Hi folks,
I’ve got some information that might be of use to some of you who might need some specialized Latin characters or especially a Greek typeface to use on your computer. I do book design and typesetting so I keep my eyes out for this kind of thing. I haven’t been part of Textkit very long so I don’t know if this free font is widely known, but here is some information on it. Hope this is helpful to some people. . .
From the website:
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&cat_id=FontDownloadsGentium
Gentium is a typeface family designed to enable the diverse ethnic groups around the world who use the Latin script to produce readable, high-quality publications. It supports a wide range of Latin-based alphabets and includes glyphs that correspond to all the Latin ranges of Unicode.
The design is intended to be highly readable, reasonably compact, and visually attractive. The additional ‘extended’ Latin letters are designed to naturally harmonize with the traditional 26 ones. Diacritics are treated with careful thought and attention to their use. Gentium also supports both ancient and modern Greek, including a number of alternate forms. These fonts were originally the product of two years of research and study by the designer at the University of Reading, England, as part of an MA program in Typeface Design.
SIL International has now embraced the Gentium project, and plans to continue development. Expansion of the glyph set to include more extended Latin glyphs, archaic Greek symbols, and full Cyrillic script support is the next step. Work on this has already begun, but the results will not be available for a few months. Addition of bold and bold italic faces will follow.
Gentium is freely available and may be used by anyone at no cost. It is not public domain, and cannot be altered, but can be given to anyone who might need it. Our hope is that it will stimulate literature production and elevate extended Latin alphabets to greater parity with the basic Latin alphabet. We also hope it will encourage other type designers to appreciate and support those fascinating and beautiful extra letters.
