Pali Typeface

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Download Pali.7z (625K 7-Zip archive)

My latest font is my version of Hermann Zapf's Palatino. Why yet another version of Palatino?

1. My font has tighter default leading — 12 on 10 point, instead of 13.5 on 10 point, so it is more economical for copy-fit.

2. Petite Capitals (xHeight Small Capitals) are in the Private Use Area so they can be used in applications that don't support OpenType features.

3. Titling Capitals in the Private Use Area. These are lighter than regular capitals and more generously spaced.

4. My font contains OpenType Features for Titling Capitals, Petite Capitals, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures, OldStyle Numerals, Fractions, Alternative Fractions (Nut Fractions), Ordinals, Superscripts, Subscripts, and Scientific Inferiors (bisecting the baseline).

5. My fonts are released under GNU license, so anyone can modify them, add support for other languages, etc., to suit their needs. Just give the font a new name and retain the GNU license agreement.

6. Like my other fonts, this font includes a wide range of symbols and dingbats.

Typeface Sample

[Erwin Denissen]

Very nice font with a very large character set. How many where (semi)automatically generated with the Glyph Transformer feature (insert characters, and complete composites)?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Insert Characters was used only as part of Glyph Transformation presets.

I find that the italic glyph transformer is fine on generating italics, and not too bad for Small Caps and Superscripts, but rather less useful for bold as it treats thick and thin strokes the same. It is better to trace a bitmap and then smooth it. A Glyph Transform preset was used to create ligatures too, but some work was needed afterwards to make them into proper Alphabetic presentation forms.

Of 1944 Glyphs in the Regular type style, 780 are composites, but complete composites was also used to create many more that are now simple glyphs: Æ and other ligatures, and all glyphs with cedilla, horn, ogonek, bar, etc. Old Style Figures, Nut Fractions, stacking diacritics, and combining diacritics all used Complete Composites too, at least as the inital stage of design.

Copy and paste was used to duplicate the Geometric Symbols, Arrows, Miscellaneous Symbols, some Maths Symbols, and Dingbats (nearly 600 glyphs) from my other fonts. They were then resized en masse to fit the Caps Height of this font.

The greatly improved accuracy of complete composites in version 5.6 saves a lot of time in aligning accents (using my optical centre adjustment tip for some glyphs). I have further improved CompositeData.xml while making this font, and will pass those improvements on later.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Updated with OpenType versions. I also fixed some incorrect mappings of a few ligatures, and added a few more. The Typeface Sample PDF has also been updated.

If anyone uses OpenType aware applications I will be interested to hear if they actually work. I added OpenType features with the OpenType Compiler and tested them in the TrueType Viewer from the same author.

However, I am new to this, and may have made some errors.

Note that OpenType fonts do not use the OTF icon in Windows unless they have been digitally signed. They are installed just like TTF fonts, by copying to the Windows Fonts folder, or by using MainType.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Updated to version 1.4.

• Added OpenType Feature for Fractions, and Discretionary Ligatures as well as Standard Ligatures.
• Added several Miscellaneous Symbols to complete the set in line with the Unicode Standard version 5.1.
• Added a full set of superscripts for lowercase a-z for use with ordinals or for phonetics.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Updated to version 1.41

There have been no changes to the glyphs, just in the order of precedence for OpenType Features. This changes what happens when more than one feature is selected:

• Alternative Fractions will be used in preference to Fractions
• Scientific Inferiors will be used in preference to Superscripts
• Oldstyle Figures will only be used if none of the above features are enabled.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Pali has been updated to version 1.50 with a full set of stacking fractions up to 63/64, more ligatures, and new OpenType features for Titling Capitals. My fonts use the Private Use area for the extra glyphs.

If you use OpenOffice, my Add and Remove Ligatures Macros can be used to add/remove ligatures, and it could modified to convert regular text to Petite Capitals. The Miscellaneous Symbols character set has been updated to support the full range of glyphs added in version 5.1 of the Unicode Standard.

Titling Capitals are lighter than regular capitals, and more generously spaced. Version 1.50 also includes many more kerning pairs (now about 1,600 including pairs for Greek, Stacking Fractions, Titling Capitals, and Small Capitals

Stacking fractions produce much neater results for typesetting. Kerning (used in the third line below) further improves the appearance.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Now that PagePlus X5 supports OpenType features, I am in the process of updating my free fonts. Even if you don't have PagePlus, you can install and use the fonts, but you won't be able to use the extra Smart Font technology to access the extra glyphs unless you have a program that supports those features. They can still be inserted using Insert Symbol or Windows Character map.

• Added OpenType Feature for Fractions, Alternative (Stacking) Fractions, Alternative Annotation forms, Petite Capitals, Petite Capitals from Capitals, Ornaments, Ordinals, Superscripts, Scientific Inferiors, Titling Capitals, Discretionary Ligatures, Historical Ligatures, Standard Ligatures, and Stylistic Alternates.
• Added several Miscellaneous Symbols to complete the set in line with the Unicode Standard version 6.0.
• Added many more kerning pairs
• Redesigned some glyphs
• Fixed some errors

Pali Typeface Sample • Free 7-Zip Archiver

[Dick Pape]

Thank you -- I always enjoy your hard work. Dick

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Pali is now up to version 1.70 — I tweaked the kerning pairs again. Spacing and kerning is perhaps the hardest part to get right. I hope that the next version of FontCreator does something to improve auto-kerning to reduce the work-load of manually creating kerning pairs.

[Erwin Denissen]

I'm not sure if it is intentional, but the .7z also contains the OpenType features file for the bold version of Pali.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Yes. That is intentional — all of my archives now contain these files. That way, anyone can modify the OpenType features easily using the tutorial on Adding OpenType Features.

[Erwin Denissen]

That is very generous!

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Updated to version 2.02 with a creative use for Contextual Ligatures. Some scholars use the Velthuis encoding system for typing Pali and Sanskrit. This has the advantage that it doesn't require special fonts with diacritics, and can be read in emails, on forums, etc.

The features for Fractions, Ordinals, and Stylistic Alternate Sets were improved. Glyphs were added for subscripts used in maths formulae like 1/x or a/b using the fractions feature.

All lunatics will be pleased to find symbols for various phases of the waxing and waning moon implemented as Stylistic Alternates for the Geometric Shapes Black Circle (New Moon) and Circle (Full Moon). The Miscellaneous Symbol for black sun with rays also has some alternate glyphs.

The script used to add the OpenType features was added to the archive and the Layout and Contents setting was reverted to version 3 so that features can be tested in the TrueType Viewer