GENTIUM-FAQ.txt (8393B)
1 GENTIUM-FAQ 2 Gentium Plus 3 ======================== 4 5 Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about the Gentium Plus 6 fonts: 7 8 9 General 10 ======== 11 12 How do you pronounce Gentium? 13 14 The preferred pronunciation is with a soft G as in 'general', not a 15 hard one as in 'gold': JEN-tee-oom. 16 17 18 Licensing 19 ========= 20 21 I want to use Gentium Plus in my publication - can I? 22 23 Gentium Plus is released under the SIL Open Font License, which permits 24 use for any publication, whether electronic or printed. For more answers 25 to use questions see the OFL-FAQ. The license, alongside information 26 specific to Gentium Plus, is in the release package. 27 28 I would like to bundle Gentium Plus with my application - can I? 29 30 This is our most common question. The SIL Open Font License allows 31 bundling with applications, even commercial closed source ones, with 32 some restrictions. See the OFL.txt file and the OFL-FAQ. 33 34 Can I use the font on my web site? 35 36 You can certainly create web pages that request that Gentium Plus be 37 used to display them (both if that font is already available on the 38 user's system or if it is delivered via @font-face). According to the 39 license, you are also allowed to place the font on your site for people 40 to download it. We would strongly recommend, however, that you direct 41 users to our site to download the font. This ensures that they are 42 always using the most recent version with bug fixes, etc. To make this 43 easier, there is a simple URL for Gentium: http://scripts.sil.org/Gentium 44 There is further important discussion of webfont issues in the OFL-FAQ. 45 46 Is Gentium Plus going to stay unrestricted and available at no cost? 47 48 There is no intention to ever charge users for using Gentium and its 49 variants. The current version is licensed under a free/open license and 50 future versions will be similarly unencumbered. 51 52 53 Modification 54 ============ 55 56 I would like to modify Gentium Plus to add a couple of characters I need. 57 Can I? 58 59 Yes - that is allowed as long as you abide by the conditions of the 60 SIL Open Font License. 61 62 So will you add glyphs upon request? 63 64 If you have a special symbol that you need (say, for a particular 65 transcription system), the best means of doing so will be to ensure 66 that the symbol makes it into the Unicode Standard. It is impossible 67 for us to add every glyph that every person desires, but we do place 68 a high priority on adding pretty much anything that falls in certain 69 Unicode ranges (extended Latin, Greek, Cyrillic). You can send us your 70 requests, but please understand that we are unlikely to add symbols 71 where the user base is very small, unless they have been accepted 72 into Unicode. 73 74 Can I send you work I've done to be incorporated into Gentium Plus? 75 76 Yes. See the FONTLOG for information on becoming a contributor. 77 78 79 Technical 80 ========= 81 82 Can you help me get Gentium Plus working on my system? 83 84 We cannot afford to offer individual technical support. The best 85 resource is this website, where we hope to offer some limited help. 86 However, we do want to hear of any problems you encounter, so that 87 we can add them to the list of bugs to fix in later releases. 88 Our contact address is gentium@sil.org. Please understand 89 that we cannot guarantee a personal response. 90 91 I can't find all the extended Latin letters in the font. How do I type them? 92 93 Gentium Plus is Unicode-encoded, which means that the computer stores a 94 special, unique code for each letter in your document. Since most 95 keyboards do not have hundreds of keys, special software is needed 96 in order to type the hundreds of special characters supported by the 97 font. See the README.txt file for more information. 98 99 I can't find the 'o with right hook' in the font. Where is it? 100 101 Combinations of base letters with diacritics are often called 102 composite, or pre-composed glyphs. Gentium Plus has hundreds of these 103 (the ones that are included in Unicode). There are, however, many 104 common combinations that are not represented by a single composite. 105 It is possible to enter these into a document, but only as 106 individual components. So 'o with right hook' would be entered as 107 'o', then 'right hook'. Although this may not look very good in some 108 cases, we're not able to anticipate every possible combination. 109 Gentium Plus includes 'smart font' support for both OpenType and 110 Graphite. 111 112 Some diacritics are not aligning well with base glyphs, and if I type more 113 than one diacritic, they run into each other. Why is that? 114 115 The smart diacritic positioning in Gentium Plus relies on either 116 OpenType or Graphite. The application you are using must support 117 one of these technologies in order to see appropriate diacritic 118 positioning. 119 120 How do I type the Greek letters? 121 122 You need a Unicode-compatible keyboarding system, which is not 123 included in the release. 124 125 I'm having problems making PDFs -- why won't my document distill? 126 127 Gentium Plus is a large font, with lots of glyphs. As a result, 128 some older printers, PDF distillers and readers can balk at PDFs 129 that have the complete font embedded. The easiest way to avoid 130 this is to have the PDF distiller subset the font. This is 131 generally a good idea anyway (with any font) and can reduce the 132 size of your files. 133 134 135 Plus 136 ===== 137 138 How are the Gentium Plus fonts different from Gentium? 139 140 This font is based on the original Gentium design, but with an expanded 141 character and glyph repertoire. It currently comes with regular and 142 italic faces. It comes with near-complete support for Latin, Cyrillic 143 and Greek. It also contains 'smart font' support for OpenType and Graphite 144 technologies. This allows for correct diacritic placement over all base 145 characters, whether they are tall, short, wide, narrow, with or without 146 descenders. It also provides for a large variety of alternates glyphs. 147 These are described on the Gentium website. 148 149 Why is the line spacing greater for the Plus fonts? 150 151 In some environments, stacked diacritics in Gentium could display as 152 'chopped-off'. Gentium Plus has slightly wider default line spacing 153 in order to avoid this problem. Most applications do, however, let you 154 set the line spacing explicitly, so you can have the lines spaced 155 precisely as you wish. 156 157 Is there an Alt version of the Basic fonts? 158 159 No, although you may notice that capitals and some tall lowercase 160 letters do use 'low-profile' versions. Gentium Plus also includes 161 OpenType and Graphite features to turn low-profile diacritics on 162 and off. 163 164 165 Future 166 ====== 167 168 What are your future plans for Gentium Plus? 169 170 Our next major effort is completing bold and bold italic weights 171 of Gentium Plus alongside a new Gentium Book Plus family. These new 172 weights are currently available for Gentium Basic/Gentium Book Basic. 173 174 Do you plan to include other typographic enhancements (old style 175 figures, etc.)? 176 177 Those would be nice, wouldn't they? From a design point of view, 178 it would be great to have these refinements, and we haven't ruled 179 them out. But there are other needs that are much higher priority 180 (such as bold). If you think you could contribute some of your time 181 and effort to these enhancements, see the FONTLOG.txt file for 182 information on becoming a contributor. 183 184 Sans-serif? 185 186 There is a definite need for a sans-serif font that shares some of 187 Gentium's strengths -- high readability, economy of space, etc. It 188 would also be great if that font also harmonized well with Gentium. 189 We don't currently have any plans for a companion face, although one 190 of our other projects - Andika - may be useful. Andika is a sans-serif 191 font designed specifically for use in literacy programs around the 192 world, and is available from our web site. 193 194 Will you be extending Gentium to cover other scripts, and Hebrew in 195 particular? 196 197 It is very unlikely that we would do this, as there are so many 198 pressing needs in Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts. 199 200 Will there be a Type 1 version? What about OpenType? 201 202 Gentium Plus includes OpenType and Graphite support. We do not plan 203 to produce Type 1 versions at this time, but please write us if this 204 is important (and tell us why). We already provide the PostScript 205 bézier curves in the 'designsource' files in the developer release.