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• Garava 4.0 adds more glyphs and uses Anchor-based positioning for accented glyphs. Version 4.02 fixed some bugs, and improved alignment and spacing of super/subscripts. Version 4.03 fixed some more bugs.
• Garava 3.83 was updated with many fixes using FontCreator 10.1
• Garava 3.80 Switched Initial Forms to Stylistic Alternates, and Stylist Alternates to Character Variants
  Garava 3.72 Fixed some bugs and adds some kerning pairs
  Garava 3.71 Completed the Currency Symbols and Number Forms for Unicode 8.0
  Garava 3.70 Adds Swashes and Initial Forms in Colour.

Garava 3.21 completes the currency symbols for Unicode 7.0 and fixes some bugs. The Heavy type style was renamed to Extra-Bold, and an Extra-Bold Italic style was added. The six styles are now all part of a single font family. Many more kerning pairs were added. Mathematical symbols were made more consistent for central vertical alignment on the figures.

Typeface Sample

It was designed for body text in Buddhist Publications. It has a generous x-height and economical copyfit. "Garava" is a Pali word meaning "reverence."

A full range of Latin characters means it can be used for Pali, Sanskrit, Romanised Indic scripts, nearly all European languages, and Vietnamese. A basic Greek character set, and a wide range of symbols extend its usefulness to other academic fields such as maths and science. Maths and currency symbols are designed on the figure width, while other symbols, arrows, and geometric shapes are a uniform width and align with the Caps height wherever the design permits. Superscripts align with the tops of figures, while subscripts bisect the baseline.

Besides the expected regular, italic, bold, and bold italic styles, the Garava font family includes an Extra-Bold style, and Italics. Small Capitals and Petite Capitals are available in each of the four base type styles, so the Small Capitals type styles are no longer supported. Only Petite Capitals are available in the Extra-Bold styles, and there are lowercase superscripts for ordinals, but not a full set for superscript text, as there is in the Regular styles.

Garava has been updated to version 2.1. The updated fonts have OpenType features for Ligatures, Petite Caps, OldStyle Figures, Superscripts, Scientific Inferiors, and Nut Fractions. The kerning pairs were extended and improved again with the help of the latest version of FontCreator 5.6, which is now much easier to use for manual kerning, and can import/export kerning values from/to a text file.

The Small Capitals in separate type styles replace the lowercase and are 80% of the Capital Height. These now have small caps figures for use with lowercase, which will be substituted if either the PetiteCaps or OldStyle Figures OpenType feature are enabled.

Petite Capitals are in the Private Use Area and use OpenType substitutions. OldStyle Figures and Petite Capitals match the x-Height of the font. Applications like OpenOffice or Serif™ PagePlus that don’t support OpenType features can still access these extra glyphs, which are mapped to the Private Use Area.

Typeface Sample PDF

Updated to version 2.4

• Added a full set of Stacking Fractions in the Private Use Area. These fractions can also be accessed using OpenType Features.
• The Heavy Typeface has been enhanced with many improved glyphs, and a full set of Petite Capitals.
• All typefaces now include a full set of lowercase superscripts for use with ordinals, or for phonetics.
• Additional Miscellaneous Symbols were added to complete the character set to Unicode Standard 5.1 Character Map

Updated to version 2.5

• Added a full set of Ordinals and superscripts. These can be accessed using OpenType Features.
• The Bold and Heavy Typefaces have improved contrast between thick and thin strokes, and lighter serifs. Petite Capital glyphs were removed.
• The Small Capitals and Bold Small Capitals type styles were removed as there are now Petite Capital glyphs and OpenType features in all four base type styles.
• Additional Miscellaneous Symbols and Dingbats were added to complete the character sets to Unicode Standard 6.0
• A few more Miscellaneous Technical Symbols were added
• OpenType features were added for Alternative Annotation Forms, Caps to Small Caps/Petite Caps, Historical Ligatures, Ordinals, Ornaments, and Stylistic Alternates.

Updated to Version 2.6

Added some more kerning pairs for Caps > Small Caps.

Removed glyph substitutions for some characters: £$¥()[]{} from the Small Caps features, and retained them only for the Caps to Small Caps features.

Download links in the first post are unchanged.

Another great addition to your achievements.

Merry Christmas

Updated again to 3.21 to improve the spacing of stacking fractions and the kerning for them

Updated to 3.30 to complete the currency symbols for Unicode 7.0

Updated again to 3.40 to improve the order of priority of OpenType features. Standard and Discretionary Ligatures no longer take precedence over Small and Petite Capital features.

Version 3.51 adds standard ligatures for fff and fffl, and discretionary ligatures for sf, sfi, sfy, sk, and sh.

Kerning pairs were also improved and some bugs in the Extra Bold Italic style were fixed.

Garava 3.70 was updated with additional glyphs and OpenType Features for Swashes and Initial Forms. Most users won't be able to see the glyphs in colour outside of FontCreator, but let me know if you have an application that supports colour fonts in Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.

I have used FontCreator 9.0 to improve the order of OpenType Features, and to find several bugs. Let me know if you spot any more.

That's a lot of kerning pairs, Bhikkhu!

Garava also has a lot of glyphs: Small Capitals, Petite Capitals, Titling Capitals, and Superscripts, which increases the number of permutations of kerning pairs. If you think it's a lot of kerning pairs, take a look at Gabriola.
Fortunately, class based kerning in FontCreator 9.0 makes it easy to generate kerning pairs. There are only 1,014 pairs of classes.
18/1/2016 (ver 3.72) • 6 styles, 3,174 Glyphs, > 34K Kerning Pairs

I see.

Garava was updated to version 3.73 to fix a bug with kerning.

Garava was updated to version 3.80 to replace Initial Forms with Stylistic Alternates, and to replace the existing Stylistic Alternates with Character Variants. This was necessary to avoid a problem caused by a significant change to the description of initial forms made by Microsoft. Initial forms are enabled by default and not meant to be exposed to the user, so they cannot be disabled in modern applications.