Fonts for transliteration (was: Critical Editions?)

[BPJ via ntg-context <ntg-context@ntg.nl>]

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Den sön 9 jan. 2022 13:22Robert via ntg-context <ntg-context@ntg.nl> skrev:

> Dear list,
>
> I am currently working on a critical edition as well, and follow the
> discussion with interest. For the time being, I prefer Latex over Context
> for this project.
>
> In addition to Jürgen's remarks on transcription fonts, a small
> contribution:
>
> Arabists and turcologists working with transcriptions used to have similar
> problems. In the nineties I adapted existing postscript fonts with
> Fontographer. I also made sure to copy kerning information from extant
> letters (e.g. a) to new ones (e.g. ā) with the required diacritic (usually
> dots, dashes and haceks). This was in the pre-unicode era.
>
> Today there is the Brill font which is quite extended, yet I am not sure
> if it can be used freely in other publications.
>
> Adapations to extant fonts can still be made with the open source app
> FontForge. Do not hesitate to contact me offline if you need help on this.
>

The technically excellent free Google Noto Serif/Sans/Sans Mono fonts have
quite extensive coverage of Latin/Greek/Cyrillic scripts. As an
Indo-Europeanist turned programmer/editor/translator doing frequent forays
into Uralic and Afroasiatic when wearing a more general historical
linguistics hat I have found nothing missing.
(If you need a Mono Font make sure to use Noto Sans Mono which has better
coverage than Noto Mono!)

https://fonts.google.com/noto

Much the same can be said of the Charis SIL font from SIL International,
although the current release lags behind Noto when it comes to coverage.

https://software.sil.org/charis/

(Make sure to look at the downloads page for info on downloadable
customized fonts!)

There is also the Gentium SIL font with Greek and Cyrillic coverage as well
as Latin, although its design may be a bit too swashy for academic work.

If something *is* missing these are all licensed under the quite permissive
Open Font License

https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=OFL-FAQ_web

Publishers may have their own (ideas about) fonts but for course materials,
handouts, manuscripts, databases and the like these are excellent. I do all
my work in the Vim text editor (with Noto Sans Mono) and *TeX/Pandoc.

Regards,

/Benct



> Regards,
>
> Robert
>
> info@mo-perspectief.nl
>
>
> > Op 9 jan. 2022, om 11:23 heeft hanneder--- via ntg-context <
> ntg-context@ntg.nl> het volgende geschreven:
> >
> > I was just writing a mail (below) and saw:
> >
> >> They do indic scripts and Kai made the first version of the devanagari
> code for the context fontloader code that I then optimized.
> >
> > Fascinating. Where can I learn more about that or is that
> > user-unfriendly (my technical knowledge is rather limited).
> >
> >
> > Dear Hans,
> >
> > two recurring problems are rather specifically Indological and they
> concern hyphenation and
> > font.
> >
> > 1. In Sanskrit prose it is possible to produce compounds that span a few
> lines. The concept of
> >   "word" or "word division" fails here, as are the TeX mechanisms.
> >
> >   What we need in practice would be a "hyphenation" for the language
> Sanskrit that hyphenates
> >   after all Sanskrit vowels (in transcription this would be a, ā, i, ī,
> u, ū, ṛ, ḷ, e, o, ai, au. The
> >   last two cannot be split, "au" is one vowel with one vowel sign in the
> original script). Of
> >   course, we want to improve this automatic spelling occasionally, so we
> need to be able to insert
> >   a \- without thereby disabling the hyphenation for this compound.
> >
> >   I think in critical editions the problem of the disabled hyphenation
> also arises when a variant
> >   is added inside a word. In any case hyphenation is a real nuisance in
> critical editions.
> >
> > 2. Fonts that contain all necessary diacritics have become sparse. (This
> is more a lamentation, not
> >   much one can do about it, I guess).
> >
> >   When I started TeXing people were used to writing aṭavī as
> a\d{t}av{\=\i}. Not user friendly,
> >   but it worked with many fonts. With each new font regime Sanskritists
> had to search for new
> >   fonts, invent work-arounds etc. Even the most promising attempts (I
> spent a lot of time with
> >   OmegaTeX) eventually disappeared. Now we are dependent on whether an
> otf font has the underdot
> >   characters (ṭḍṃḥ) and the vowels (āīūṛ). Within the commercial fonts,
> I found only one
> >   "Brotschrift" that worked, which is Adobe Text Pro. I really like
> Minion, for instance, but the
> >   latest otf Version has no ṭ etc.
> >
> >   Thank god, we have many TeX fonts derived from older ones that still
> work, but many entries in
> >   the TeX Font Catalogue do not!
> >
> >
> > Jürgen
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ---
> >
> > Prof. Dr. Juergen Hanneder
> > Philipps-Universitaet Marburg
> > FG Indologie u. Tibetologie
> > Deutschhausstr.12
> > 35032 Marburg
> > Germany
> > Tel. 0049-6421-28-24930
> > hanneder@staff.uni-marburg.de
> >
> >
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
> > If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry
> to the Wiki!
> >
> > maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl /
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> > webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net
> > archive  : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/
> > wiki     : http://contextgarden.net
> >
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
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>
> maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl /
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___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net
archive  : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/
wiki     : http://contextgarden.net
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