Cyrillic characters

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PJMiller
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Cyrillic characters

Post by PJMiller »

Are there any Cyrillic users on this forum ?

I am extending the Munson font to include Cyrillic. When I first posted this font someone made the comment that it looked like a Soviet era block serif and I must agree with that observation.

I know that there are some preferences with the design of Cyrillic characters which are usually ignored or not known when non Cyrillic users design Cyrillic characters (particularly the italic characters which often have a very different form to their upright counterparts). If there are any Cyrillic users on the forum (or anyone else with an opinion) I would be very happy to hear your thoughts on the design of these Cyrillic characters.

Thank you very much. :D
Munson_Cyrillic.jpg
Munson_Cyrillic.jpg (628.44 KiB) Viewed 15817 times
Munson_Cyrillic_Italic.jpg
Munson_Cyrillic_Italic.jpg (695.09 KiB) Viewed 15817 times
Niko
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Re: Cyrillic characters

Post by Niko »

I am Russian and know about the specifics of the Cyrillic letters. I think that your Cyrillic letters for that font are quite normal, and I did not find any character mistakes, although I could judge by only the letters of the Russian alphabet, but it has 33 letters.
You could look at font “Times New Roman” for comparison. That is a very good font with the Cyrillic glyphs.
PJMiller
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Re: Cyrillic characters

Post by PJMiller »

This post was about a month ago and the font has moved on a little since then. I have re-designed a few of the characters, here are the characters which have been altered.
Munson_Cyrillic_Sample.jpg
Munson_Cyrillic_Sample.jpg (28.7 KiB) Viewed 15718 times
Munson_Cyrillic_Italic_Sample.jpg
Munson_Cyrillic_Italic_Sample.jpg (32.82 KiB) Viewed 15718 times
Any constructive criticism is appreciated.

Thank you. :D
PJMiller
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Re: Cyrillic characters

Post by PJMiller »

P.S.

The version of 'Munson' now on offer doesn't have any Cyrillic, that is going to be in the next version which will be released when it is finished (fairly soon I hope) but fontmaking is just a hobby not my job so I do it when I feel like doing it, there is no deadline.

I am currently extending the small caps feature to support Cyrillic and aligning anchors.
Niko
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Re: Cyrillic characters

Post by Niko »

These letters are good as before. I just noticed that, for the Italic, you made the small letter Zhe like composite of the inverted and normal small letter Ka, but that shape is more typically for the Sans Serif Italic fonts, although there are quite a number of the Serif fonts with that shape, for example the Palatino Linotype.
PJMiller
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Re: Cyrillic characters

Post by PJMiller »

Niko wrote: Fri Dec 01, 2017 11:02 pm I just noticed that, for the Italic, you made the small letter Zhe like composite of the inverted and normal small letter Ka, but that shape is more typically for the Sans Serif Italic fonts, although there are quite a number of the Serif fonts with that shape, for example the Palatino Linotype.
Yes but what do you think of it ?
Niko
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Re: Cyrillic characters

Post by Niko »

PJMiller wrote: Sat Dec 02, 2017 10:47 am
Niko wrote: Fri Dec 01, 2017 11:02 pm I just noticed that, for the Italic, you made the small letter Zhe like composite of the inverted and normal small letter Ka, but that shape is more typically for the Sans Serif Italic fonts, although there are quite a number of the Serif fonts with that shape, for example the Palatino Linotype.
Yes but what do you think of it ?
There is no mistake here. So that is a matter of taste. I like both the variants.
stormag
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Re: Acute cyrillic characters

Post by stormag »

I'd like to add cyrillic characters to my font - could you tell me which one should I have for a complete set of glyphs for the russian language?

Are the acute-accented letters (like а́ е́ и́ о́ у́ ы́ э́ ю́ я́) necessary? I have a problem finding them in the unicode table when I try to use the "Insert character" tool.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
PJMiller
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Re: Cyrillic characters

Post by PJMiller »

Cyrillic developed over a long period of time when christian monks set out across asia to bring christianity to the people there. So it is not just one language, the alphabet is used by about thirty five different languages.

If you only want to support russian and a few of the major languages then you only need the Cyrillic characters in the Windows Glyph List 4 but if you want to support some of the minority languages then you need to include more glyphs. Some of the characters in the Cyrillic Unicode block are historical and are not in common use these days.

The characters in the Cyrillic Supplementary block are all for the minority languages.

If you implement the entire Cyrillic and Cyrillic Supplementary blocks then that covers just about all of the Cyrillic languages but that is a lot of work. If you only do the WGL4 characters then that covers the major languages. It's up to you.

I would say that some of the accented characters in your post are not in the Cyrillic blocks to my knowledge, they may be other blocks if they are used by other languages. If it isn't in the Cyrillic block then there is no need to include it because nobody who types on a Cyrillic keyboard and uses your font will realise it is there and therefore it won't be used.

There is a useful database for seeing what characters are used by which language.

Also you can add anchors to characters to position diacritic marks when they are used with those characters. Doing it this way any mark can be paired with any character potentially. But again if it is not a combination which is used in the language then it will not get used.

Hope this helps.
stormag
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Re: Cyrillic characters

Post by stormag »

Thank you very much – that is really comprehensive – in fact it gave me a lot of interesting additional information!
PJMiller
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Re: Cyrillic characters

Post by PJMiller »

You're welcome.

:D
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