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 2023 December 21 (Robert Alessi) version 2.7a
  48     * Bugfix release: the vertical dimensions of oldstyle numerals
  49       in italic and bolditalic were wrong.
  50
  51 2023 December 12 (Robert Alessi, Antonis Tsolomitis) version 2.7
  52     * Added OldStandard-Math.
  53
  54     * Added “oldstyle” numerals in regular and bold series.
  55
  56     * Replaced open theta with closed theta in slot 035B and adjusted
  57       rules ss05 and ss06 accordingly.
  58
  59 2020 December 18 (Robert Alessi) Version 2.6
  60
  61     * Added 2nd pointer to Alexey Kryukov's archived webpage.
  62
  63     * Added and updated FONTLOG.txt (this file).
  64
  65     * New file: OldStandard.fontspec. Slanted shapes for regular and bold are
  66       now available through the 'FakeSlant' feature of fontspec.
  67
  68     * Updated naming schemes in BoldItalic. Thanks to Jontxo Reig for
  69       testing.
  70
  71 2020 February 24 (Robert Alessi) Version 2.5
  72
  73     * Updated documentation and makefile.
  74
  75     * Better g caron.
  76
  77     * Added missing small capitals Ā, Ī and Ū.
  78
  79     * Added font table.
  80
  81     * Reset all hinting information and instructions.
  82
  83     * Removed duplicate c2sc and smcp rules.
  84
  85     * Added small capitals for all Greek accented letters.
  86
  87 2019 July 26 (Robert Alessi) Version 2.4a
  88
  89     * Reshaped macron, acute, grave and j in BoldItalic.
  90
  91 2019 July 25 (Robert Alessi) Version 2.4
  92
  93     * Added auto-generated BoldItalic.
  94
  95 2019 July 24 (Robert Alessi) Version 2.3 (1.0 in the current git repo)
  96
  97     * Fixed missing direction in U+2023.
  98
  99     * fixed missing control points, wrong coordinates and directions
 100       in OldStandardT-Italic.sfd.
 101
 102     * Added g caron.
 103
 104     * Added small capitals in Regular (French, German, Italian,
 105       Spanish, Basic Russian and Arabic DMG).
 106
 107     * Make +ss06 work if beta is preceded by a vowel with an accute
 108       accent taken from the Greek Extended Unicode block.
 109
 110 2011 April 30 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 2.2
 111
 112     * Latin Extended Additional (again, except Vietnamese and
 113       medievalist additions) for Bold and Italic.
 114
 115     * More punctuation characters, including New Testament critical
 116       signs.
 117
 118     * New implementation for the 'frac' feature: it is now possible to
 119       build any arbitrary fractions rather than just those available
 120       in Unicode in the precomposed form.
 121
 122     * SIL's Graphite rendering technologie is now supported. The
 123       features available are mostly the same as for OpenType, but
 124       there are some additions (in particular it is possible to render
 125       a Greek text with accents above capitals).  The manual has also
 126       been changed to reflect the new functionality.
 127
 128     * Cosmetic glyph changes (foots/arms in Cyrillic 'Ka', 'Zhe', 'Ya'
 129       in particular).
 130
 131     * Added human-readable stylistic set names (US English only) and
 132       style (sub-family) names in a few additional languages.
 133
 134     * The fonts are now available also in the WOFF format to simplify
 135       embedding into web pages.
 136
 137 2009 November 18 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 2.1 (not released)
 138
 139     * The "Greek and Coptic" Unicode range is now fully covered,
 140       except Coptic letters. The epigraphic letters have been
 141       implemented in a simple sans-serif style: I don't like
 142       "creativity" if it can result in producing urecognizable glyphs.
 143
 144     * Regular and bold: New alternate glyphs for Cyrillic IE
 145       (U+0415/U+0435) and Ukrainian IE (U+0404/U+0454), used by
 146       default for Church Slavonic. The intent is to make Old Cyrillic
 147       YEST clearly distinguishable both from Latin E and "wide" YEST.
 148
 149     * New glyphs for CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER MONOGRAPH UK (in all 3
 150       styles).
 151
 152     * I have implemented a k-shaped kappa in all three styles, a
 153       script rho in regular and bold and a rho with straignt tail in
 154       italic. These characters (except the script rho) are kept
 155       unencoded and can be accessed via the 'mgrk' feature tag. I
 156       don't think they would be very useful, but at least it is now
 157       possible to use Old Standard for typesetting a copy of the
 158       Unicode Greek codechart (I needed one for a book I was
 159       preparing).
 160
 161     * Multiple cosmetic glyph changes. In particular Latin capital
 162       "C", "E", "F", "G", "L" and related glyphs have got heavier
 163       vertical serifs in the regular font.  Cedilla is redesigned
 164       (once again) in regular and bold. Shapes of some Greek letters
 165       (including alternate beta and theta) have also been improved.
 166
 167     * I no longer use custom PUA mappings. I have preserved PUA
 168       codepoints for a few standard glyphs (including capital accents)
 169       previously mapped there by Adobe, as well as for additional
 170       accented Greek characters implemented for compatibility with
 171       Ralph Hancock's fonts. Everything else has been moved outside
 172       the encoding.
 173
 174     * Oops. I was wrong regarding "zhe with breve": this letter
 175       actually should be formed with a standard (Latin) breve rather
 176       than a Cyrillic telephone receiver-like accent. BTW I think rhis
 177       letter should be available in the font: since I already support
 178       historical Romanian characters, the modern Moldavian Cyrillic
 179       alphabet should be supported as well.
 180
 181     * The regular font now includes most accented characters from the
 182       Latin Extended Additional range (but not Vietnamese).
 183
 184 2008 November 18 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 2.0
 185
 186     * A bold version is now available!
 187
 188     * Added a full set of historical Cyrillic characters, as defined
 189       in Unicode 5.1;
 190
 191     * Implemented Roman numerals and ancient Roman epigraphic letters
 192       (including Claudian letters).
 193
 194     * Switched to lookup-based representation of the OpenType data in
 195       the source files to conform the new FontForge's file format;
 196
 197     * Now both cubic and quadratic versions of the font outlines are
 198       stored in the same source files (one file for each style), as
 199       FontForge's new approach to multilayered fonts allows this;
 200
 201     * Switched to OFL version 1.1;
 202
 203     * FontForge now can generate reasonably good TTF instructions (it
 204       could not when OldStandard v. 1.0 was released). So the TTF
 205       fonts are now automatically instructed with FontForge. I still
 206       include the old instructions for the regular version (prepared
 207       with Peter Baker's xgridfit utility) into the source package,
 208       but they are no longer used in the font itself. This certainly
 209       makes some glyphs look worse, but improves the overall
 210       performance of the font (especially in the antialiased mode);
 211
 212     * Danish Aringacute redesigned (now has the acute at the top of
 213       the ring and a specially designed, reduced in size, diacritic
 214       for the capital glyph);
 215
 216     * Redesigned cedilla and all combinations with this accent in the
 217       upright font;
 218
 219     * More contour cleanup;
 220
 221     * Added accented combinations with "W" for Welsh;
 222
 223     * Added several new math characters to the regular font. The
 224       intent was to fully cover the TeX OMS encoding, but this task is
 225       still far from being reached;
 226
 227     * There is now a dedicated Unicode codepoint for capital insular
 228       "G" (U+A77D), so move the corresponding glyph to that location;
 229
 230     * Corrected the shape of Greek symbol phi (U+03D5). It is still
 231       not recommended to use this glyph instead of the normal (looped)
 232       form;
 233
 234     * Several new characters have been added, including the Latin
 235       letter EZH (U+01B7/U+0292) and capital Es Zett for German
 236       (U+1E9E). There are some new combining marks as well;
 237
 238     * I used to consider the breve accent should always take the
 239       typically Cyrillic form when used after Cyrillic
 240       letters. However this assumption seems to be wrong: the specific
 241       form of the diacritic is actually an attribute of just three
 242       letters, i. e. "short i" (Russian etc.), "Short u"
 243       (Byelorussian) and "zhe with breve" (Moldavian).
 244
 245 2007 July 14 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 1.1 (not released)
 246
 247     * Added Latin letters OPEN E and OPEN O, requested by an African
 248       user;
 249
 250     * New glyph for ampersand in the upright font;
 251
 252     * Redesigned Polish ogonek and Czech comma-like caron;
 253
 254     * More work on italic Greek letters;
 255
 256     * General contour cleanup for some glyphs.
 257
 258 2007 January 22 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 1.0
 259
 260     * Added the WHITE SQUARE (U+25A1) character;
 261
 262     * Minor corrections in the fonts themselves and in the PDF manual.
 263
 264 2006 December 12 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.9
 265
 266     * Added a few more Latin Extended-B characters, yogh and wynn in
 267       particular (thanks to Peter Baker for the valuable information
 268       on the design of the letter yogh he provided). I also have
 269       implemented uppercase and lowercase versions of the insular
 270       "g". Thus Old Standard is now suitable for typesetting texts in
 271       Old and Middle English.
 272
 273     * Added Hebrew aleph and a few Fraktur characters, useful for
 274       critical apparatus, especially in Bible/New Testament editions.
 275
 276     * Implemented a full set of standard f-ligatures, present in most
 277       OpenType fonts.
 278
 279     * Andrew Panov has convinced me to implement a set of mathematical
 280       glyphs, designed in the style of traditional Russian math
 281       typesetting. These glyphs are currently available only in the
 282       regular version of the font.
 283
 284     * A PDF manual, explaining various features of the font, is now
 285       available.
 286
 287     * Greek sampi (both uppercase and lowercase) has been redesigned.
 288
 289     * Implemented Greek lunate epsilon and reversed lunate epsilon
 290       (the design doesn't match the remaining Greek letters
 291       though). Thus all Unicode slots intended for "alternate" and
 292       mathematical Greek glyphs are now covered.
 293
 294     * A few improvements in the TTF instructions for the regular font
 295       (drop-out control has been enabled).
 296
 297     * Several minor corrections in the OpenType layouts.
 298
 299 2006 October 01 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.8
 300
 301     * Implemented a set of TrueType instructions (hints) for the
 302       regular font (italics are still unhinted). I would like to thank
 303       Peter Baker for his excellent (and extremely well documented)
 304       xgridfit program (http://xgridfit.sourceforge.net), which
 305       provides a good Open Source solution for gridfitting, or
 306       "hinting," TrueType fonts.
 307
 308     * The TrueType version of the regular font now has a separate
 309       source file (OldStandard.ttf.sfd) with quadratic splines.
 310
 311     * Changed the naming convention for the TrueType version: the font
 312       name now has a "TT" suffix, so that both TTF and OTF versions
 313       can be installed on the same system simultaneously.
 314
 315     * Added a few Latin Extended-B characters, useful mainly for
 316       germanists, in particular "b" with bar, "o" with ogonek and
 317       hwair.  Also I have corrected shapes of lowercase eth and
 318       thorn. Thus Old Standard now includes all characters necessary
 319       for representing Old Icelandic texts and Gothic
 320       transliteration. Still more characters (the most important of
 321       them being uppercase and lowercase yogh) are needed for a proper
 322       support of Old/Middle English.
 323
 324     * As usual, a few minor bugs have been corrected.
 325
 326 2006 June 09 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.7
 327
 328     * Added OpenType layouts for Latin, Greek and Cyrillic. Special
 329       attention has been paid to correct shaping and positioning of
 330       diacritical marks.
 331
 332     * Minor corrections of glyph shapes.
 333
 334 2006 May 08 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.6
 335
 336     * License changed to the SIL Open Font License.
 337
 338     * Added Greek glyphs, including those in the U+1F00--U+1FFF "Greek
 339       Extended" Unicode range.
 340
 341     * Ukrainian and Serbian Cyrillic glyphs were redesigned in order
 342       to bring them into a better correspondance with real examples of
 343       the early 20th century printing.
 344
 345     * The standard mathematical operation signs were redesigned and
 346       significantly enlarged, so that now their implementation
 347       contradicts to the contemporary standards, but better
 348       corresponds to the European tradition of math typesetting.
 349
 350     * Several additional math characters, needed to provide a full
 351       coverage for the Mac Roman encoding, have been added.
 352
 353     * Ancient Greek metrical characters (U+23D1--U+23D9) have been
 354       implemented.
 355
 356     * A TTF version is released in addition to OpenType-CFF fonts. It
 357       has no hinting at all, so don't complain for bad screen
 358       rendering!
 359
 360 2006 Feb 14 (Alexey Kryukov) Version 0.2
 361
 362     * First public release.
 363
 364 Acknowledgements
 365 ----------------
 366 (Here is where contributors can be acknowledged. If you make modifications
 367 be sure to add your name (N), email (E), web-address (W) and description
 368 (D). This list is sorted by last name in alphabetical order.)
 369
 370 N: Alexey Kryukov
 371 E: alexios@thessalonica.org.ru
 372 W: http://www.thessalonica.org.ru
 373 D: Original Designer of Latin, Greek and Cyrillic glyphs
 374
 375 For more information please visit the Fonts page on Thessalonica's
 376 website: http://www.thessalonica.org.ru/en/fonts.html.
 377
 378 Or send an email to <alexios at thessalonica dot org dot ru>.
 379
 380 N: Robert Alessi
 381 E: alessi@robertalessi.net
 382 W: http://www.robertalessi.net
 383 D: Current maintainer of Old Standard