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Andika Documentation

Annie Olsen, 2006-08-07; 8248 reads

'This is a GREAT font! I am so glad that you guys are doing this.'

Table of Contents for this page:

    System Requirements
    Type sampler showing all glyphs
    Supported Character Ranges in Andika Basic
    Highlights

System Requirements

Andika Basic Regular is designed to work on systems and with applications that provide support for TrueType fonts and for Unicode character encoding. This includes Microsoft Windows® 9x or greater, as well as recent versions of the Mac OS (version 9.0 and later), and also some implementations of Unix / Linux (TrueType font support on Unix and Linux may depend upon the particular applications in use). On some systems (true, at least, of 32-bit Windows), it can also be used with older applications that use legacy, industry-standard, 8-bit character encodings.

Some important issues with respect to Unicode need to be borne in mind. Unicode is a character encoding and not a glyph encoding. Thus you should make every effort to use the character that reflects your character needs rather than finding a glyph that "looks right" and using its character code. Thus, for example, there is only one code for U+014A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ENG, although there are 4 different glyph shapes for this character in use around the world (incidentally, all 4 are supported in Andika Basic).

Type sampler showing all glyphs

Andika Basic Type Sample
Annie Olsen, 2008-04-25
Download "AndikaBasic_TypeSample.pdf", Acrobat PDF document, 86KB [2263 downloads]

Supported Character Ranges in Andika Basic

SIL's "Basic" Roman fonts — Andika Basic, Gentium Basic, and Gentium Book Basic — have a limited character set, supporting 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, comparable to Charis SIL and Doulos SIL, will be supported in a future version of Andika. This "Basic" font is intended to provide an Andika with stable letterforms for both default and alternate glyphs. No need to request additional glyphs or characters to be supported in the Basic fonts - such support will become available in the full font 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

Note: All of the SIL PUA characters listed above (except U+F130 and U+F131) have now been accepted into the Unicode Standard. They are therefore double-encoded in Andika Basic, allowing previously-entered data to still display correctly.

Highlights

OpenType and Graphite smart code for diacritic placement!
Support for a few more recent additions to Unicode and the SIL PUA
Character assignments are updated to conform to Unicode 5.1

User-selectable font features

Andika Basic supports a subset of the smart font features that Charis SIL and Doulos SIL fonts support. Those features are:

Capital Eng alternates
Capital N-left-hook alternate
Modifier apostrophe alternate
Modifier colon alternate
Open O — both upper and lower case — alternates
Vietnamese-style diacritics

As a font designed for literacy use, Andika Basic also offers several unique features:

Single-storey a and g as default glyphs
Lower case alternates for
- i and l (tail)
- j and dotless j (top left serif)
- q (point)
- t y y-hook (no tail)
Capital Q alternate
Capital Y-hook alternate
Numeral 0 1 4 6 7 9 alternates

The document below can be downloaded in order to see all the user-selectable font features that are available in Andika Basic. The feature names, feature ids, settings and examples are provided. The document was produced with Graphite OpenOffice.

Font Features for Andika Basic 1.0
Lorna A. Priest, 2009-10-27
Download "AndikaBasicVariants1.0.pdf", Acrobat PDF document, 277KB [25 downloads]