| 1 | GENTIUM-FAQ
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| 2 | Gentium Release 1.02
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| 3 | 28 November 2005
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| 4 | ========================
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| 5 |
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| 6 | Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about the Gentium fonts:
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| 7 |
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| 8 |
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| 9 | General
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| 10 | ========
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| 11 |
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| 12 | How do you pronounce Gentium?
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| 13 |
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| 14 | The preferred pronunciation is with a soft G as in 'general', not a
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| 15 | hard one as in 'gold': JEN-tee-oom.
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| 16 |
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| 17 | What is GentiumAlt?
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| 18 |
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| 19 | It is a version of the font with redesigned diacritics (flatter
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| 20 | ones) to make it more suitable for use with stacking diacritics, and
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| 21 | for languages such as Vietnamese. The Greek glyphs also use the
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| 22 | Porsonic (single-curve) design for the circumflex. Since Gentium
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| 23 | does not currently include any 'smart' rendering routines, there is
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| 24 | no easy way to access these alternate diacritic shapes from within
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| 25 | the regular Gentium font. The encoding of the fonts are the same, so
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| 26 | the same text can be viewed with either one. There is also no
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| 27 | problem with having both font families installed at the same time.
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| 28 |
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| 29 |
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| 30 | Licensing
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| 31 | =========
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| 32 |
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| 33 | I want to use Gentium in my publication - can I?
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| 34 |
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| 35 | Gentium is released under the SIL Open Font License, which permits use
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| 36 | for any publication, whether electronic or printed. For more answers
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| 37 | to use questions see the OFL-FAQ. The license, alongside information
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| 38 | specific to Gentium, is in the release package.
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| 39 |
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| 40 | I would like to bundle Gentium with my application - can I?
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| 41 |
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| 42 | This is our most common question. The SIL Open Font License allows
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| 43 | bundling with applications, even commercial ones, with some restrictions.
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| 44 | See the OFL file.
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| 45 |
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| 46 | Can I use the font on my web site?
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| 47 |
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| 48 | You can certainly create web pages that request that Gentium be used to
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| 49 | display them (if that font is available on the user's system). According
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| 50 | to the license, you are even allowed to place the font on your site for
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| 51 | people to download it. We would strongly recommend, however, that you
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| 52 | direct users to our site to download the font. This ensures that they
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| 53 | are always using the most recent version with bug fixes, etc. To make
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| 54 | this easier, we've simplified the URL for Gentium:
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| 55 | http://scripts.sil.org/gentium
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| 56 |
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| 57 | Is Gentium going to stay free?
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| 58 |
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| 59 | There is no intention to ever charge users for using Gentium. The
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| 60 | current version is licensed under a free/open license and future
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| 61 | versions will be similar.
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| 62 |
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| 63 |
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| 64 | Modification
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| 65 | ============
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| 66 |
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| 67 | I would like to modify Gentium to add a couple of characters I need. Can I?
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| 68 |
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| 69 | Yes - that is allowed as long as you abide by the conditions of the
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| 70 | SIL Open Font License.
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| 71 |
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| 72 | So will you add glyphs upon request?
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| 73 |
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| 74 | If you have a special symbol that you need (say, for a particular
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| 75 | transcription system), the best means of doing so will be to ensure
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| 76 | that the symbol makes it into the Unicode Standard. It is impossible
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| 77 | for us to add every glyph that every person desires, but we do place
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| 78 | a high priority on adding pretty much anything that falls in certain
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| 79 | Unicode ranges (extended Latin, Greek, Cyrillic). You can send us your
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| 80 | requests, but please understand that we are unlikely to add symbols
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| 81 | where the user base is very small, unless they have been accepted
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| 82 | into Unicode.
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| 83 |
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| 84 | Can I send you work I've done to be incorporated into Gentium?
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| 85 |
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| 86 | Yes! See the FONTLOG for information on becoming a contributor.
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| 87 |
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| 88 |
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| 89 | Technical
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| 90 | =========
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| 91 |
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| 92 | Can you help me get Gentium working on my system?
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| 93 |
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| 94 | We cannot afford to offer individual technical support. The best
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| 95 | resource is this website, where we hope to offer some limited help.
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| 96 | However, we do want to hear of any problems you encounter, so that
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| 97 | we can add them to the list of bugs to fix in later releases.
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| 98 |
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| 99 | Our contact address is <gentium AT sil DOT org>. Please understand
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| 100 | that we cannot guarantee a personal response.
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| 101 |
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| 102 | I can't find all the extended Latin letters in the font. How do I type them?
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| 103 |
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| 104 | Gentium is Unicode-encoded, which means that the computer stores a
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| 105 | special, unique code for each letter in your document. Since most
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| 106 | keyboards do not have hundreds of keys, special software is needed
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| 107 | in order to type the hundreds of special characters supported by the
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| 108 | font.
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| 109 |
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| 110 | I can't find the 'o with right hook' in the font. Where is it?
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| 111 |
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| 112 | Combinations of base letters with diacritics are often called
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| 113 | composite, or pre-composed glyphs. Gentium has hundreds of these
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| 114 | (the ones that are included in Unicode). There are, however, many
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| 115 | common combinations that are not represented by a single composite.
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| 116 | It is possible to enter these into a document, but only as
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| 117 | individual components. So 'o with right hook' would be entered as
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| 118 | 'o', then 'right hook'. Although this may not look very good in some
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| 119 | cases, we're not able to anticipate every possible combination.
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| 120 | Future versions of Gentium will include 'smart font' support for
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| 121 | technologies such as OpenType and SIL's Graphite. This will make
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| 122 | diacritic positioning much better.
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| 123 |
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| 124 | Some diacritics are not aligning well with base glyphs, and if I type more
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| 125 | than one diacritic, they run into each other. Why is that?
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| 126 |
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| 127 | Gentium currently has no 'smart font' code for automatic diacritic
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| 128 | positioning, but will in the near future.
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| 129 |
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| 130 | How do I type the Greek letters?
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| 131 |
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| 132 | You need a Unicode-compatible keyboarding system, which is not
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| 133 | included in the distribution package.
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| 134 |
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| 135 | I'm having problems making PDFs -- why won't my document distill?
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| 136 |
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| 137 | Gentium is a large font, with lots of glyphs. As a result, some
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| 138 | printers can balk at PDFs that have the complete font embedded. The
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| 139 | easiest way to avoid this is to have Acrobat/Distiller subset the
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| 140 | font. This is generally a good idea anyway (with any font) and can
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| 141 | reduce the size of your files.
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| 142 |
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| 143 |
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| 144 | Future
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| 145 | ======
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| 146 |
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| 147 | Now that SIL International has taken over Gentium, who will be the next
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| 148 | designer?
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| 149 |
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| 150 | Victor Gaultney will remain as primary designer, but Annie Olsen, a
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| 151 | fellow type designer from the SIL Non-Roman Script Initiative, has
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| 152 | joined the project team. She is a former calligraphy teacher, and is
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| 153 | well suited for the task. Other members of the NRSI team will also
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| 154 | add their expertise in technical matters.
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| 155 |
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| 156 | Do you plan to include other typographic enhancements (small caps, old style
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| 157 | figures, etc.)?
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| 158 |
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| 159 | Those would be nice, wouldn't they. From a design point of view,
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| 160 | it would be great to have these refinements, and we haven't ruled
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| 161 | them out. But there are other needs that are much higher priority
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| 162 | (Bold, Cyrillic, etc.). If you think you could contribute some of
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| 163 | your time and effort to these enhancements, see the FONTLOG file for
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| 164 | information on becoming a contributor.
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| 165 |
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| 166 | What about bold?
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| 167 |
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| 168 | We hope to make a prototype of a Bold weight (and a few others,
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| 169 | including italic) available soon, but it will only cover basic Latin
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| 170 | glyphs at first. Once we are confident that the basic design is solid,
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| 171 | we will begin to design the bold versions of the other hundreds of
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| 172 | glyphs. Be patient, though, as Gentium has lots of glyphs!
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| 173 |
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| 174 | Sans-serif?
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| 175 |
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| 176 | There is a definite need for a sans-serif font that shares some of
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| 177 | GentiumÕs strengths -- high readability, economy of space, etc. It
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| 178 | would also be great if that font also harmonized well with Gentium.
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| 179 | We don't currently have any plans for a companion face, although one
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| 180 | of our other projects - Andika - may be useful. Andika is a sans-serif
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| 181 | font designed specifically for use in literacy programs around the
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| 182 | world. A prototype should be available in a few months.
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| 183 |
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| 184 | Will you be extending Gentium to cover other scripts, and Hebrew in
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| 185 | particular?
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| 186 |
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| 187 | It is very unlikely that we would do this, as there are so many
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| 188 | pressing needs in Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts. But you could
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| 189 | contribute to the project.
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| 190 |
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| 191 | When will Cyrillic be completed?
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| 192 |
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| 193 | As soon as we can get it done, but it is still a few months away.
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| 194 |
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| 195 | I need a couple of ancient Greek glyphs, such as the digamma. When will
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| 196 | those be ready?
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| 197 |
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| 198 | These have already been designed and will be in the next release
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| 199 | (mid-2006).
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| 200 |
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| 201 | Will there be a Type 1 version? What about OpenType?
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| 202 |
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| 203 | The next generation of Gentium will have OpenType, Graphite and AAT
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| 204 | support. We do not plan to produce Type 1 versions at this time, but
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| 205 | please write us if this is important (and tell us why). We are, however,
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| 206 | considering releasing a version in OT-CFF format, but it will not go
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| 207 | through the same careful testing as the standard OT/Graphite/AAT version. |
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