Kerning for Greek

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PJMiller
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Re: Kerning for Greek

Post by PJMiller »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote: Most of my fonts only contain Basic Greek, which is not for Greek text but for Maths and similar uses in English text.

Perhaps fonts with a full Greek Extended character set should have a Greek script and a separate kerning table for Greek. It's all a bit much to be honest. I prefer to have no more scripts and languages than really necessary as it makes fonts harder to maintain.
Does this imply that if a font is intended for everyday use in the Greek language then it needs the 'Greek Extended' unicode block fully populated ?

Are there any Greek people on this forum ?
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Kerning for Greek

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

PJMiller wrote:Does this imply that if a font is intended for everyday use in the Greek language then it needs the 'Greek Extended' unicode block fully populated ?

Are there any Greek people on this forum ?
I think Greek Extended is only needed for Ancient Greek.
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Joop Jagers
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Re: Kerning for Greek

Post by Joop Jagers »

Only for Modern monotonic Greek the Greek Extended block isn't necessary. For all other purposes (ancient Greek, katharevousa, polytonic Greek) you can't do without Greek Extended.
PJMiller
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Re: Kerning for Greek

Post by PJMiller »

Is Polytonic Greek used much these days?

I thought it was deprecated when they simplified the language in 1982.

What I need to know is how useful it would be to people to populate the Greek Extended unicode block ($1F00 to $1FFF).
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Re: Kerning for Greek

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

PJMiller wrote:What I need to know is how useful it would be to people to populate the Greek Extended unicode block ($1F00 to $1FFF).
As a wild guess, I would say it essential for those scholars who need to write in ancient Greek, but useless to 99.99% of Greeks.

The reason that my font Garava includes it is because I used that to test the Complete Composites feature. Guru and Acariya, which are basically the same font but with different widths, also include it. My other fonts do not.

With Transform scripts and Complete Composites it's not hard to add, but it still takes time to check the spacing of this large character set, which could be better spent on other things.

Arial and Times New Roman include it, but Georgia and Verdana do not.
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PJMiller
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Re: Kerning for Greek

Post by PJMiller »

The font I am working on (the successor to Kelvinch) will have the MUFI character set and so will be of use to medievalists.

Perhaps Ancient Greek would be a useful addition to such a font.
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