?

Answer: Yes! That is allowed as long as you abide by the conditions of the SIL Open Font License. And we would be very interested in seeing any changes you might make. See Notes to contributors for more information.

Known Issues

We are aware of the following problems. Please report any others you may encounter.

There has been no manual hinting done, but we have improved the overall autohinting parameters. Still, onscreen display may at times be somewhat distorted. Please evaluate the letterforms from printed text, but let us know if you find severe distortions. In any case, the fonts should look fine when printed.
Opening the font with FontLab 5.0.x, then closing it, 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.
There are no alternate versions of fi and fl ligatures at this time.