Lady’s Gitweb - OldStandard/blob - FONTLOG.txt

   1 FONTLOG
   2 Old Standard font family
   3 ========================
   4
   5 This file provides detailed information on the Old Standard family of
   6 fonts. This information should be distributed along with the Old Standard
   7 fonts and any derivative works.
   8
   9 Basic Font Information
  10 ----------------------
  11
  12 The Old Standard font family is an attempt to revive a specific type of
  13 Modern (classicist) style of serif typefaces, very commonly used in various
  14 editions printed in the late 19th and early 20th century, but almost
  15 completely  abandoned later. Although contemporary typographers often
  16 consider this lettertype obsolete and out-of-fashion, it still has at least
  17 two advantages:
  18
  19 -- The classicist style still can be considered a good choice for
  20 typesetting scientific papers, especially on social and humanitarian
  21 sciences, as its specific features are closely associated in the people's
  22 eyes with old books they learned on;
  23
  24 -- the most beautiful examples of Greek and Cyrillic lettertypes were all
  25 based on the Modern style, so that for those scripts "Modern" fonts
  26 are much more appropriate than any contemporary (e. g. Times-based)
  27 designs.
  28
  29 That's why the Old Standard font family has two main purposes: it is
  30 intended to be used as a specialized font for philologists (mainly
  31 classicists, germanists and slavists) and also as a general-purpose font
  32 for typesetting various  editions in languages which use Greek or Cyrillic
  33 script. For this reason Old Standard provides glyphs for a wide range of
  34 Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters.
  35
  36 The name "Old Standard" was selected as opposed to the "Obyknovennaya
  37 Novaya" ("New Standard") typeface, widely used in the Soviet typography,
  38 which represents another, slightly different type of the same Modern style.
  39 The digital version of this font is now available from Paratype
  40 (http://www.paratype.ru). Of course this name doesn't look very original,
  41 but it seems to be a good choice for a revival of the most common
  42 lettertype of the early 20th century.
  43
  44 ChangeLog
  45 ---------
  46
  47 2020 December 18 (Robert Alessi) Version 2.6
  48
  49     * Added 2nd pointer to Alexey Kryukov's archived webpage.
  50
  51     * Added FONTLOG.txt (this file).
  52
  53     * New file: OldStandard.fontspec.
  54
  55     * Updated naming schemes in BoldItalic. Thanks to Jontxo Reig for
  56       testing.
  57
  58 2020 February 24 (Robert Alessi) Version 2.5
  59
  60     * Updated documentation and makefile.
  61
  62     * Better g caron.
  63
  64     * Added missing small capitals Ā, Ī and Ū.
  65
  66     * Added font table.
  67
  68     * Reset all hinting information and instructions.
  69
  70     * Removed duplicate c2sc and smcp rules.
  71
  72     * Added small capitals for all Greek accented letters.
  73
  74 2019 July 26 (Robert Alessi) Version 2.4a
  75
  76     * Reshaped macron, acute, grave and j in BoldItalic.
  77
  78 2019 July 25 (Robert Alessi) Version 2.4
  79
  80     * Added auto-generated BoldItalic.
  81
  82 2019 July 24 (Robert Alessi) Version 2.3 (1.0 in the current git repo)
  83
  84     * Fixed missing direction in U+2023.
  85
  86     * fixed missing control points, wrong coordinates and directions
  87       in OldStandardT-Italic.sfd.
  88
  89     * Added g caron.
  90
  91     * Added small capitals in Regular (French, German, Italian,
  92       Spanish, Basic Russian and Arabic DMG).
  93
  94     * Make +ss06 work if beta is preceded by a vowel with an accute
  95       accent taken from the Greek Extended Unicode block.
  96
  97 2011 April 30 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 2.2
  98
  99     * Latin Extended Additional (again, except Vietnamese and
 100       medievalist additions) for Bold and Italic.
 101
 102     * More punctuation characters, including New Testament critical
 103       signs.
 104
 105     * New implementation for the 'frac' feature: it is now possible to
 106       build any arbitrary fractions rather than just those available
 107       in Unicode in the precomposed form.
 108
 109     * SIL's Graphite rendering technologie is now supported. The
 110       features available are mostly the same as for OpenType, but
 111       there are some additions (in particular it is possible to render
 112       a Greek text with accents above capitals).  The manual has also
 113       been changed to reflect the new functionality.
 114
 115     * Cosmetic glyph changes (foots/arms in Cyrillic 'Ka', 'Zhe', 'Ya'
 116       in particular).
 117
 118     * Added human-readable stylistic set names (US English only) and
 119       style (sub-family) names in a few additional languages.
 120
 121     * The fonts are now available also in the WOFF format to simplify
 122       embedding into web pages.
 123
 124 2009 November 18 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 2.1 (not released)
 125
 126     * The "Greek and Coptic" Unicode range is now fully covered,
 127       except Coptic letters. The epigraphic letters have been
 128       implemented in a simple sans-serif style: I don't like
 129       "creativity" if it can result in producing urecognizable glyphs.
 130
 131     * Regular and bold: New alternate glyphs for Cyrillic IE
 132       (U+0415/U+0435) and Ukrainian IE (U+0404/U+0454), used by
 133       default for Church Slavonic. The intent is to make Old Cyrillic
 134       YEST clearly distinguishable both from Latin E and "wide" YEST.
 135
 136     * New glyphs for CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER MONOGRAPH UK (in all 3
 137       styles).
 138
 139     * I have implemented a k-shaped kappa in all three styles, a
 140       script rho in regular and bold and a rho with straignt tail in
 141       italic. These characters (except the script rho) are kept
 142       unencoded and can be accessed via the 'mgrk' feature tag. I
 143       don't think they would be very useful, but at least it is now
 144       possible to use Old Standard for typesetting a copy of the
 145       Unicode Greek codechart (I needed one for a book I was
 146       preparing).
 147
 148     * Multiple cosmetic glyph changes. In particular Latin capital
 149       "C", "E", "F", "G", "L" and related glyphs have got heavier
 150       vertical serifs in the regular font.  Cedilla is redesigned
 151       (once again) in regular and bold. Shapes of some Greek letters
 152       (including alternate beta and theta) have also been improved.
 153
 154     * I no longer use custom PUA mappings. I have preserved PUA
 155       codepoints for a few standard glyphs (including capital accents)
 156       previously mapped there by Adobe, as well as for additional
 157       accented Greek characters implemented for compatibility with
 158       Ralph Hancock's fonts. Everything else has been moved outside
 159       the encoding.
 160
 161     * Oops. I was wrong regarding "zhe with breve": this letter
 162       actually should be formed with a standard (Latin) breve rather
 163       than a Cyrillic telephone receiver-like accent. BTW I think rhis
 164       letter should be available in the font: since I already support
 165       historical Romanian characters, the modern Moldavian Cyrillic
 166       alphabet should be supported as well.
 167
 168     * The regular font now includes most accented characters from the
 169       Latin Extended Additional range (but not Vietnamese).
 170
 171 2008 November 18 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 2.0
 172
 173     * A bold version is now available!
 174
 175     * Added a full set of historical Cyrillic characters, as defined
 176       in Unicode 5.1;
 177
 178     * Implemented Roman numerals and ancient Roman epigraphic letters
 179       (including Claudian letters).
 180
 181     * Switched to lookup-based representation of the OpenType data in
 182       the source files to conform the new FontForge's file format;
 183
 184     * Now both cubic and quadratic versions of the font outlines are
 185       stored in the same source files (one file for each style), as
 186       FontForge's new approach to multilayered fonts allows this;
 187
 188     * Switched to OFL version 1.1;
 189
 190     * FontForge now can generate reasonably good TTF instructions (it
 191       could not when OldStandard v. 1.0 was released). So the TTF
 192       fonts are now automatically instructed with FontForge. I still
 193       include the old instructions for the regular version (prepared
 194       with Peter Baker's xgridfit utility) into the source package,
 195       but they are no longer used in the font itself. This certainly
 196       makes some glyphs look worse, but improves the overall
 197       performance of the font (especially in the antialiased mode);
 198
 199     * Danish Aringacute redesigned (now has the acute at the top of
 200       the ring and a specially designed, reduced in size, diacritic
 201       for the capital glyph);
 202
 203     * Redesigned cedilla and all combinations with this accent in the
 204       upright font;
 205
 206     * More contour cleanup;
 207
 208     * Added accented combinations with "W" for Welsh;
 209
 210     * Added several new math characters to the regular font. The
 211       intent was to fully cover the TeX OMS encoding, but this task is
 212       still far from being reached;
 213
 214     * There is now a dedicated Unicode codepoint for capital insular
 215       "G" (U+A77D), so move the corresponding glyph to that location;
 216
 217     * Corrected the shape of Greek symbol phi (U+03D5). It is still
 218       not recommended to use this glyph instead of the normal (looped)
 219       form;
 220
 221     * Several new characters have been added, including the Latin
 222       letter EZH (U+01B7/U+0292) and capital Es Zett for German
 223       (U+1E9E). There are some new combining marks as well;
 224
 225     * I used to consider the breve accent should always take the
 226       typically Cyrillic form when used after Cyrillic
 227       letters. However this assumption seems to be wrong: the specific
 228       form of the diacritic is actually an attribute of just three
 229       letters, i. e. "short i" (Russian etc.), "Short u"
 230       (Byelorussian) and "zhe with breve" (Moldavian).
 231
 232 2007 July 14 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 1.1 (not released)
 233
 234     * Added Latin letters OPEN E and OPEN O, requested by an African
 235       user;
 236
 237     * New glyph for ampersand in the upright font;
 238
 239     * Redesigned Polish ogonek and Czech comma-like caron;
 240
 241     * More work on italic Greek letters;
 242
 243     * General contour cleanup for some glyphs.
 244
 245 2007 January 22 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 1.0
 246
 247     * Added the WHITE SQUARE (U+25A1) character;
 248
 249     * Minor corrections in the fonts themselves and in the PDF manual.
 250
 251 2006 December 12 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.9
 252
 253     * Added a few more Latin Extended-B characters, yogh and wynn in
 254       particular (thanks to Peter Baker for the valuable information
 255       on the design of the letter yogh he provided). I also have
 256       implemented uppercase and lowercase versions of the insular
 257       "g". Thus Old Standard is now suitable for typesetting texts in
 258       Old and Middle English.
 259
 260     * Added Hebrew aleph and a few Fraktur characters, useful for
 261       critical apparatus, especially in Bible/New Testament editions.
 262
 263     * Implemented a full set of standard f-ligatures, present in most
 264       OpenType fonts.
 265
 266     * Andrew Panov has convinced me to implement a set of mathematical
 267       glyphs, designed in the style of traditional Russian math
 268       typesetting. These glyphs are currently available only in the
 269       regular version of the font.
 270
 271     * A PDF manual, explaining various features of the font, is now
 272       available.
 273
 274     * Greek sampi (both uppercase and lowercase) has been redesigned.
 275
 276     * Implemented Greek lunate epsilon and reversed lunate epsilon
 277       (the design doesn't match the remaining Greek letters
 278       though). Thus all Unicode slots intended for "alternate" and
 279       mathematical Greek glyphs are now covered.
 280
 281     * A few improvements in the TTF instructions for the regular font
 282       (drop-out control has been enabled).
 283
 284     * Several minor corrections in the OpenType layouts.
 285
 286 2006 October 01 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.8
 287
 288     * Implemented a set of TrueType instructions (hints) for the
 289       regular font (italics are still unhinted). I would like to thank
 290       Peter Baker for his excellent (and extremely well documented)
 291       xgridfit program (http://xgridfit.sourceforge.net), which
 292       provides a good Open Source solution for gridfitting, or
 293       "hinting," TrueType fonts.
 294
 295     * The TrueType version of the regular font now has a separate
 296       source file (OldStandard.ttf.sfd) with quadratic splines.
 297
 298     * Changed the naming convention for the TrueType version: the font
 299       name now has a "TT" suffix, so that both TTF and OTF versions
 300       can be installed on the same system simultaneously.
 301
 302     * Added a few Latin Extended-B characters, useful mainly for
 303       germanists, in particular "b" with bar, "o" with ogonek and
 304       hwair.  Also I have corrected shapes of lowercase eth and
 305       thorn. Thus Old Standard now includes all characters necessary
 306       for representing Old Icelandic texts and Gothic
 307       transliteration. Still more characters (the most important of
 308       them being uppercase and lowercase yogh) are needed for a proper
 309       support of Old/Middle English.
 310
 311     * As usual, a few minor bugs have been corrected.
 312
 313 2006 June 09 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.7
 314
 315     * Added OpenType layouts for Latin, Greek and Cyrillic. Special
 316       attention has been paid to correct shaping and positioning of
 317       diacritical marks.
 318
 319     * Minor corrections of glyph shapes.
 320
 321 2006 May 08 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.6
 322
 323     * License changed to the SIL Open Font License.
 324
 325     * Added Greek glyphs, including those in the U+1F00--U+1FFF "Greek
 326       Extended" Unicode range.
 327
 328     * Ukrainian and Serbian Cyrillic glyphs were redesigned in order
 329       to bring them into a better correspondance with real examples of
 330       the early 20th century printing.
 331
 332     * The standard mathematical operation signs were redesigned and
 333       significantly enlarged, so that now their implementation
 334       contradicts to the contemporary standards, but better
 335       corresponds to the European tradition of math typesetting.
 336
 337     * Several additional math characters, needed to provide a full
 338       coverage for the Mac Roman encoding, have been added.
 339
 340     * Ancient Greek metrical characters (U+23D1--U+23D9) have been
 341       implemented.
 342
 343     * A TTF version is released in addition to OpenType-CFF fonts. It
 344       has no hinting at all, so don't complain for bad screen
 345       rendering!
 346
 347 2006 Feb 14 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.2
 348
 349     * First public release.
 350
 351 Acknowledgements
 352 ----------------
 353 (Here is where contributors can be acknowledged. If you make modifications
 354 be sure to add your name (N), email (E), web-address (W) and description
 355 (D). This list is sorted by last name in alphabetical order.)
 356
 357 N: Alexey Kryukov
 358 E: alexios@thessalonica.org.ru
 359 W: http://www.thessalonica.org.ru
 360 D: Original Designer of Latin, Greek and Cyrillic glyphs
 361
 362 For more information please visit the Fonts page on Thessalonica's
 363 website: http://www.thessalonica.org.ru/en/fonts.html.
 364
 365 Or send an email to <alexios at thessalonica dot org dot ru>.
 366
 367 N: Robert Alessi
 368 E: alessi@robertalessi.net
 369 W: http://www.robertalessi.net
 370 D: Current maintainer of Old Standard