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Jivita is an original Sans Serif typeface designed for body text. It has a wide range of OpenType features, and four type styles.

Updated to version 2.20 with FontCreator 10.1

Jivita was updated to version 1.3 with many improvements and new features, including a set of 26 Decorative Drop Capitals, using a different variant for each type style. This can be accessed using the Initial Forms feature (called Word Start Alternates in PagePlus), or by inserting them from the Private Use Area using a character map in applications that don't support OpenType.

Updated again to ver 1.70 to improve the Initial Forms.

Version 1.72 harmonizes the width of the Initial Forms glyph, which are now colour glyphs.

Again a great improvement. Can't wait to test it on Windows 8.1.

Version 1.73 switches the foreground background colours of Bold Italic, so now all four styles are noticeably different.

Jivita Version 1.90 completed the Number Forms and Dingbats character sets, added chess pieces to the Ornaments, and a standard ligature for ffj.

The updated version of TTFautohint (version 1.2) distributed with FontCreator 9.0 solves the hinting problem with my large fonts so there's no longer any need for workarounds. The latest version of TTFautohint (currently 1.3) is too big to include in the FontCreator download, but can be downloaded from Sourceforge and extracted to: the \TTFAutohint\ folder in FontCreator's installation folder.

ttfautohint-1.3-win32.7z includes a command-line utility for adding hinting to fonts, which may be helpful to those who wish to fine-tune the hinting.

With the help of the massive improvements in FontCreator 9.0 I have updated four fonts (14 type styles) today. Mostly, I have used the Visual OpenType Designer to make changes, but on Jivita I used the Code Editor to copy/paste the script for Contextual Ligatures and the Ornament ligatures for chess pieces. The code editor automatically changed the lookup for Ornaments from a single substitution to a ligature substitution when I pasted the code from Pali Regular.

For someone who knows nothing about OpenType scripting, there's a steep learning curve, but the Visual Designer makes it a lot easier to add and edit OpenType features. Once you have worked out how to create one working script for the Regular type style, it takes very little time to import the script into the other three styles. The kerning pairs will probably need adjusting — that's all, as long as you have named the glyphs consistently across all four types styles.

Version 2.00 replaces the Initial Forms feature with Stylistic Alternates and the former Stylistic Alternates are now Character Variants.

Some kerning pairs were added.

Version 2.10 fixes the bug with flattening of kerning classes, optimised some complex glyphs, and added a set of smaller, unhinted web versions without most of the symbols or coloured drop caps.

Version 2.20 added proportional figures, fixed some bugs in glyph naming, improved kerning classes, and added more kerning pairs.

Version 2.30 improved the glyphs with ogonek.